How bad do we let things get? Should we wait until the planet can’t sustain life anymore? Should we wait until it’s 100 degrees F in the Artic? Until wildfires blanket entire continents or the last glacier is gone? Should we wait until fascist billionaires take even more from us? Until there are Flock cameras at every mail box? Maybe we should wait until the wells run dry or the tornadoes never stop. When is it going to be enough? I’m so tired of seeing things getting worse. Every. Single. Day. I’m ready. I’ve been ready. How about you?
How do we coordinate? How do we look after each other? What is the signal? If we don’t work together then we are just continuing our slow march to destruction to the drum of the parasitic billionaires. Please, for us, for the cats, the dogs, the birds and trees. The fish and the whales, the beatles and the centipedes. Please tell me it’s worth it to you, that you’re willing to get uncomfortable, that you’re willing to fight. There are more of us than them, and we are rapidly running out of time to make that mean something.
Its when people have nothing to lose.
I tell people all of the time
“I won’t throw the first brick, but when the bricks start flying give me a call”
The thing that broke me wasn’t data centers or hot weather, it was when I had to pay $7 for hot dog buns
The business men who put a $7 price tag on hot dog buns during the 4th of July are not nearly as afraid of the public as they should be.
It’s fucking bread. Bread!
When stealing bread to feed your family is almost a felony… burn it down.
Problem is, if it happened, you would need to choose your targets wisely for it to be effective. Looting a Target isn’t the answer. The point is not to get yourself a new TV; it’s to advocate for real change. Don’t burn down your own place of business, don’t burn down your own neighborhood… burn theirs
Find the motherfuckers in the Epstein Files, sink yachts, tear down the walls surrounding billionaire neighborhoods, etc…
You’re spot on with identifying “bread” as the general problem. The issue with your perspective though is that people are burning things down in order to get bread. They know where the bread is in their neighborhoods, and “their” businesses. At the point they’re burning and looting why not grab a circus(new TV) on your way out?
Do you know where the bread is on a megayacht? I don’t! It’s not where the rioting is going to start. It will start at where there is know bread. If you have the understanding that that the fires need to reach the billionaire enclaves you can’t be shaming people for getting their bread however they can and then burning the evidence after. That will always be the initial spark.
I’m not rioting for bread, I’m rioting to tear down a broken system
If I want bread, I’ll just steal it. I don’t have to burn down Target to steal bread now, why would that change?
I do need to remind the people in charge who they work for though… and if they’re not willing to share what they have, then I’ll take it from THEM. If they’re not willing to get rid of their shit to save the environment then I’ll get rid of it for THEM
I don’t want to steal a TV from Target, I want to steal the TVs from the CEO who decided bread costs $7
The rioting needs to target the capitols and in my opinion, not the grocery stores. Down with the parasites!
The grocery stores are capitAls too.
Grocery stores are also a parasite who’s entire existence is in order to ration food/supplies/materials at the barrel of a gun to see how much extraction people will put up with.
However, I agree. Killing the canary doesn’t close down the coal mine. Ideally the canary wouldn’t be harmed but you’re going to need to dramatically change your relationship with the canary first, starting with setting it free.
The issue is that the powers that be did learn their lesson and they learned it well. If you keep the masses JUST sufficient enough that they still have something “to lose” they’ll be to busy chasing that to be able to mount any kind of resistance to their exploitation. It’s the splash and dash mentality. It’s also why they are so against abortion. they frame it as a moral issue, but it’s really about ensuring a good crop of fresh people to exploit when the current crop wears out. It’s a common fascist tactic: Concentration Camps were usually billed as “work” camps where people would be set to menial or meaningless tasks, so they would waste away on purpose, and the deaths could be logged as “by natural causes” and not murder. (only what the regime defined as “undesirables” were sent to be euthanized.)
