[throw0101b]

> It's often pretty hard to do public protest without breaking some kind of law, even if you do everything you're supposed to.

All movements start small, and if you want to have your movement be a success it involves bringing more and more people over to your point of view / side.

One can be disruptive in that you hold a rally or march to raise awareness, and be seen (in numbers) by folks on the street. Marches / parades are disruptive to traffic but if you've planned it and told people about it then they can plan around it. One can also go in, cause some trouble, and then disperse so that you get in the news but also do not piss of non-involved people.

But being disruptive so that you piss people off is a way to not get more people onto your side of your movement. It is a way to inhibit further involvement of the public towards your side.

A movement must be aware of how its actions are perceived by non-members of the movement. Just because you interpret things a certain way does not mean that the general public won't view you as a jackass:

> “It’s a sign of independence,” he said. “I look at it as a rebel sign. In the biker community, a lot of people have the Confederate flag because we’re rebels.”

> But to many, the flag is a racist symbol and a disturbing reminder of the U.S. Confederacy’s fight to preserve slavery. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau denounced their display at the Ottawa protest, saying his government wouldn’t give in to “racist flags.”

* https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/freedom-convoy-supporter-says-...

I don't know which "biker community" this guy is talking about, but as a motorcyclist I don't view the Confederate flag positively.

[portaouflop]

> But being disruptive so that you piss people off is a way to not get more people onto your side of your movement. It is a way to inhibit further involvement of the public towards your side.

While I agree to some extent with your comment, I think there is some nuance needed. For a movement to succeed you need to be disruptive and piss some people off. It just depends in what way disruptive and who you piss off.

For example take the women’s rights movements. Were they disruptive and did poss a lot of people off? Hell yeah they did. Did they ultimately succeed and get the public opinion on their side. Also yes.

Another (horrifying) example is the nazi movement. They were extremely disruptive and pissed off a ton of people when they were still an extreme fringe group. Precisely because of that they became very successful.

There are many more examples like that. A protest movement needs to be disruptive to some extent to be successful

[mandmandam]

That argument was used (a lot) to decry suffragette protests and desegregation protests.

I for one am glad that women and black people didn't take it too seriously.

You may want to read some MLK - he had some very clear words about the liberal who demands civility in the face of oppression.

[throw0101b]

> You may want to read some MLK - he had some very clear words about the liberal who demands civility in the face of oppression.

It is not about acting civilly. It is about messaging.

If non-movement people consider you as a bunch of jackasses, do you think they will join your cause, or even have sympathy towards it? You need to communicate your message—words and actions—so that, at the very least, people will have a neutral opinion. If you're actually good, then people will have a positive opinion of you and your goals.

> Days later, King was quietly bailed out and ejected from prison by Albany police chief Laurie Pritchett, who had studied the nonviolence protest method and released King to undermine it. In other cities, violence by police against peaceful demonstrators brought outcry and sympathy. But Pritchett met nonviolence with nonviolence. Within weeks, the protest fizzled out. For King, Albany was largely a failure, and his takeaway was for the movement to better pick its spots.

[…]

> It was far from total victory, but King had something more important: the attention of an outraged and rapt nation. The legacy of the water cannons and dogs, of callused feet and imprisoned children, would be incarnated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act and the Twenty-Fourth Amendment, which banned poll taxes. Montgomery and Birmingham also formed the script for peaceably countering injustice in a nation founded on protest. From antiwar protests during Vietnam to Occupy Wall Street and beyond, King’s commitment to nonviolent protest lives on.

* https://time.com/5101740/martin-luther-king-peaceful-protest...

It is why violence is usually such a bad idea: most non-members of a movement don't want to get into that, and would probably see the movement as a bunch of thugs. In a survey of 600 movements since 1900, Chenoweth et al found that those that used violence were successful ~25% of the time, but non-violence had a >40% success rate.

* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44096650-civil-resistanc...

* https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/2021-1...

* https://www.hks.harvard.edu/behind-the-book/erica-chenoweth-...

* https://www.peacejusticestudies.org/chronicle/review-of-civi...

You almost double your chances of success by gaining sympathy versus 'acting out'. Do you think the race riots helped or hindered the civil rights movement?

> Let me say as I've always said, and I will always continue to say, that riots are socially destructive and self-defeating. I'm still convinced that nonviolence is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom and justice. I feel that violence will only create more social problems than they will solve. That in a real sense it is impracticable for the Negro to even think of mounting a violent revolution in the United States. So I will continue to condemn riots, and continue to say to my brothers and sisters that this is not the way. And continue to affirm that there is another way.

* https://www.crmvet.org/docs/otheram.htm

If you want to actually achieve your goal(s) then non-violence and public opinion are important things to consider.

[mandmandam]

You seem to be trying to conflate blocking a road and honking your horn with violence... In order to defend fucking with non-violent protesters bank accounts directly (and very illegally).

Lots of people claimed that anyone who didn't respect lockdowns and wear masks were being "violent" - is that what you're trying to do here?

> If you're actually good, then people will have a positive opinion of you and your goals.

Lol. I really don't know how anyone could say that with a straight face. Was MLK popular with people who thought segregation was cool and fun?

Or is your argument that he was wrong to act as he did...

