I hear the narrative that people shouldn’t protest in this way but I have taken to asking what is the alternative? If you are silent, your discontent will go unnoticed. The real problem is that we are having to do this at all. As far as I’m concerned, these people are genuine heroes, fighting against a lobby masquerading as a government. A damn shame
There is no version of protest that isn’t an inconvenience. People who are more mad at the protesters in the streets than they are at whatever they are protesting are exactly the people that need to hear the message the protesters are trying to spread.
The worst thing a protester can do is garble their message or make it incoherent. It needs to be short, actionable, and repeatable. It needs to be something that acts as a response to “get out of the road!”
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A spokesperson for the campaign said: “Section 7 of the Public Order Act 2023, a law drafted by the fossil fuel lobby, was introduced in April by Priti Patel, and covers ‘interference with the use or operation of key national infrastructure’…"
A lobby masquerading as a government indeed.
The only thing this is telling activists is that pacifist protesting isn’t going to work, so the next step will be hostile/violent protesting. This is a bad predicament.
The test to see whether you agree with an argument like this, is imagining people protesting something you are vehemently in favour of. If you’d still agree with it then, then the logic holds.
Protest at the refineries? You shut those down and you’re not inconveniencing the 60 people who are sitting in their cars in traffic… you end up causing a ripple to millions. This type of protesting is just silly and doesn’t actually do anything.
Just Stop Oil started off with protests at the refineries. It had zero identifiable impact and almost no press coverage.
That’s why people started things like ‘slow march’ and ‘throw soup at the glass in front of artwork’
If they’re going to be impactful to these companies, they’re going to be more on the saboteur side of things.
The argument is thus : you need a lot of people on board to effect change in a democracy. The protests are not winning popular support - in fact the opposite. The public are distressed, and actually turn against the cause.
Edit : downvoting explainers . Great work .
Lemmy is full of 12 year olds
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
― John F. Kennedy
Peacdful protest was the compromise and its well past time the owning class was reminded of this.
It’s the UK. They long ago traded freedom for the illusion of security and don’t have the ability to forcefully remind the owning class of anything beyond their ability to ignore such inconveniences.
Absolutely infuriating.
A spokesperson for the campaign said: “Section 7 of the Public Order Act 2023, a law drafted by the fossil fuel lobby, was introduced in April by Priti Patel, and covers ‘interference with the use or operation of key national infrastructure’. It seems this government has now made walking down the road, walking on the public highway an illegal act that is worthy of imprisonment.
