Adam Schiff and centrist concern trolls have it completely backward: Trump’s immigration crackdown is the source of pervasive violence.

WHEN PRESIDENT DONALD Trump announced on Saturday night that he would send the National Guard to Los Angeles to crush protests, a narrative emerged on social media that demonstrators had somehow given a gift to the authoritarian president by escalating confrontations with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

“Los Angeles — violence is never the answer. Assaulting law enforcement is never ok,” Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., posted on Sunday. “Indeed, doing so plays directly into the hands of those who seek to antagonize and weaponize the situation for their own gain. Don’t let them succeed.”

In reality, the protesters throwing rocks at heavily armed security forces or attempting to damage the vehicles used to kidnap their immigrant neighbors did not introduce violence. They are instead acting in militant community defense.

After all, would the situation somehow be less violent were ICE left to snatch and disappear people without impediment? Does Schiff imagine either his pronouncements or the empty condemnations of his Democratic Party colleagues will slow down the deportation of our neighbors?

  • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
    394·
    2 days ago

    Don’t believe the doubters: protest still has power

    Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.

    There are, of course, many ethical reasons to use nonviolent strategies. But compelling research by Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, confirms that civil disobedience is not only the moral choice; it is also the most powerful way of shaping world politics – by a long way.

    Looking at hundreds of campaigns over the last century, Chenoweth found that nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to achieve their goals as violent campaigns. And although the exact dynamics will depend on many factors, she has shown it takes around 3.5% of the population actively participating in the protests to ensure serious political change.

    Working with Maria Stephan, a researcher at the ICNC, Chenoweth performed an extensive review of the literature on civil resistance and social movements from 1900 to 2006 – a data set then corroborated with other experts in the field. They primarily considered attempts to bring about regime change. A movement was considered a success if it fully achieved its goals both within a year of its peak engagement and as a direct result of its activities. A regime change resulting from foreign military intervention would not be considered a success, for instance. A campaign was considered violent, meanwhile, if it involved bombings, kidnappings, the destruction of infrastructure – or any other physical harm to people or property.

    Source in article from 2019

    • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      66·
      2 days ago

      I’m not saying protest doesn’t have power. But the power of nonviolent protest diminishes sharply if there’s no implicit threat of violent protest if matters get pushed too far. One of the primary reasons MLK succeeded was because Malcom X was waiting in the wings.

      Nonviolent protest against a status quo ante is one thing; nonviolent protest against an aggressively authoritarian regime that’s grabbing more power by the day is quite another. It is a very, very different context.

      • brandon@piefed.socialEnglish
        39·
        2 days ago

        As an additional point to add to yours, every single political protest movement in history has included violent elements. It’s unavoidable. When these political “moderates” start pearl clutching about some windows being broken or whatever it is an attempt to de-legitimize the entire movement, and draw the focus away from the actual source of the majority of violence, the cops (including ICE).

        • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
          39·
          2 days ago

          I think I need to be clear, I don’t give a shit if windows are broken or they throw scooters off bridges onto cop cars, I’m talking about violence against humans. TBH, the looting sends the wrong message of greed instead of being for a cause, but not because they’re damaging shit.

          • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            111·
            2 days ago

            I don’t even need to reach into the past for a very clear counterexample: do you really think Zelenskyy could have asked Putin nicely to not invade his country anymore, and it would have made a damn bit of difference?

            • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
              44·
              2 days ago

              This is not an invasion of our land, these are democratic protests. There is a huge difference between Russia sending bombs to bomb LA and Americans protesting. If Russia sends bombs, fuck them up.

              • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
                6·
                2 days ago

                It is very rare for the president to send the National Guard into a state without the governor’s cooperation. The last time was when LBJ used it to protect pro civil rights protestors in Alabama.

                Unfortunately, Trump’s goal in LA is not so well-intentioned, it’s to establish authority so ICE can continue disappearing citizens without due process. It is, for all intents and purposes of the word, an invasion. Thing is, if Newsom attempts to intervene, Trump would loooove to arrest him for treason. And if they do nothing, and protestors step aside, ICE will just continue disappearing people, moving state to state, pushing and pushing, further and further, hoping that someone gives him an excuse to escalate.

      • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
        9·
        2 days ago

        I feel like we’re all saying the same thing: if you make peaceful revolution impossible, you make violent revolution inevitable. It’s not about what’s right or wrong, or what the public should or should not do; it’s about which of those two options Trump himself has decided we’re doing. And he has chosen…poorly.

      • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
        84·
        2 days ago

        I see what you’re saying, but I live in Seattle. I saw how they spun our city as a “hellhole” and “it’s on fire” for months. I had family members calling to see if I was okay when it was very contained and our cops had been quiet quitting for years anyway, it was that fucked up. You have to have the people on your side, and not be on the side of the soldiers/agents/whatever.

        • brandon@piefed.socialEnglish
          15·
          2 days ago

          They will say that regardless of how much violence protesters actually do. Purity testing demonstrations only makes the situation worse by allowing the right the ability to dictate the narrative.

          • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
            45·
            2 days ago

            What are you trying to say? That the demonstrators should start killing people, looting and setting everything on fire? I don’t think that’s a good solution. In fact, that would just get a lot of protesters killed.

            There’s no purity testing. I’m counteracting a lot of people saying to bring their guns and start shooting. I wonder why people are calling for that? It doesn’t seem in the protester’s best interest.

            • brandon@piefed.socialEnglish
              13·
              2 days ago

              I am saying that:

              1. the vast majority of violence perpetrated at these demonstrations is done by law enforcement
              2. if cops wanted people to stop throwing water bottles at them they would stop trampling people with horses and shooting reporters with rubber bullets
              3. framing these demonstrations as “violent” only serves the narrative of the right
    • rambling_lunatic@sh.itjust.works
      81·
      2 days ago

      A very big portion of How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm criticizes this study and how it ignores the more violent and property-destroying aspects of the movements it studied.

      As Malm describes, the radical flank effect is a well-documented phenomenon in which the presence of a more militant faction in a social movement makes the authorities much more likely to compromise with the moderate elements.

      I suggest you read the book if you haven’t already.

    • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
      14·
      2 days ago

      Daily reminder that the media of the time did not hail King as the paragon of non-violence as we do today. The rhetoric were that his protests were violent and disruptive, and that they ought to be stopped. It was only after he was successful that all that rhetoric was blown away and retroactively painted with the brush of acceptance and approval.

      Also worth noting that in the 2014 Maidan protests, one of the only times nobody got hurt was when the group announced an armed peaceful march and the cops made themselves scarce.

      https://youtu.be/yzNxLzFfR5w

    • ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world
      17·
      2 days ago

      I think the government has learned a lot about suppression of protests in the last 20 years.

      Find (or create) an excuse to call the protest violent, apply less-than-lethal weapons liberally, and subvert the message of the protest to turn the public against it.