#mass movements

[ninsiana0]

Dr. Lisa Corrigan on Bluesky "about how marches and protests expand the threshold of acceptable risk so that people take more and bigger social risks IN PUBLIC, EN MASSE."

[shrinkrants]

I believe mass marches can help us rally our collective spirits and remind people that they’re not alone, and that they have the potential to be a part of something larger than themselves. But I think trying to recreate that energy through mass marches repeatedly, whether the marches are permitted or not, is a losing proposition because you’re not really amassing power. You’re not, as you’re saying, establishing leverage, and you’re not affecting material outcomes. And over time, people get tired of doing the same thing and not seeing any results. So numbers dwindle, which feels disempowering to the people who do keep showing up. And I have seen this kind of errant approach of continuously trying to replicate moments that feel empowering or inspiring across a number of movements. And we really don’t have time to get stuck in this cycle this time around. Strategy right now is not about scheduling the next big march. --Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò in conversation with Kelly Hayes.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Notice the way in which people show their gullibility and their herd instinct, and their wish - or perhaps their need - to be fooled. Credulity may be a form of innocence, but it provides a standing invitation for the wicked and the clever to exploit their brothers and sisters.

Christopher Hitchens

Whose taking bets when the Woke fever will break and then try and find anyone who actually believed in it in the first place?

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation. Unlike those anywhere else, the masses in America have never despaired of the present and are not willing to sacrifice it for a new life and a new world. ― Eric Hoffer, The Temper of Our Time p 50 (1967)

[Scott Horton]

[queersatanic]

imagine if liberals cared as much about any other form of political action beyond shaming people every two to four years about how (or whether) they voted in a general election

It's not that voting is meaningless or accomplishes nothing. "If voting changed anything, they wouldn't let you do it" rings a bit hollow given the major push to disenfranchise Black voters in particular, but also many other groups considered likely to vote Democratic.

However, many billions of dollars, organizing time, and energy is siphoned into electoralism where all change can continue to be mitigated and directed by the same people already in power, and changed in such a way that it can be easily reversed later.

The violence of the status quo is not threatened or undermined by elections, and that violence is always being built up and readied to be released against any existential threats anyway. They control the proper channels, but they also get to decide what is proper and how much punishment there is when someone goes outside of it.

Put a different way: as poor people, our options are much more mutually exclusive than a billionaire's will be. So when thinking about how to direct your own limited resources, keep in mind all the areas where you're in competition with billionaires under capitalism and whether your limited resources are best spent competing in that arena instead of elsewhere.

[thefugitivesaint]

Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev, 'Strike', 1906

[anti-capitalistlesbianwitch]

Anyway I don't think we can rely on governments, regardless of who is in power, to do the work that only mass movements can do.

Angela Davis, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement

[psycheapuleius]

“Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.”

— ERIC HOFFER, The True Believer.