As an European citizen, I am always surprised seeing the american “protests” posts on Reddit.
Normally you see there a bunch of people standing next(!!!) to a street holding up signs and showing them the car drivers. In addition they celebrate themselves inside the post as a huge mob of protestors and how big this whole action is.
Comparing this to European protests it looks weird. Here a protest is to disturb the everyday life to get the focus to a problem. (closing streets, stores, infrastructure and so on). Normally everything is still peaceful.
So my question:
Is what I observed really the protest culture in the US?
And if yes:
Why don’t the protest aim to disturb the everyday life?
Comments
Because we respect other people’s rights to disagree with us and to not have their life forcibly interrupted by our desire to jam our opinions down their throats.
Most of the time, anyway. Blocking streets still happens but it’s not an effective tactic here, it just gets everyone angry with you and ultimately harms your cause more than it helps, which answers your final question.
Disturbing the life of people trying to go about their business can be counter productive to the end goal.
There are times more drastic measures are worthwhile, but generally speaking more is accomplished with education, legislation, and in court than with disruptive protests.
There is a saying in the US, the four boxes of liberty to be used in order.
Soap box. Ballot box. Jury box. Ammo box.
I’m guessing it’s because we all got scared when the military started spraying bullets into crowds during BLM protests. As for what protests aim to do instead, couldn’t tell you. People treat me like a bad actor when I ask that and other questions 🤷
Disrupting people’s lives doesn’t work here because they’ll just end up hating you and what you stand for.
Bread and circus.
Americans, and British to be honest, have never really grasped that a peaceful protest is an ignorable protest.
They always seem to think they win points for civility and respectableness, which is why the work/life balance is so out of whack and rights and are stripped on a daily basis.
Throw a goddamn brick or two, light a cop……………………………………..car on fire. Show that the options are change or hell to pay. That is how protests are meant to work, and how they achive stuff.
With the current presidency being the way it is, I fear for my safety in general as far as retaliation from Trump and his cronies, but at the same time that’s why we need the protests.. it honestly is baffling but here we are
Two reasons: in my opinion we are better represented and the federal govt. doesn’t have as huge of an impact on our lives.
In America the federal government can make large changes, but generally the biggest changes happen at the state, and even local level. At these levels it is very easy to make your voice heard, there’s often community meetings and town halls, representatives may only live a couple miles away from you. There’s not really a point to protest when chance can be meaningfully enacted by just talking.
Secondly is the fact that America is despite what many say, great at giving everyone a voice. Every representative has an office to call, there are numerous political action committees that have connections to every politician in the country, all representatives have social media, etc. Most people feel that they can reach their representative easily, and as such have a voice, even if it is small. Ultimately, when you feel you have a voice many people may be discouraged to protest simply because they feel their exact ideas are being represented.