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Comment by jmspring | Hacker News Reader

A public that is passive and follows "the rules" enables this, unfortunately.

In 2011 and 2012 we had Occupy Wall Street and Anonymous. Probably the broadest protest movement online and offline in a long time, if not ever.

And the politicians won. Wall Street won. The TSA won. They all have more power than 2 years ago.

If the broadest peaceful protest couldn't make it, what possibly can?

A Ghandi-style peaceful protest would fare better than what the occupy movement did. I went to the one in London and saw that the protesters were following police orders to, for example, stay in one place. This is not the way to make your voice heard and it's not what Ghandi did.

You can have an active, non-violent protest. This entails disobeying any and all orders from the authorities (e.g. blocking major roads and refusing to move unless taken by force), blocking access to important buildings, blocking access to police and government vehicles, using smoke bombs - anything which causes chaos but does not physically hurt anyone. The point is to cause as much of a problem as possible without enacting bodily harm to another.

http://www.crvp.org/book/Series01/I-39/ch18.htm

> An avowed pacifist, he saw non-cooperation as a training in self-sacrifice. In Gandhi’s dictum, non-violent, non-cooperation was "a method of search for social truth."

> He cautioned that non-cooperation does not apply to service under private individuals. Its efficacy lay in voluntary withdrawal from the affairs of the State, an expression of popular discord, causing discomfort to government.

> "Satyagraha literally means insistence on truth."

You can have an active, non-violent protest. This entails disobeying any and all orders from the authorities

What you saw in London was not representative. OWS (possibly not every instance) was doing this when they were removed by pepper spray and bulldozers. There was at least one incident where an individual was hospitalized after being hit in the head by a ballistic tear gas or smoke canister. He was not attended to by the police who injured him. Perhaps they could have been organized more effectively, but I'm not convinced that there is an amateur organization capable of peacefully resisting our current federal forces.

> blocking access to police and government vehicles, using smoke bombs - anything which causes chaos but does not physically hurt anyone

Do you really recommend becoming a terrorist in the US right now?

By that metric, the police are terrorists for using tear gas and blocking roads.

I'm fairly sure this is indeed where we are now. To be fair to the police, they are being controlled by federal organizations.

It would appear that that's exactly what he's doing. It's not a bad tactic, though costly, and only effective if you can get dozens and dozens of thousands to participate.

That's sabotage and civil disobedience. If nobody is harmed, how is that terrorism?

You could not be more correct.

I took this photo yesterday: http://i.imgur.com/ilLp1.jpg

None of the movements had any leadership or organized goals whatsoever. In a world where so many have so much access, those that took part in the protests were essentially cut off from many people who wanted to learn more about them.

Perhaps a more narrow and focussed protest can?

Violent protest.

You really, really don't want to be resident there ifwhen it actually comes to that, brother.

Consider emigrating. It's much better, safer, and more effective than violence.

c.f. Milgram experiment. It's human nature.

Germany is way more rule-following and is way more free than the USA.

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