Is Trump "actually good" because people love him?

That logic ain't logicing man. Idk where you got that idea but it isn't explaining reality very well is it.

[throw0101b]

> You seem to be trying to conflate blocking a road and honking your horn with violence... In order to defend fucking with non-violent protesters bank accounts directly (and very illegally).

Do you want your movement to succeed? If yes, then don't piss off the non-members / the general public, and try to get them on your side.

That is what MLK understood and did.

That is what Nelson Mandela did not understand when he was young (when he did acts that caused him to go to jail), but did understand when he was older.

It is also what Ghandi (who also spent in jail) understood.

[adamiscool8]

>“We do not need allies more devoted to order than to justice,” Martin Luther King, Jr.

[throw0101b]

What justice was the trucker convoy looking for? What injustice were they fighting against? What grave depravity had they long suffered against?

You are quoting from "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", which also states:

> In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action.

* https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....

The convoy did not do the first three steps, or if they did, they did not effectively show the public that they did.

From my perspective (or "my truth" as the kids are wont to say these days) they were a bunch of anti-vaxxers railing against da gubermint.

[CamperBob2]

So MLK and the suffragettes blockaded the town square and blew truck horns all night. Got it.

Oh, wait, no, they voluntarily sacrificed their freedom and were arrested, beaten, and tortured for their beliefs. I guess you're confused.

[dang]

You posted many flamewar comments in this thread and appear to have done more than any other single account to spoil it. We ban accounts that do this, and your account has (it turns out) been doing it for a long long time:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34537163 (Jan 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22904111 (April 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22114100 (Jan 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19449785 (March 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18233901 (Oct 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16783015 (April 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14278148 (May 2017)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10780427 (Dec 2015)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9985956 (Aug 2015)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8825352 (Jan 2015)

That's excessive and abusive. We need you, same as any other user, to follow the site guidelines regardless of how right you are or feel you are, and regardless of how wrong others are or you feel they are.

I appreciate your substantive posts but it's also the case that you've been posting abusively in totally other contexts (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40759689). If you keep this up we're going to have to ban you, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and fix this, that would be good.

[CamperBob2]

Actually I think I'll stand by quite a few of those comments, Dan, including the ones I've posted in this thread. If you feel the need to ban my account, I won't stand in the way, but I will say I don't respect a lot of the objections you've gone back almost 10 years to dig up, especially when considered in the larger context of the threads in question.

Don't want flame wars? Don't post flamewar-inciting links, as many of those arguably are, then object selectively when some people take the bait you're dangling.

[dang]

> Don't want flame wars? Don't post flamewar-inciting links

That's not how HN works. Commenters are responsible for how they react and whether or not they follow the rules. It's not as if you have zero choice in whether you get incited or not, although I know it sometimes feels that way (to me too).

To remove an entire topic to prevent some commenters from posting abusively would be to punish the ones who are following the rules just fine. I don't think that's how HN should operate. Here's another recent post in case it's of interest: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40852027

Of course, not every story is on topic for HN, and indeed most provocative stories aren't—but that's a separate question. Some are, and the rules still apply in those cases. In fact, they apply especially then, as the guidelines make clear: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[sys_64738]

Not forgetting being executed by the government. Trumpers from the 1950s and 1960s.

[mandmandam]

Suffragettes did block roads, yes.

So did MLK.

Lol.

[pasabagi]

I don't know: as I understood it, the trucker thing was basically about showing that they occupy a strategic position in the Canadian economy. It's like the old rail strike idea: it doesn't matter if everybody hates you, if the trains aren't running, then the government has to make a deal, otherwise the economy collapses.

I don't think they actually did hold that strategic position (if the police had, you know, done their jobs, they wouldn't be blocking the roads for long), but if you know that the police won't do that (because they always baby right wing protestors) it makes some sense. And that was a lot of the rhetoric from the truckers about themselves: I guess we'd just come out of the pandemic with all these sudden realizations about essential workers, which definitely included truckers, and there's often (but probably not in the trucker's case) a connection between being 'essential' and 'occupying a strategically advantageous position'.

[throw0101b]

> I don't know: as I understood it, the trucker thing was basically about showing that they occupy a strategic position in the Canadian economy.

And yet various organizations that represent truckers, both organized unions and independents, distanced themselves from the convoy:

* https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/embarrassment-for-the-industry...

* https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/canadian-trucking-...

* https://teamster.org/2022/02/teamsters-denounce-freedom-conv...

If the convoy was anything but a bunch of anti-vaxxers, they failed to really convey that message from my perspective.

> And that was a lot of the rhetoric from the truckers about themselves: I guess we'd just come out of the pandemic with all these sudden realizations about essential workers […]

I have first-hand knowledge of essential workers because of family connections to nursing and retail (food/groceries). I also have family connections to people who actually run trucking companies, and do maintenance on rigs.

I personally got deemed an essential worker by my company because of my IT role, and got a letter on company letterhead stating as such for any time I had to come into the office, in case I should perhaps be stopped for breaking curfew (the organization I was with had connections with medical treatment).

I don't think anyone would reasonably deny truckers are often essential, but the number of truckers making a fuss about was a tiny majority that worked in the industry.