(I recall Louis saying that Zeynep Tufekci was an original marxmail subscriber)
excerpt - Thousands of people surging into the street or taking over college campuses, cheering on fiery speeches, presenting demands, chanting slogans — that familiar model won’t go away entirely. Especially not if a certain former president wins re-election, an event that could prompt millions to march. But as much as it pains me to say it, protesting just doesn’t get results anymore. Not the way it used to. Not in that form. It can’t. Those in power have figured out how to outmaneuver protesters: by keeping peaceful demonstrators far out of sight, organizing an overwhelming police response that brings the threat of long prison sentences, and circulating images of the most disruptive outliers that makes the whole movement look bad. It works. And the organizers have failed to keep up. History, of course, is full of innovation and counter-innovation. Protests will reinvent themselves eventually. So what form does the future of political protest take? If the past is any indication, the answers will surprise us all. After a tumultuous century of uprisings and conflict, in the mid-19th century, Paris imposed a new street plan <https://smarthistory.org/haussmann-the-demolisher-and-the-creation-of-modern-paris-2/> that turned narrow roads into majestic boulevards — not merely for the aesthetics but also to make them harder for protesters to barricade. A century later, however, those boulevards were where the 1968 movement <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/05/world/europe/france-may-1968-revolution.html> exploded with flair, creativity and impact. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/21/opinion/campus-protests-internet-america.html -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#32491): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/32491 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/108581554/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
