Bahnd Rollard

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  • 6 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 26th, 2023

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  • Firstly, your hyoptheical protest is no such thing and a strawman, that is an act of war, expected of despots and revolutionaries, not groups of rational individuals demanding change. It also highlights my point, you stated that reform movements begin to gain steam when a critical mass of the population backs them, how can a group expect to gain such a following when their protests cost proportionaly more to the people you need to support your cause than it does to the people actually making the decisions?

    How do you expect to find supporters if you cost average people a measurable portion of their living. I did some napkin math, assume a days worth of hourly work at 15$, before income tax, thats ~120$, versus an oil C-suite who according to my search take home ~24m a year (does not include the other parts of their pay and benifits) meaning you have to cost them ~100k of their personal take-home income to proportionaly effect them the same way. This is not worth noticing for the suit (notice how all those Return-to-office articles only mention normal workers and not executives) and personally damaging loss of income for the average person who statistically has little savings.

    This was my point about being better protestors, damaging or disrupting public infrastructure (roads, rails, things essential to emergency services) should be reconsidered as venues for the protest because its disruption alienates the people who you would like to support your cause, is ignored by the people with the power to affect the change being demanded and makes the protestors themselves look like fools.

    Apologies for the late reply, people got to sleep ya know.


  • Then argue against my point, (did a quick search) the Stanford University debate rubric has “respect for the other team” as the first field. Insults will reduce score and also indicates you do not have a rebuttle (also a points reduction). Im simply trying to get my replies to work through the logic of the discussion.


  • Personally. Im all in favor of any financal disruption to businesses, do walk outs, sit-ins, strike, most any other form of protest. I feel like the line is crossed when public infrastructure or essential services are unnessesarly impacted. It shows that the participants lack the planning capacity to select their venue appropratly.

    Going to go out on a limb and hope the mods dont whack this post (Hi .LW mods), but Luigi has the right idea (minus the murder part… Bit too late to workshop that though). His protest was targeted at the individauls responsible for supporting the problem in the first place. A vast majority of the decision makers in the world are not elected, they can not be voted out of their money and influence.

    This is why I aplaud most protesters, but climate groups almost always seem to miss the mark. Bringing attention to a topic does not change policy, throwing tomato sauce at a painting or being an intentional cockwomble in traffic only inconviences those who have no power to effect change.

    Traffic disruptions do not work on people who can afford private jets. Be better protester, and have standards.


  • This is a style of protest where I really have a problem. My stance on it is “protest however you like, do not block roads”. I understand that the point of a protest is to be disruptive but I feel like that is a line too easily crossed.

    An example I expirenced was a long time ago when I lived in Boston and there was some climate protestors that did their stunt on mass pike (the big highway into the city). They put a pipe through a bunch 55-gallon drums, dragged them out of their trucks onto the highway, handcuffed themselves to another protester in the pipe, and then filled the drum with instant concrete. Blocked traffic for hours while the cops had to cut them out of their contraptions. The problem was that there were several emergency vehicles stuck in the jam that they made, while protesting is an admirable persuit, these people caused the deaths of atleast 2 others because the ambulance they were in got stuck in the gridlock. IIRC, most of the protestors got manslaughter or worse charges and spent a few years in prision.

    This may just be a random internet tale to most, but it really should highlight that protesting must be more than random disruption and it has to be coordinated (within itself and with local municipalities), otherwise people get hurt.