Messofanego
Banned
You were going off about hypothetical concerns ("sick kid in the car, late for a job interview"), which is often an argument among people against road protests. Nana Ruth is a culmination of this kind of concern.
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Portland Police tackle protestors blocking traffic
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AcademicSaucer
Member
That old lady, lmao
Frozenprince
Banned
Blocking your God damn bus route is not an excuse for a riot cop to beat a man senseless what the ever loving fuck.
No wonder shit ain't getting better if a fucking twenty minute delay on people's commute is enough to turn off their empathy. These threads make me profoundly fucking sad because they are perfect examples of the bleating empty bullshit that most liberals profess to follow until they are marginally fucking inconvenienced at worst.
No wonder shit ain't getting better if a fucking twenty minute delay on people's commute is enough to turn off their empathy. These threads make me profoundly fucking sad because they are perfect examples of the bleating empty bullshit that most liberals profess to follow until they are marginally fucking inconvenienced at worst.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
The people shutting off their empathy in this thread aren't even the ones who got delayed! They're pretending they got delayed. They're theorizing on a hypothetical delay they may or may not ever actually endure.
Gordon Shumway
Banned
Don't laugh! She's a treasure..
Frozenprince
Banned
Baffles my fucking mind.
I've got a child. Sometimes, my child gets sick, sometimes that happens when we are driving. If I get caught in construction and it holds me up for twenty minutes, do I blame the construction workers? No. Of course I don't, because that would be fucking stupid and ridiculous and beyond petty. It's the attitude of a child.
The mere hypothetical of someone being inconvenienced is enough to get the tut tutters out in full force and engaged in their favorite pastime. Blame the brown people.
abstract alien
Member
Did the bus or anyone in it even have anything to do with what they were protesting against? I don't really see anything other than them wanting a certain police chief fired.
Elaugaufein
Member
You are aware that realising that protests can disadvantage hypothetical people other than yourself is actually a sign of empathy right ?
Messofanego
Banned
What...if...tho?!
They're of little merit and are done in bad faith. Especially when people bring up ambulance cars, when ambulance wouldn't have problems getting through.
Frozenprince
Banned
Right? Like they'd sit there while someone bled to death in the back of an ambulance like some cackling Saturday morning cartoon villain.
Frozenprince
Banned
Get this shit outta here. It ain't about these poor commuters and their poor jobs and their poor dying old ladies and it ain't never been about that.
It has always and will always just be about silencing the anger filled voice of the oppressed, because the oppressors don't want to hear it because it's too painful for them to see.
People are tired of being silent.
Not everybody stuck is just having their time wasted. Even then you're not making allies by disrupting some random person's day. You're just being a nuisance and shouldn't be surprised when the cops are cheered for removing you.
It's not even like this is BLM where it's about black people and their treatment being ignored by the majority. The average person being disrupted in Portland didn't even vote for Trump.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
And if your empathy only flows freely for hypothetical people, and not real ones, what does that say?
This is like, the third time I've mentioned it in this thread, but I live in Portland, and I work downtown. I'm 10 blocks from where that protest was. Another poster also lives in the city and upthread mentioned the very true fact that these sorts of things are more or less a way of life in this city. That's how frequently political protests of one sort or another happen here. And the side-effects of such are almost never anywhere near as extreme, or disadvantageous, as the hypotheticals being tossed in this thread.
I've never once, anecdotally, heard a story about a Portlander who got caught in a protest and flunked a class, or got fired from their job, or missed a doctor's appointment, or got home hours late to their house and their loving waiting family, because there was a protest downtown.
Not once. I've never heard that story—or any of its ruthian variations—get told in Portland. I hear it dragged out online all the time, as the empathy for hypothetical people flows like strawberry wine at Steve Brule's backyard barbecue, but it's a thing I don't know that I've ever heard happen here in my city, which happens to be the city at the center of this very thread.
People protesting the police isn't just experienced quite a bit here in Portland, it's expected. It's understood. Because fuckin' look at 'em. Look at how they act.
This city's women's march was larger than its turnout for Barack Obama back in 08, and that was the largest public turnout for anything since the Blazers won the world championship the year I was born. It's a protestin'-ass city. There are so many protests in Portland that my paper recently started keeping and updating a resistances & rallies calendar.
Don't worry about our hypothetical people. We're too busy raising hell for the real ones.
Frozenprince
Banned
Y'all really don't understand how protests actually work huh.