Competing Lords owned the land and extracted labor from the peasants, and this was feudalism. Then peasants overthrew the lords so they could seek ownership of those lands, but that only benefited those who already had the means to fill the vacuum left by the lords. Capitalism only shuffles the deck of Feudalism. it doesn’t solve the underlying flaw in the game, namely that there will always be someone with more means than you extracting value from people whose only asset to sell is their labor and time. Eventually a group of gentrified individuals will emerge that fill the rolls that the old lords did, and given that nepotism is rampant in industry, it’s not even really that different at all from feudalism. The idea that a CEO should be president of a democracy is such a perversion of the idea of public rule that it is anathema to it. Extreme wealth should be disenfranchising in of itself, as if you are that wealthy, you no longer need the protections of a popular government, but rather, you are what that kind of governance is supposed to be protecting against.
For years I’ve held the view that slavery never ended, they just made the entire country and most of the world of the plantation, with the illusion of mobility and free choice. All you are really free to do is choose what cog to be in their machine, and as soon as you are used up you are replaced with another. I agree with you on abortion, but I think it also goes deeper. Parents have even more to lose, and are more likely to be good little wage slaves to protect their children in the short term, unable to see the long term.
The second paragraph answers the first. We wait until we’re coordinated.
If you want to speed up the process, get out there and coordinate. You might be ready, the people here might be ready, but a few thousand geographically isolated people on a left-leaning niche forum aren’t gonna do it. Getting out into the community and getting active, that could actually shift sentiment.
Find a local organization with at least a hundred members. Even if you don’t align 100% with the DSA, join and go to meetings. That’s where you’re going to find people to coordinate with. Network with people, find out who has which skills, and volunteer your own. Participate in mutual aid. Canvas for leftist politicians. Even if you only care about revolution, going to these events and interacting with these causes will bring you in contact with the people who will coordinate with you.
Part of the problem is that there’s a thing called “Co-opting the Revolution” that’s been figured out, that you can neatly repackage dissent as a product to sell.
Like how you get Che Gueverra as merch now.
And it’s done an incredible job at making people feel like they’re doing something, whilst actually doing nothing.
I’ve done my part! I wear a ACAB pin that I purchased from Hot Topic
Or
I’ve done my part! I participated in the Reddit Blackout, and then bought the memorabilia
And the sad thing is, IT FUCKING WORKS
Psychologically, for many people, it silences the parts of the brain that are like “FIX THIS! DO SOMETHING!” for quite a lot of people
The technical term often used is “recuperation”. Any innovation in radical evolution of culture is seen as a threat to the status quo, so recuperation comes in to co-opt the radical impulse and funnel it back into the status quo in a manner that is not destabilizing to exist structural power.
The classic example is media piracy like napster, bit-torrent, etc being co-opted into streaming services, itunes, etc. Service the desire that animated the radical impulse while reinforcing the existing power structures, foreclosing the potential threat. Enshittification often follows shortly after the enclosure has been successful.
Ooh neat!
this is not an argument against the need to fight. just giving up the future because the enemy will be underhanded in how it fights back.
No one REALLY feels the threat posed by the polycrisis. It’s all complex, intellectual worries about things that FEEL like they’re still just a little ways out, not quite here. People are mostly focused on the here and now and the very near future. The riots happen when people literally can’t feed their kids in the here and now. As long as it’s just difficult, and not impossible, people will struggle on with their nose to the grindstone. Watch for rises in unemployment. CoViD showed what can happen when millions if people find themselves with mountains of free time to use on political action. When enough people are hungry and have no job to distract them, the fires will come.
We couldn’t organize enough people to go stand in a line for 20 minutes and scribble in a few little pencil bubbles to prevent the hell upon earth that is currently happening.
Unfortunately there will be no revolution or uprising or meaningful riots until things are far, far, far worse than where they are now.
Our citizens couldn’t sacrifice 20 minutes out of their lives to prevent what appears to be the beginning of the end of the USA; they’re certainly not going to give up their homes and livelihoods and freedom anytime soon.
A small group of very passionate people can move the world, in fact its the only thing that has ever moved the world.
Sounds like you should consider working to get out the vote. I certainly will be.
