New research says framing protests as fights for civil rights 'backfires.' So what might work?
New research says framing protests as fights for civil rights 'backfires.' So what might work?
Kim Voss, a UC Berkeley professor of sociology, says appeals rooted in American values may be more effective today than those evoking memories of the Civil Rights Movement.
She and her coauthors speculate that framing hardships today as civil rights violations evokes comparisons with the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, which makes contemporary problems appear less significant and therefore less worthy of government action. [...] Surveys were conducted in 2016 and 2019...
Six to nine years ago, it was easy to make the case that virtually everything had improved since the 1960s and that evoking that era made modern issues look relatively minor in comparison. But now we have federal agents rounding people up en masse and shipping them off to foreign prisons without a hearing—there are at least some dimensions of the current situation where a comparison with the 1960s accentuates how serious things have become.
Yeah, that one paragraph made this entire story worthless. We have gestapo kidnapping people and warfighters on the street facing down Americans. It's no longer hyperbole to compare the times.
Well, yeah. Be general. If I want to sell candy I don't market it to 11-year-old claustrophobic basketball players, I market it to kids.
Every specificity that is added to the movement's message scares away potential supporters that can no longer identify. This is global though. Every fringe group wants to add their message to the masthead of every protest. The left has had this problem forever.
You might be interested in !aspen_anti_billionaire_society@midwest.social
I'm not super familiar with it, but the sole mod has been quite outspoken about trying to make it a "big tent" and not allow it to be pulled by every extreme away from the singular goal of taxing the 0.01%, not even going after the 1%.
Thanks! I read a few of their comments, I agree in principle, but saying Occupy Wallstreet failed because antagonizing the 1% isn't broad enough is a wild take :D
Speaking for everyone around me I hear talk...
Frame it as "fuck billionaires".
what might work?
Actual fights. The first time we fought the Nazis, we didn't beat them by protesting; we beat them with bombs and bullets.
Nonviolent options only work under the threat of a violent plan-B.
...and plan-A has been completely ignored for decades.
Is this just your conjecture, or do you base this on something? Because there is research that supports nonviolent protest movements being the more effective path.
It's based on observing current events through the lens of the education I've received on history. Protests by themselves today require a ridiculous scale to accomplish peanuts; contrast that to MLK Jr's protests during the civil rights movement. His got shit done. Why? Because the Black Panthers were standing by with rifles. Today's protests are all bark from a toothless mouth, so we're allowed to yip away until it's out of our system, then the status quo just keeps trucking along. There's no modern iteration of the Black Panthers to back up all of our nonviolent protests.
The 50501 movement / ICE protests are starting to show promise, but again, scale - we've seen nationwide protests regularly for months, and so far all they've accomplished is being an inconvenience for ICE... in exchange for making themselves a target to multiple facets of the military.
We need more than noise.
A fight against monarchy seemed to work well.
How so?
The "No Kings" protests we just had, brought out massive numbers all over the country.
Simple, honest, fair reporting.
Rights -> Job -> Head
It must be framed as keeping children and parents together