Mourning in America - Trump Year One: November '16 to

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Do people think that protesting at the moment is a good idea? I won't tell people what to protest about, but...well, I guess I'm going to do that anyway. I really think protesting at the moment is a bad idea - when you're punch drunk and dazed it's good to sit in your corner for a minute.

Protesting won't do much, but it will raise the picture of some people that are not pleased right now.

This raises the issue - does Trump get these people on side, or slag them off and continue without them?

I was on the fence about the usefulness of protesting the election results until president elect Trump petulantly tweeted about the unfairness of that constitutionally-protected right, so now I think it basically needs to continue every single day for the next four years.

There are a lot of reasons to protest. I joined the march in NYC a couple nights ago and god, was it reaffirming to just hear this tremendous background roar of voices, be amongst so many other people who were hurting, to have this visible sense of not being alone. It served an important need for a lot of people. Also think there may potentially be something to letting people all over the country who are afraid of what this regime will do to them, that they have allies. Not saying it's the best or final step in that effort but I don't see a strong reason NOT to do it.

American high schools need to return to teaching about the obligations of citizenship. Even my old, highly-regarded high school no longer offers civics classes. When I went there, civics was mandatory for all 9th graders.

― jane burkini (suzy), Friday, November 11, 2016 5:51 AM (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We had it too but it made no impression on me whatsoever. It was taught by a cranky old guy, we didn't go out and register to vote or work on a campaign or learn about our local politicians (because in a town of 3000 people, the politicians are your next-door neighbors and the school wouldn't be able to get away with educating ppl about them in case it caused any CONTROVERSY), and afaict it was completely useless. So not that kind of civics, pls.

This raises the issue - does Trump get these people on side, or slag them off and continue without them?

depends if you believe him last night or in the morning

now that he's not running, watching him bitch and moan about the large swaths of the population who rightfully hate his guts should be rather interesting

The idea of showing solidarity is a good one, not quite as good as a higher turn out meaning the vote went the other way.
But since there is the closeness in voting it is good to show taht there are loads of people that do find this result inherently wrong.
JUst hoping that the right to protest doesn't wind up being curtailed over the next 4 years.

You guys, I have a full-time Americorps volunteer working with/for me this year, and since that program is federally funded and has to have approval of Congress, there are A LOT of restrictions on what the workers are and aren't allowed to do, like oh, hilariously, they're not allowed to talk to girls about their options in case of unwanted pregnancy. Even when their specific job is to mentor teens for the purpose of getting them ahead in life and not letting them get trapped in their teenaged mistakes, they can't even answer a single question about abortion.

Here's another thing they can't do: THEY CAN'T PARTICIPATE IN ANY ACTIVITY THAT HAS THE EFFECT OF HELPING PEOPLE REGISTER TO VOTE. That's right! Congress wouldn't approve the funding for the national service corps unless they were forbidden from registering citizens to vote.

So I'm thinking register the fuck out of our school community from this point on, what do you think?

I think the protests are very good

Just please, please, please, don't get violent or start breaking things, the last thing we need is more "Hillary thugs" headlines on FOX and a cry that we do not live in a "law and order" society anymore

people in oakland already started smashing shit up, they always do

The civics teachers at my school were great - even if you were not an A student, they got everything across to the class and centred on both our rights and obligations as citizens. There hasn't been a teenager who wasn't at least curious about knowing their rights and they engaged us with their teaching.

Just please, please, please, don't get violent or start breaking things, the last thing we need is more "Hillary thugs" headlines on FOX and a cry that we do not live in a "law and order" society anymore

― frogbs, Friday, November 11, 2016 9:21 AM (nineteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Nothing they do or don't do will change the right wing's notion of their lawlessness and illegitemacy.

Holy shit Harry Reid:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cw_Oc1lWIAAPz4K.jpg

more voter suppression laws, stacking the justice system with right wing ideologues.. and worst i really do worry about some kind of unexpected major crisis through which he suspends/ignores the rule of law and the GOP continues to go along with it.. and i mean i worry that if he doesn't get one, he'll create one, tanking the economy, starting another war

I think daria-G is relentlessly correct in this thread.

So many people I talk to in person and interact with online, who are already volunteering, donating, etc, are saying "I hope someone figures out what more we can do to stop this" and the response is kind of an eerie silence, eh?

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/ideas/images/2/21/Boom-graphic.png/revision/latest?cb=20141108172854

XP

The pope’s “endorsement” has over 868,000 Facebook shares

As if to correct the record:

"I am not sure whether we still can vouch for the faith of American Christians, as they need more wisdom looking at the leader they finally elected", said Pope Francis.

yeah I can only hope that rolling back progressive policies just proves to be massively unpopular amongst the public at large which gives a lot of people in Congress pause. There are more people in government than the Christies, the Palins, the Giulianis, the Ryans, etc etc. Trying to rollback marriage equality strikes me as something that would be incredibly unpopular in a way that it would not have been 10 years ago. I would also hope that blowing up the Paris agreement when alarmist climate science has become somewhat mainstreamed would also spark massive backlash. Probably just wishful thinking though (that it would happen, or that it would matter to them)

self-xp: Actually, that seems an iffy site. Looking for confirmation from other news sources.

and YES coolpope is totally OTM with this. even if he didn't actually say it, it would be OTM if he did say it. if you elect Donald Trump, Christian values are simply not that important to you. PERIOD.

and not that we need to point this shit out any further but fucking lol @ Newt "What's going to happen to the moral fiber of our country if the president receives a BJ?" Gingrich is going to play a major role in the "Grab her by the pussy" administration

the last thing we need is more "Hillary thugs" headlines on FOX and a cry that we do not live in a "law and order" society anymore

these headlines will be written anyway! their truth value for FOX and their viewers is not based on how many protesters actually break anything, as evidenced by trump's repeated and utterly baseless invocation of paid "hillary thugs" at his rallies.

