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Is your argument is that anyone who is unwilling to nuke their entire life for the movement is insufficiently motivated and shouldn't even bother getting involved?
If that's your stance, then you're just plain wrong and you should probably keep quiet about it because your working against the movement.
Vanguard revolutions don't work. They just replace one set of shitty authoritarians with another. The ONLY way this can ever work is if we make the movement accessible to as broad a swath of people as humanly possible.
I've been a political activist for 22 years now. I cut my teeth on the front lines of the anti-Iraq War movement in 2003. I was at Occupy. I spent my early-to-mid 20s with little regard for my personal safety and financial stability. But nobody keeps that up forever. I'm pretty sure I did it longer than most. But that's not all I want from life.
Yes, fighting fascism is important to protecting my kids' future (I have 2 kids). You know what else is equally important to that, though? Making sure they have a stable home and food on their plates now. And I can't do that if I nuke my life by spending every single day in the streets, losing my job, and getting arrested.
My kids won't have to ask me what I did because they're there with me. Both my 3 yo and 5 yo were at the DC protest on Saturday. And this wasn't either of their first action. My 5 yo was with us at the 2020 uprising when she was less than a year old.
A successful movement takes all kinds. Yes, there are some who can take greater risks and more radical actions, but I'm not at that place in my life anymore and that's fine. If we can't find a way to include people who have other responsibilities in life, too, without insulting them or implying they're not really interested in change, then the entire movement is cooked.
So, thank you for your past service to the cause, but if you don't have anything constructive to say, kindly fuck off.
No this is not my argument, and I never said these words. If that's what you interpretted, then either I am communicating poorly or your projecting something else onto my words.
Being that you and I have similar experience in activism and direct action, don't you also have a feeling of futility? I mean we've helped make minor iterations, made minor accomplishments, but what has it been worth when you look around at the state of things? Have the billionaires who roadblocked every legal court battle, every protest, every movement, every innovative patent for alternative energy/plastic products, every bailout, every recession, do you really believe that continuing to occupy some insignificant sidewalk is doing anything anymore? Did it ever?
I'm not asking for a "vanguard movement" of blood and carnage, I'm simply asking about moving the crowds outside their mansions with zero violence would be lightyears more effective than what we're doing. It's far time we at least take that next peaceful (with strong implications) step, that we are clear and concise about who/what our problem is, and where, where they can see us. I'm not physically able to attend protests right now, but the first mass gathering outside a mansion that occurs I swear on my health that I'll turn up to add to the numbers. The world is going to shit, what are we doing? The same old shit. Yay for us? I'm trying to avoid bloodshed, not welcome it, and if simply gathering outside the homes of oligarchs are met with a firing squad then that makes the conversation much clearer for everyone.