roadkill on the information superhighway

"I feel amazing but I feel like this sensation has a price and I'm about to pay it."

Louise Bourgeois’ ‘The Couple’.

A protest is an expression of an opinion. A “demand” is an expression of a desire. To “demand” something is to shew that you want it; to “protest” something is to shew that you do not want it.

The mechanism by which these expressions of popular desire are supposed to work on the realm of politics is unclear. Why should capital, or the military, or the police, or the state, care what the people want? Are we to believe that an expression of popular desire can have some overwhelming, supernatural, tidal power of its own? Are we supposed to believe that politicians and capitalists will be overcome with sympathy for the plight of the people and decide to change their minds? History tells us that this will not happen.

In fact an expression of desire is only the first part of a sound political strategy. The desire needs to be 1. specific, actionable, and delivered to bodies with the power to act on it; and 2. accompanied by a threat. Here is what we want; here is what we will do if we do not get what we want. The point of a protest (a “demonstration” of popular will) is to give an indication of how many people are willing to actively, physically intervene in the mechanisms of capital if they don’t get what they want.

Take a strike for instance. There is an expression of desire (for pay raises, vacation time, improvement of safety standards, &c.), and there is a threat (if you don’t give these things to us, we will stop work and shut down your operation). The threat is likely to be effective because it stops the capitalist from getting what they want if carried out.

Take a boycott (say, Puma). There is an expression of desire (we want you to stop sponsoring Israel’s football team) and there is a threat (if you don’t, we will not buy your products and will take other actions to prevent other people from buying your products). This is why BDS works—boycotts are undertaken not as an organic expression of moral outrage (though they can certainly start with moral outrage), but precisely because and to the precise degree that they work. They work by threatening to deny the capitalist what they want, and by having the necessary infrastructure to follow through (e.g. alternate transportation during the Montgomery Bus Boycotts; strike funds that allow striking workers to, you know, strike).

Now think of contacting representatives. This can only work if there’s an expression of desire, and a threat. The threat could be, I will not vote for you in x election unless you vote this way in this bill. The threat could be, we will flood all of your lines to such an extent that usual business cannot be carried out. The threat could be, we will demonstrate outside of your offices, at your appearances and speeches, outside your home, and wherever we see you in public such that your life as usual cannot be carried out.

Take a protest. The expression of desire (the people in the streets, the signs, the chants) is part of it. The threat, the demonstration of popular power, should be another. If you don’t give us what we want, we will shut down transportation, we will shut down shopping, we will render business as usual impossible. Think of the phrase “a protest without disruption is a parade.”

We do these things not because they feel good or cathartic, not because self-expression is an end in itself, not because we are good people if we do them, or for any other symbolic reason. We should do things to the degree that they are effective in achieving the outcome we want. An expression or representation of desire is exactly nothing. You have to take actions that are in some way geared towards forcing people to accede to your desires.

My first thought is that this is intended as a funnel for people’s energy. We shouldn’t allow the publication of this number to divert our attention away from the other avenues of contact and protest we’ve been engaging in, and we shouldn’t feel like our job is done once we text it.

Someone else mentioned that they may be trying to gauge whether Biden should run for re-election, and so we should tell him that we won’t vote for him. This doesn’t make any sense. The barest, barest minimum for texting this number to even potentially do literally anything at all, is to use it to issue a threat.

You should say, if anything, that you will vote for him in the next election if and only if he stops funding Israel’s genocide n Palestine. You don’t even really have to mean it! But if you tell him / his team that you will not vote for him no matter what, then you are completely useless in trying to convince them to do anything! This isn’t a good threat because it is not dependent on someone else’s actions!

And so many people don't realize that this is a valid strategy.

Here's a good example of this in action:

"The Leader does not appear to be interested in truly listening, nor interested in giving true value to international Law, nor truly caring about the children of Gaza. With broken hearts, we must depart the Laurier Club," the group wrote. 

"The idea that this situation will all be forgotten in two years is an extremely risky and unwise strategy for the Party. The scale of the humanitarian loss is simply unprecedented."

....

The organizer said they would let Mehra take the donors' message to the Prime Minister's Office and would give Trudeau until January to respond.

The organizer, a self-described founding member of Network 100, said the group might have to consider an escalation if Trudeau does not start calling for a ceasefire.

Next steps might include telling specific Liberal MPs the group will throw its support to NDP or Green Party candidates in certain ridings, since those two parties have called for a ceasefire, the organizer said.

CBC News ran the organizer's name through Elections Canada's database. The organizer alone has contributed more than $20,000 to the Liberals since December 2014, when the group began its donor activities.

If every member of the group cuts the Liberals off, the party could find itself short at least $680,000 annually. The party raised $14.5 million last year, according to Elections Canada.

Joel Jackson, the president of the Organized Village of Kake, a tribal community, has lived within the Tongass National Forest in Alaska his entire life. His community relies on the land for hunting deer and fishing salmon that swim in streams kept cold by the old-growth forest.

But the 66-year-old worried about damage to that land - the largest national forest in the US - after former President Donald Trump rescinded a measure blocking logging and road-building on nine million acres of land in the Tongass in 2020.

"The forest is key to our survival as a people, to our way of life … for thousands of years," Mr Jackson said.

Last week marked a long-awaited victory for Mr Jackson and other tribes and environmental groups who petitioned the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to reinstate the protections for the forest.

"-the act legally requires commercial ventures to verify users’ ages if a company “knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material harmful to minors on the internet from a website that contains a substantial portion of such material.”

In order to do so, North Carolina requires these sites to either use “a commercially available database that is regularly used by businesses or governmental entities for the purpose of age and identity verification,” or utilize “another commercially reasonable method of age and identity verification.” Companies are not allowed to hold records on any personally identifying information used to confirm users’ ages.

Additionally, North Carolina offers residents the right to a lawsuit if a site is found to record user identifying information, or if a minor’s parent or guardian finds that a website allowed their child to access a site purposefully hosting material “harmful to minors.”" obviously we don't want these websites having our IDs, but sites like e621 and pornhub just straight up aren't asking for them either- blocking their service to the state in it's entirety instead. even beyond the restriction of adult websites, obviously as the 'queerest place on the net' we can see how "material that is harmful to minors" is not just intentional vague wording, but a massive red flag. even if you dont care about the porn- which you should, this is a massive rights violation. how long until 'harmful material' is expanded to include transgender people? same-sex relationships? anything lgbtq? this is a serious fucking problem and it opens the door to hundreds of potentially worse bills that extrapolate on the same concept.

i have no idea what to do to fight it, but if someone smarter than me could add links to representatives or something, that would be awesome.