Advice on protests

Okay. Well, there was a disruptive or disruptive slash expressive protest yesterday at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, which I think we should analyze a little bit. First, the selection of the parade as a target, as a target for disruption is itself for the purpose of expression. I mean, you chose that the parade primarily as a as a as a target for expressive, not disruptive protest. The the the the purpose was expression, not meaningful disruption.

It's a public event, so the real objective was to draw attention to the Palestinian issue. That makes it an expressive protest, not a disruptive protest. Even though the method for gaining attention was disruption. It wasn't the kind of disruption that in and of itself achieves a goal. You know, like a disruptive protest that actually achieves a goal would be, for example, dock workers refusing to offload cargo from an Israeli ship.

That's a disruptive protest that actually disrupts the system of support for Zionism or or the Zionist system of support. You know, even a boycott is actually a form of disruptive protest because it has a real world financial impact. Blocking a parade route is not disruptive in this way. It doesn't actually achieve a real world impact. It's disruption for the purpose of expression.

Another thing, when I've seen footage of the protest, what I saw was only like two or three people were actually involved in the protest. So and then there may have been more people, but that's what the media showed. It only showed about two or three people. They glued their hands to the pavement along the route of the parade. So right away, you know that those protesters are most likely coming from climate change protesters, from that faction of activists who are involved in climate change protest cause that's one of their tactics, you know, gluing themselves, to the pavement.

So here you can see how the equation works. The smaller the number of people, the smaller the smaller number of people of sorry, the smaller number of protesters you have, the more likely it is that they will engage in more extreme tactics. The smaller number of people you have involved in a protest, the more likely it is that their tactics will be more extreme. Because the use of extreme tactics is, supposed to compensate for their small numbers. They wanna maximize the impact that they can have despite being a small number of people.

They wanna maximize the impact that they can have. But they don't have adequate numbers of participants in their protest for maximum impact. So they employ more extreme tactics. In my view, there's two, at least two negative repercussions for this or ramifications of this. First, your protest highlights the fact that you have little support, which isn't good for you.

It makes it look like you're a small number of people who believe in this cause, so that's not good. And then second, you appear unhinged. You appear radical because of the methods or because of the tactics that you choose to employ and you chose to employ those because you have small numbers. So both of these things emphasize how small you are, how small your group is, how small your supporters are, or how few your supporters are. Ultimately, this is not helpful for whatever cause you're advocating whether it's the Palestinian cause or any other cause.

You look fringe, you look radical, you look like a small group of angry misfits That makes your cause look fringe. It makes your cause look radical and unsupported and angry. And this impression is for for this particular protest, that impression is amplified by their particular choice of targets. In this case, the thanks the thanksgiving day parade. This is a celebration, it's a tradition.

It's enjoyed by families and all types of mainstream sorts of people all across the country. So that that protest is more likely to be alienating people rather than winning winning over their support. Your expressive protest is more likely to make your cause look extreme. It's gonna make your cause look strange and hostile. So it seems unlikely to me that something like that, something like that sort of protest is gonna actually win over support from mainstream people which is supposed to be the purpose of an expressive protest.

Now, like I said, I would guess that these protesters at yesterday's Macy's Day Parade probably belonged to the climate change faction of activists. But So that means that they have a pool of activists that they could draw from, But the fact that there was only two or three of them there shows that they were unable to recruit more people from their own faction to participate. Which means that even those people, even the the climate change activists who are sort of known for being rather radical and extreme, they weren't able to convince them to participate in that protest. Means they didn't even think it was a good idea. They didn't even think it was gonna be an effective protest.

So you need to keep these things in mind and you need to think it through, and analyze the feasibility of what it is that you want to do. If you're trying to organize any sort of action, need to analyze, you know, really the feasibility of what it is that you want to do. So if you don't have enough people to do something that's effective then you probably need to shelve the idea, you know, and either spend your time and focus your time on recruiting more people to actually carry out that idea or just shelve the idea completely and go back to the drawing board and think of something else and plan something else. And planning has to be taken very seriously. If you wanted to do a protest at the Thanksgiving Day Parade, that's something that you should have been planning for weeks.

You know, not the not the morning of or the night before and then just slap some glue on your hands and go park yourself on the pavement on the parade route. Because you know, it is conceivable that an effective protest could have been organized for that event although personally I don't, you know, I would question the advisability of even that selection of targets. Don't know how useful that is but conceivably you could do a useful protest, an effective protest, at an event like that. But for a large public event like that, you're gonna need large numbers of people to participate. You're gonna need a much larger group of, of protesters in order for it to be effective.

And I think that for a public event like that, something that would have been a more purely expressive form of protest would have been better than any sort of disruptive protest. I don't think for something like that you really want to use a disruptive strategy. Just strategically, I think it would be wiser. I mean, you could have even just had large banners being held by a crowd of activists held over their heads as the parade floats pass by, a large banner with free Palestine or end genocide in Gaza or any other type of a message So that the cameras that are filming the the parade, they would have to also show your message in the background. You know, over the heads of protesters on the lining the sides of the street or unfurled from the windows of buildings so that, you know, the the floats that are in the air, the big balloon floats, they would have to pass by messages of support for Palestine and that that would have to be shown on camera.

Something like this. I mean, even if you wanted to do a disruptive protest like blocking the path of the parade, which again I don't think is necessarily a good idea. But if you wanted to do that effectively, you're gonna need at least two dozen people, not two people. You know, ideally more than two dozen people. 30 people, 40 people, 50 people, a 100 people to block the parade route and that would be, you know, a stunning demonstration.

It would be a stunning sight and it could end up being iconic but when you just have two or three people gluing themselves to the road, they're just sort of these they come across as very zealous and frankly unstable activists shouting angry slogans. I don't really see how that ends up ultimately being positive or being effective or being useful to winning support for the Palestinian cause. So I think activists need to keep these things in mind. Disruptive protests should be substantively disruptive. It should actually disrupt the system, the operation of the system itself.

And expressive protest should be aimed at winning support, not alienating people. Because look, the fact of the matter is that support for Palestine is the global consensus and there's even huge numbers of people in the West who support Palestine. This isn't a fringe issue, it's not a fringe cause. So there's no need to engage in actions that are radical in nature. You shouldn't There's no need to engage in a radical fashion that makes the cause itself appear to be fringe or marginal.

This is the rational and reasonable position to support Palestine and to oppose genocidal violence. This is the rational and reasonable position. So you shouldn't take actions that make our side look like the irrational side and the unreasonable side. Moderate action, taken by large numbers of people is always going to be better, than extreme action taken by a small number of people. But if you do have only a small number of people, then you have to focus on trying to be highly creative, highly imaginative in crafting your strategy, crafting what type of a demonstration or protest you want to do, what type of an action you want to do, you have to be highly creative if you only have a small number of people and you need to, you need to try to take an action or try to avoid taking an action rather, you need to try to avoid taking an action that will only highlight the small number of people that you have and you need to avoid taking an action that's going to make you, your activist and your cause, look strange and hostile.

These are the type of actions frankly, that could be organized by intelligence agencies precisely for the purpose of discrediting your cause and making it look like only, you know, crazy radical activists care about this issue and if you're going to associate yourself with that cause then we will malign you as being a crazy, fringe, radical activist. So no one wants to be perceived in that way so they they might disassociate themselves from your cause just so that they don't have to be associated with the crazy people who are gluing themselves to the pavement on Thanksgiving Day. So don't let your passion cloud your judgment and push you into actions that will ultimately only undermine and sabotage what it is that you're trying to accomplish.