Part of the issue is that everyone I know that wants to do something is terrified that it’s going to place targets on vulnerable members of their larger communities. A lot of trans people, queer people, black and brown people, disabled people, immigrants, and indigenous folks I know want to DO something. They’re just scared that if they do, then it’s going to only accelerate violence against their marginalized communities and the greater population isn’t going to fight for them.
Nothing is going to happen until we weaponize the cishet white dudes and get them on our side.
This 100%. It’s the only demographic that can do any heavy lifting if we’re talking raw manpower, and they’re currently being heavily courted by fascists and death cults. That tide needs to turn.
I get that, for sure, as one cishet white dude.
When death is no longer the worst alternative, there will be revolution.
- my favorite high school history teacher
Yes, that might have to happen. Historically it’s how things tend to go. And in the mean time, boycott everything you can, hit them in the hip pocket, find groups with listings that make it clear what’s owned by “the bad guys” unsubscribe, disengage and lock down privacy, they make money from you, by you just engaging. There’s a creator who led a boycott on Kelloggs after the ceo said, when asked about the cost of living, how people should cope, he said people should eat cereal (which had recently doubled in price) I’m retelling it poorly, but it drove people to gather and start a boycott. And it was big.
If we led instructors on how to unsubscribe, disengage and engage privacy, that would hit their hip pocket.
If we figured out who sucks the most, and targeted them, one by one, boycotting, they’d feel it.
Figure out and share reports on local candidates and politicians, because the news is owned by the billionaires.
Remember that they want you to believe change isn’t possible, they will fight you with big shows of how what you’re doing isn’t causing change and isn’t worth the risk, by putting people in prison for ridiculous lengths of proposed time, and filming their own atrocities to keep everyone in fight or flight, (in a head space where you can’t organise and fight back)
A lot of their warfare against the public consists of driving you into despair, driving you into fight or flight, etc. You can see that, in some of the ansers here. People who have or are giving up and exasperated, thinking what they’re doing isn’t making a change. A huge way to prepare yourself for the fight is learning nervous system regulation tools and practicing them daily. You need your faculties about you. Let the turkeys around you gobble all they want, keep on your path.
Boycott it’s not enough. Firebomb Nestlé
You’re my kinda people
climate change can be stopped with solar energy, and the amount of installed solar power has grown exponentially in the last few years. so that’s something positive.
All renewables will help here. And new storage options. And nuclear as a base power.
We can’t stop the current impact but we can reduce it and start turning the tide around.
This shit has gone on for way too long.
Best way to start it off is with a symbolic figure. Some greedy CEO, board of directors member, police chief, or corrupt politician. Whatever is done has to involve being publicly displayed.
I find myself being pushed closer and closer everyday to jumpstarting it myself, but the reality is, it is highly unlikely that one person is going to accomplish it. Coordination with others is key.
…or so I’ve heard.
It’s simultaneously mindblowing and completely believable that no major action has been taken yet. So many sheep heading to slaughter.
Its less about starting to riot and more about stopping to buy. Cancel your accounts, throw away your credit cards, stop paying taxes, start a fucking garden ( now is perfect btw) and build a network of friends and neighbours.
We all want to have a good life lets just live it.
I have pulled back from consumerism as much as possible, anything I can buy used I do, and I have been gardening and planting fruit trees since before covid. It’s not enough, not in the face of the problems before us, and the greed that has brought it about. Everyone should start a garden if able, if nothing else to find out just how hard it is to get viable crops thanks to our erratic climate.
You’re asking people mostly disconnected from global affairs, buried under poor working conditions, trying to stay afloat and distracted from their own foibles, to take part in something that will take the pathetic and worse existence they are living now into a direction that is SIGNIFICANTLY worse.
Riot and revolution are always downgrades from the status quo in the hope the suffering leads to something better. The jury is out on whether not that always happens.
For now we get a very boring five phase empire collapse and its never a drastic change to bad until multiple systems fail.
It’s when those in charge start destroying the circus and the bread isn’t affordable people usually revolt as well. They’re in the process of that (ID laws for internet and rising food prices) but we haven’t reached a point where essentially death is a preferable outcome to not doing anything.