I mean dude was cheating on his own wife at the time, newt is just a not-rich donald trump xp

Harry Reid's whole statement is worth reading.

http://www.reid.senate.gov/press_releases/2016-11-11-reid-statement-on-the-election-of-donald-trump

Obviously mass meetings can be wonderful for morale and comfort - I would just avoid the sense of it being a protest, which just ends up seeming undemocratic. A carnival of like minded people celebrating diversity and community would be a better spin.

Er, sorry? How are protests undemocratic? If you mean specifically protests somehow challenging the legitimacy of the election that would be one thing to discuss (although it gets tricky if, say, the protest is challenging the electoral college - or, in 2000, Bush V. Gore also - as being undemocratic)... but getting out in the street and saying "I think this leader and what he stands for are both awful bullshit" is a legitimate form of speech in a democratic society.

the folks who are irritated by protests are not wont to look any more charitably at multi-culti celebrations of diversity

Yeah I've always been skeptical of the effectiveness of a protest to successfully "bring awareness" to an issue but given how many Trump voters apparently were unaware that their vote was legitimizing hate speech and literally making children cry, I totally support it 100%

the folks who are irritated by protests are not wont to look any more charitably at multi-culti celebrations of diversity

You are underselling the establishment-focused Democrats who are convinced that protesting Trump now means there will be carte blanche given to the right to protest whomever the next left-leaning person to the win the Presidency is and are afraid that the sentiment will destroy our democracy.

My main response is "America is already dead based on the outcome of this election so I really don't give a shit what this hypothetical future protest you're concerned about is"

been seeing photos from friends protesting in Chicago and NYC the past few days. im 100% supportive of them. imo they should just do what they gotta do and ignore what the media/establishment thinks of them as a general rule.

My main response is "America is already dead based on the outcome of this election so I really don't give a shit what this hypothetical future protest you're concerned about is"

essentially this but in both directions. idgaf about ppl concern trolling the protesters and honestly i don't really think the protests matter much either. i think we're fucked either way so if it makes ppl feel better to protest then they might as well bc i have yet to find something that makes me feel better.

Donal j trump has had our ear for going on two years now, flooding the public sphere with hatred, incitAtion to violence, assaults on the most basic constitutional tenets, and downright treasonous statements. He has not only gotten away with it, bu has been rewarded for it. His supporters have gotten what they wanted. Eh, I think protest is more than called. What happened is unacceptable.

i keep asking myself if this is how ppl felt in germany in 1933 and i've gotta think that no, they were probably more hopeful bc they hadn't yet seen what the worst could look like yet.

Or call them anything but "protests" (or worse) regardless.

Trumpers rode in on a wave of propaganda, mudslinging, and full-blown lies. Expect that to continue and to escalate, and never underestimate the power of an outrageous story - no matter how manifestly untrue - to take root in minds primed to believe the worst about any Other.

A friend went from the "protests are hurting things, the democratic process has happened and like it or not we have a new president" to half a day later posting "wait, the electoral college could vote against Trump!" to this morning posting something about how he will no longer be posting anything about politics

Uh that was in response to this: folks who are irritated by protests are not wont to look any more charitably at multi-culti celebrations of diversity

http://nypost.com/2016/11/11/kkk-celebrating-trumps-election-with-victory-parade/

my nice person facade of talking reasonably to people about politics is fading and when I see shit like "protests won't help" coming from presumed democrats I want to yell whatever the equivalent of "CUCK!!!" would be

is it still cuck, can I use that unironically

X-post to doc cass - I said they would seem undemocratic. For lots of people, and the media, it just seems like protesting that things didn't go their way.

guys, this is how it goes, this is how it always goes.

there are a lot of us, and we're not monolithic, and the vast majority of us say over and over again, no violence, no violence, no violence, but everybody's mad, a lot of people are mad, and we don't have control over people's minds, we can't ensure that nobody who hates trump will ever do anything bad ever again. and when somebody does something like that, we'll say "they don't speak for us", and they'll say "we speak for them", and who do you think the media are going to believe?

we don't have control over the "optics", we don't have formal power structures backing us up, and a lot of people are going to ask us to do the impossible and then blame us when we can't.

i'm not saying we shouldn't be concerned about these things, but i think the question is for whose benefit we need to be concerned. and we need to be careful and judicious and precise about what we do and how we do it not because of how it will look to others. we need to do it for our own sake. we need to be the best we can be. any form of non-compliance or resistance, whatever form it takes, will be judged, and it will probably not be judged fairly. we need to expect this and build this into our outlook.

This (protests) is a difficult topic to address adequately via message board posts (esp when you're typing it on cellphone with one thumb). There's a lot of strategic and tactical considerations. Seems corny to say this on ilx but most everyone here has a point. If we were at dinner or a meeting together I'd attempt some grand, nuanced synthesis, and then you'd all see what a pompous blowhard i can be.

We need a Trump FAP!

yes!

set the time and place

rushomancy I'm delegating blowhard duties to you (iow: otm)

We might need more than one ... It's a big country

road trip!

rushomancy I'm delegating blowhard duties to you (iow: otm)

― never have i been a blue calm sea (collardio gelatinous)

cool, i've been preparing all my life for this

Who fucking cares what fascists think about people exercising their constitutional right of assembly. ??? They are the enemy. We can't win them over unless they totally break with the paradigm that enabled them to elect a racist authoritarian. Fuck them.