2025-01-06 Asking for change, politely

It seems to me that when the powerful are terrible people and the weak are trying to articulate their anger, to organize, to get a mass movement going, asking them to politely make their case and letting other people make up their mind is not OK. By telling people not to fight for their rights but to just politely make their point and then shut up one aligns with the powerful, one dismisses the methods of resistance.

To get a feel for absurd this is, I remember a cartoon I once saw where American natives gave the conquistadores a list of complaints; where black Americans gave white Americans a list of civil rights they were asking for; and so on. And in all cases, the oppressor answered, "oh, that's not fair!" or something to that effect and instituted the necessary changes.

It never works that way.

For the oppressed to organize, they need the right to speak, to organize, to meet, to protest.

For the oppressor to get spurred into action, it needs to hurt.

These days, that means that protests must lead to costs. Otherwise they're ignored. It's as simple as that. Therefore, protest disrupts the economy, disrupts the flow of goods, damages property. If it doesn't cost, it doesn't hurt. If it doesn't hurt, it isn't felt.

Also consider all the political theatre that goes on. You can be part of a grass-roots organisation and fight for change. As far as the situation in Switzerland is concerned, the government might even invite you to comment on new draft legislation. But you're not going to get to write the proposals. You're not going to change the system by participating in meetings. At that point, you're part of the long arm of the government reaching into civil society, there to confirm that they have made the right choices, to do your part in the public performance to assure the rest of us that everything is OK, everybody has been heard and all points of view have been accounted for. At that point, it's too late for change.

The opportunity for change is to be a threat to the establishment, to undermine the seats of politicians, to cast doubt on their reliability, to make them unelectable. Then the government starts moving and writes new proposals to be confirmed by the political theatre in front of a changed audience.

@danahilliot@climatejustice.social has a blog post (in French) called Public participation as empty performance of democracy discussing Melissa Checker's book, The Sustainability Myth: Environmental Gentrification and the Politics of Justice, NYC University Press, 2020, in which she dismantles the procedures of “public debates with citizens”.

=> Public participation as empty performance of democracy | The Sustainability Myth: Environmental Gentrification and the Politics of Justice

@samiamsam@mastodon.social reminded me that "people need to read Letter from a Birmingham Jail".

=> Letter from a Birmingham Jail

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I find the actual letter to be more interesting to read than the summary on Wikipedia.

​#Politics