I know this is a millennial retirement village, but I can't emphasise how destructive it was to my sense of a shared political community as a teenager to see 150,000 people on the streets of Melbourne protesting against the war in 2001 and to be totally ignored. Not digging the 2025 rerun!
I have not known a single year where America was not assaulting another Nation my entire life, I've seen now what feels like 100 year wars waged in Months and yet nobody actually condemns the US, Nobody in the US actually STOPS this shit the People just let it happen. "Democracy" my Arse.
Feeling that, my man. Feeling that. NOT a good feeling.
you & me both, nephew boomer here, jailed in '69 for opposing Vietnam war, stood with a couple of dozen protesters in front of the White House protesting Iraq war in 2001 while passersby sneered & jeered at us. dreading this 2025 sequel
I was working at a corporate law firm at the time, even the partners marched
We are still trying our best in the inner north of Melbourne. Still got to try.
what war were they protesting against in 2001?
I mixed up Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003
oh that makes sense - I think most people thought us trying to get bin laden after 2001 was justified
My general sense of millennial nihilist deja vu in seeing all these kids riled up about war in Israel and economic turmoil and idiot presidents and war in the middle east was summed up best in the Ballad of Buster Scruggs.
This war was started on Putin's birthday. Any ideas why?
It ain't just millennials retired here. Same crushing realisation for the Gen X crew then, and at every major political protest since. The gears of war keep on grinding as our feckless leaders march in bipartisan lockstep with international allies regardless of their actions & ultimate intentions.
It’s not a rerun. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. What can we learn from the past, and how can we apply those lessons today to achieve a better outcome? We can come together to protest, but protesting alone does not make change. However they do shape the conversation.
What protests also do is create a moment where dozens, hundreds, thousands, etc of people with shared beliefs and common cause, all share the same physical space… these are great opportunities to coordinate and organize future actions! If we’re smart, hopefully we can keep the momentum going…
In addition to protest marches and rallies, we have many other options for peaceful resistance to the authoritarian regime. These two web sites outline many nonviolent strategies. You can choose the ones that work best for your community. beautifultrouble.org commonslibrary.org
*sighs in 1991*.
Every protest we were told was pointless and wasteful and "no big deal" and "it's always been this way" and "we should let the adults run the world" and "protesting never changed anything" turned out to be important. Did protesting change anything, did we help? Maybe not enough but at least we tried
You and @brkeogh.bsky.social are sharing a vibe here.
Yep same by GenX. We were in DC screaming at the world that George Bush was full of shit about WMDs, and low and behold he was full of shit about WMDs. A whole fucking generation with Curse of Cassandra; no one ever listens.
A whole generation? Most of Gen X was not protesting that war. Not at all.
Yeah we were. In 2003 GenXers were in our late twenties and early '30s and were left as fuck. Everybody knew it was bullshit; only the boomers were on board. The point being, it doesn't, and did not, matter what *any* of us think. The US government's been out of control since Vietnam.
12 million people protested a couple weekends ago, and what changed? Fuck-all. If anything the US government agenda got more aggressive, more propaganda, more wag the dog bullshit.
because a peaceful protest will never enact real long term change. unless every single ablebodied adult in american walked to DC i suppose, but that quite literally could never happen
One day / weekend warrior peaceful protests that “they” can plan against sadly won’t be enough to make any real change at this stage. Peaceful dissent could still work, but it needs to have some form of disruption to have any kind of positive impact for the American people.
imagine if that 12.1 something million people committed to boycotting the companies people have been told to boycott for years! that would certainly be something. but theyd rather sip starbies and walk down the street holding an ableist sign of trump in a diaper or with a walker with the word "taco"
we need thousands of people to protest randomly every day of the month. as soon as i heard some 50501 protest working with cops i knew it wasnt a very serious movement. just people who want to walk down a street and feel good about "protesting", but would call the police on a Black guy in a second