What I Learned Joining a Climate Civil Resistance Organization for 18 Months | Hacker News Reader

What I Learned Joining a Climate Civil Resistance Organization for 18 Months

lhostis.me

12 pointsnoutella8 comments

I see lots of criticism of tactics in these comments, but isn't the proof in the pudding? This was a wildly successful campaign that will have a significant positive effect on many people's lives while also reducing emissions. It's a win-win-win. This seems to me proof that blocking traffic, vandalizing museums, and all the other seemingly "nonsensical" tactics are in fact the right move at the moment.

Road blockades are such a weird thing. Why would you block the way and piss off the same people that you need to win for your cause? This is so nonsensical that I'm starting to believe its a form of disruptive self-promotion, aka "Look at us, we are fighting for the right thing" and not meant to rally support.

Same with vandalism in art galleries/museums.

The point isn't to win new people to your cause. The point is to get other people who already believe in your cause to overcome apathy and make this cause a primary factor in how they vote. For example, the Free Palestine movement in the US exists mostly among young liberals. The Free Palestine protests that block roads are intended to get young liberals to believe the Free Palestine issue is very important. If they believe it is very important, they won't vote for Biden, who is enabling Israel's war in Gaza. Biden sees the polling and then moves toward a less pro-Israel stance.

I have my doubts that a given individual who can't separate activists from their cause could alternatively be swayed by a logical argument favouring the cause, anyway.

This is an excellent article on practicalities. Their goal stayed consistent: find the funding to insulate leaky homes. In France, this meant roadblocks. France does not love cars. Other cultures do love cars. Roadblocks may not make your cause memorable where you are.

The emissions saved by remote work are undervalued.

Can't stop thinking in Ghostbuster's Gozer asking for the form of the Destructor. It's a situation where whatever you choose, it will only move forward the agenda of what is the big threat in some way.

Doing something in a bad situation is comforting for oneself, but if for most visible moves you do the situation gets worse in some of its dimensions, then it would be bad to do it in the first place. And it usually gets that way, mass media put in a very bad light this kind of movements, so that road closes up or get adopted by radicals that can both be manipulated to do the opposite in the big picture or put an even worse light on anything similar anywhere.

Sometimes doing something less, substractive solutions instead of additive, are a better approach. They don't look so fast of getting immediate results, but are harder to end badly or being used to reach the opposite goal. Consume less, travel less, efficient living, promote/use things that goes around those goals, and do it for good, do not erase with one hand what was written with big effort by the other. The action is the inaction, in the best Newspeak style.

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."

Blaise Pascal

The goal sound kind of nice, but saying we only have 700 days left before we will have to start putting negative numbers on our t-shirts and blocking traffic just seems lunacy

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