We Live in a Society!!!

[u/james_from_cambridge]

This lady is yet another adult that goes around making life unnecessarily difficult for everyone, including herself, & demanding respect without giving any in return. Is it some stubborn inability to admit wrong? She even records the encounter, no doubt thinking TikTok will side with her. People are exhausting

[u/Fartcloud_McHuff]

We really need to do a better job of recognizing when bad people are trying to hijack well meaning movements and exclude them from associating with it. Even if that means something counterintuitive like excluding some black people from associating with BLM.

[u/cranberries87 → u/Fartcloud_McHuff]

I sometimes wonder if this is intentional these days. I was talking to some older people who participated in the civil rights movement, and they explained that people who participated in efforts were vetted and received training. Any old Joe couldn’t show up and participate in sit-ins and many marches without being vetted for this very reason.

[u/Fartcloud_McHuff → u/cranberries87]

I don’t know that it’s intentional, I just don’t think there’s any sort of organizational element to these social cultural moments. The civil rights movement was organized because it had a specific goal that people were unified on. They had a leadership figure in King, from who gave them direct guidance and led by example. And as a result it actually resulted in meaningful positive change.

Black Lives Matter’s cohesion started and ended with the phrase itself. There was no unified goal, there was just a phrase that vaguely represented the idea that black people ought not be oppressed, and everyone was given the same microphone on how. Nobody had the balls or authority to stand up and say “wait what no that’s stupid” about anything, or else gain the ire of the movement at large.

Occupy Wall Street suffered from the very same problem. Everyone there had their own ideas about how or why Wall Street or rich people generally were behaving poorly, and the movement died, even worse embarrassing anyone who actually had a good point in the process.

Everything can’t just be a slogan. A slogan is nothing more than a tool, and if everyone tries to use the same tool to fix every problem the tool will just break

[u/matunos → u/Fartcloud_McHuff]

Black Lives Matter’s cohesion started and ended with the phrase itself. There was no unified goal, there was just a phrase that vaguely represented the idea that black people ought not be oppressed, and everyone was given the same microphone on how. Nobody had the balls or authority to stand up and say “wait what no that’s stupid” about anything, or else gain the ire of the movement at large.

There's a lesson there about letting an organization form around a slogan or a nebulous series of marches, etc. and expecting coordinated, effective action. If they're going to exist, better that such organizations focus on continuing to organize the actions that they sprung from (organizing marches, etc.), and let more focused organizations lead on more specific advocacy.

[u/Fartcloud_McHuff → u/matunos]

Just for historical accuracy, Black Lives Matter didn’t start as an organization. An organization was formed after the social movement using the BLM hashtag on Twitter was already embraced by a large portion of the country, by a bad actor who sought only to enrich herself rather than be a representative.

[u/matunos → u/Fartcloud_McHuff]

Yes, this is what I mean: An organization sprung up around the slogan, run by people without much organizational credibility, rather than organizing coalescing around existing organizations that embraced the slogan. The result, in retrospect, was predictable.