I believe Trump is moving the US in the right direction, whereas a good president would be moving the US in the left direction

Engaging algorithm, no paywall, funding or monetization strategy, viewpoint diversity, and a large amount of people already using it

At my university there are CS clubs specifically for women because only like 1% of the CS students in both classes and clubs are female

Ok then let’s dissect your statement.

Short term gain.

Not a complete sentence so not even sure what this means. But when taking it into the context of my statement that you replied to (which was about the effectiveness of the protests), I assume you’re saying that I was focusing on short-term gain in contrast to focusing on the long term when determining the effectiveness of the protests. Which hints that I should be taking different aspects into consideration and arguing differently. Which is a position, which I then assume you intend to defend.

If the topic wasn’t about the effectiveness, which was the primary topic of the comment you replied to, that should have been clarified.

It’s more about long term awareness.

Based on what’s inferred from the previous statement, this further validates its intent. It also brings up what specifically should be considered when arguing differently, which is “awareness”.

It is unfortunate for those now. But

“Some of what you said is correct, but…” Argumentative-style writing, reinforcing the intent stated earlier.

it’s not something that changes overnight.

Based on the context of the previous statements, reiterates that the effectiveness is determined by the long term, specifically “awareness”, as opposed to how I measured it.

So it seems like you were trying to justify something.

The way you initially commented made it seem like you were arguing that long-term awareness justifies its classification as “very” effective and I’m arguing that it doesn’t. And now you’re saying that you’re arguing the same thing I am, so I can’t even tell what your stance is at this point or why you brought it up.

But you crap on mine for understanding that I don’t have any better ideas too, but am aware of what protests do in terms of change? Got it.

What’s wrong with that? The title of this post was that protests are “very” effective. I’m arguing that they’re not, and apparently so are you.

With the peaceful protests I’ve been to or that have happened at my university, most of the time they haven’t tried to stop anything aside from cops being stationed waiting for it to deescalate, then the protest eventually fizzles out and people forget it happened. There are a couple exceptions to these though:

1. One protest happened at the same time as a bunch of other protests on different campuses, and a large number of troopers and other law enforcement with weapons shut it down and arrested dozens of people for refusing to leave an area. There was a lot of shady (and illegal) actions happening between the university admin and Texas government, where even Zionist Reddit shitlibs thought it was extreme. There was an investigation going on led by a student-run newspaper since then, not sure if it’s still happening. As far as why they did this, my guess is: (1) fear of property damage based on actions in other protests and (2) governor Abbott wanting to put on a political show by exercising his power, but I highly doubt it was because it posed a real threat to their power.

2. The official student newspaper reporting on pro-Palestine topics painting the university in a negative light, eventually leading the university to fire the entire newspaper. Probably due to a fear of reputational damage so they wanted to impose additional obstacles (which of course backfired).

Overall these didn’t result in any actual policy changes so there wasn’t much of an outcome. It did cause some reputational damage, where even FIRE thought our admin was too fascist and ranked us almost last. It’s probably impacting their enrollment and hiring faculty at least a little bit (but there are a lot of other factors negatively impacting this as well). Also resulted in more financial burdens for the protesters involving bail fees and needing to fund their new independent newspaper in different ways.

There was another (non-peaceful) protest I heard of in the area involving an ICE agent being hospitalized and protestors facing terrorism charges. This also didn’t result in any policy changes, but did have some real-world harm to fascists and threat to their security, but also larger financial burdens and a lot more difficult to build popular support over.

I’m not saying I have better ideas, but if it doesn’t fix anything until it’s too late, “very” is not a good word to describe its effectiveness

ok so it will get fixed after the damage has already been done, got it

What is awareness going to do? People are already plenty aware of what’s going on, this was one of the first genocides to be livestreamed.

Thanks to the protests being effective, Palestine is no longer being genocided, immigrants aren’t being sent to concentration camps, and the US is not threatening random countries… oh wait

Well at least the .world news community has another bias checker their bot can source from

Nothing, I suck at sleeping and now I gave up and am browsing Lemmy

I use a dishwasher, but half of the dishes either don’t get cleaned or aren’t dishwasher safe so I have to wash by hand. I tried cleaning the filter, using detergent in the prewash, and running the water until it’s hot before starting the dishwasher, and none of it did shit.

although its incorrect, i’d say their are better things to worry about

BTW a lot of open source programs have Esperanto translations (including Lemmy). Facebook does also for some reason.

On Typst its --

Threatening violence on your opponent’s territory right before you have to negotiate with them is stupid though unless you have a reason to want things to escalate

IDK how dumb this idea is, but what if Trump/Republicans that align with him are trying to cause a shutdown to take advantage of the chaos somehow and blame it on the Democrats, and part of the reason for sending the military to Portland/LA was to anger the Democrats enough to not fold?

Right now there isn’t really one (assuming USA which is where I’m located). IMO the best thing you can do right now is first find likeminded people IRL and do stuff that’s interesting to yourselves and other like minded people, then use those shared interests/bonds as a foundation for motivated community outreach.

Where I live I feel like the sense of community is almost nonexistent despite having a large population. IDK how much of that is from me being autistic, but a lot of things that stem from capitalism like car culture, addictive social media platforms, anything AI, shitty work-life balance, and horrible safety net are also strong contributors to society being super isolating, which then causes anger and self centeredness which results in a lot of what else is wrong with society.

One of the reasons Republicans are as successful as they are is that they provide community through stuff like religion and church, which tests people’s commitment through rules and tithes but also results in tighter bonds where people are more open and trust each other more and do a lot of (mentally) uplifting things together. Then politicians use that to create a unified vision of an ideal society and wield that to their advantage to gain political power, and those communities are super motivated to uphold it.

Meanwhile there are tons of churches everywhere, but as for a left-wing equivalent there’s next to nothing and I’m not even fully sure that it’s possible to replicate something like this with left-wing values. Probably the most important things to take from this is being based on an agreed upon set of values, having a shared vision, expecting some level of commitment (including financially), meeting IRL, having regular activities that are enjoyable and based on the shared values/vision, and the most visible outreach being centered around the interests of those being immediately talked to and also around helping the local population which contributes to a positive image of the organization among less informed people and helps boost its popularity (it’s also less difficult to make changes locally than nationally). Once there is enough popular support, then there’s actually a chance of gaining political power and overthrowing capitalists through next step actions, but without popular support or some other form of power the chances of that succeeding is basically none.

As far as organizations that exist right now go, for ones like PSL I’m not sure how other chapters work or how it works on a national level. The problems I have with my local chapter is that it mainly focuses on peaceful controlled protests (has no chance at making meaningful change, sucks for community building, and is ultimately a waste of time) and it rarely focuses on local issues on social media (not good for building local support, and I want to actually do stuff, not just read and yell things). The best organization I’ve found so far which I’m volunteering with is one that stemmed from Food Not Bombs, which is run by leftists and focuses on raising awareness of local issues (specifically related to homelessness), using temporary aid as a way to protest unjust laws and promote a vision for an ideal society that fixes systemic issues that cause homelessness. Outside of the main distribution efforts, the main organizers in the group know some homeless people by name and where they’re located and will help them as well. They’ve also gotten media attention in local mainstream news outlets (not exactly good attention but it’s something). Some other Food Not Bombs chapters have gotten national media attention for breaking laws that hurt homeless people. A more broad organization that still prioritizes local issues (until more can be done outside of that) would be a lot better IMO, but that doesn’t really exist where I live so this is what I’ve been involved with for now.