Protests aren't always about forcing wide spread immediate change. Many are just so that they can spread awareness and get their message out. And given that this is now a national news story.
They worked. The protests are working.
PatThePassive
Member
It is easy to fall into this, I don't know what the protesters are protesting, I'm don't see myself as a protesting type and its easy to see such protests as an inconvenience.
Although if they are the modern anarchists type then I'm glad we got this clip.
People don't care, they'll worry about their hypothetical situations where someone could get to work late, or get to school late and lose everything and not care about why people are protesting
The civil rights movement interrupted the livelihood of fellow American citizens and was largely unsupported by white people (according to the poll data from a previous post).
Protests are supposed to be disruptive; and they will inevitably incur the ire of some group of (or perhaps many) people.
That's not to say that this protest was poorly planned and lacked an incoherent message (judging by the video footage), but it does NOT justify tackling what is otherwise a non-violent protest.
Some of the posts in here are very disappointing.
Oh my god! Protesting is not about making allies. Do you not know that?
Frozenprince
Banned
Why is your giant communal gathering designed purely to be disruptive disrupting my life, cried the world.
Elaugaufein
Member
If I set out to deliberately do nothing but disrupt your life you'd (correctly) think I was an ass irrelevant of my reasons for doing so. Why are you expecting people to view this any differently ?
Gordon Shumway
Banned
This amuses me..thanks..
This same argument every single protest event after 6 days of Trump I just dont get it.
Frozenprince
Banned
Because they aren't deliberately out or disrupt your life. They are there to disrupt workings of a society that they are trying to bring awareness to something. That involves disrupting things because otherwise, nothing would get accomplished. People don't care otherwise.
Y'all just really seem to not get it.
Nealand Liquor
Member
Who or what the fuck is Nanna Ruth?
Does that logic apply to all protests that "disrupt" lives?
Gordon Shumway
Banned
LMAO..
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commedieu:
Wife was all sorts of pissed while reading your post..was hilarious to see her complete turn and 2 minutes of cackling when she got it lol..thanks for that, brother.
Elaugaufein
Member
People in this thread are claiming that the point of protests is explicitly to disrupt lives of people completely unrelated to the things people are protesting about. It applies to that kind of protest. People seem to be surprised that protests that they claim are explicitly not designed to make allies / win friends are actually resulting in making enemies of people, which should be really easy to see coming. You're either out to disrupt people or you can get upset when people find you disruptive and approve of you being removed, pick one.
Frozenprince
Banned
No, the point of a protest is to disrupt a system to create an avenue for attention. It's as "disruptive" to your life as employees at Verizon protesting and making it harder for you or buy a case for your stupid phone.
It's marginally inconvenienceing on its worst day.
Frozenprince
Banned
If someone is making me their enemy because I blocked traffic for fifteen minutes then they got way way way deeper issues and would just come up with some other bullshit contrived reason to hate me anyway.
All that privilege.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
Hold on.
The "enemies" being made aren't really enemies. They're people in a forum thread hundreds if not thousands of miles away from the city in question, people pouring all their empathy into hypothetical people and saving none for the cause behind the protest.
This cause (whatever it ends up being) is almost always backburnered, if not ignored entirely. Sometimes faint lip service is paid ("I don't like police brutality" or "I think women's rights are great!" or whatever) as quickly as possible before getting to what's really important: The hypothetical inconvenience of people who aren't you that might have to deal with the political protest.
The pushback you're seeing isn't protesters reacting towards everyday people who don't appreciate their sacrifices. You're seeing pushback from fellow posters who are watching your one-way stream of empathy towards the single least aggrieved party in the conversation (who, again, most of the time aren't even fucking real people, they're hypothetical) at the expense of either the message being sent, or the injuries dealt to the people sending it.
You're trying to present your (probably misplaced) empathy as a prize that must be won first by the protesters, like they're contestants on the Bachelor or something. Then people are reacting to the strange decision to show you don't give a fuck about the political cause being protested anywhere near as much as you care about showing how angry you are at the mere possibility you might be 20 minutes late for something someday.
Frozenprince
Banned
If it rains too hard traffic gets delayed twenty minutes I mean...
Let's be real here.
We all know what this is actually about.
Ain't nobody gonna hold your hand and ask you nicely to please stop letting black kids get shot.
Let's be real here.
We all know what this is actually about.
Ain't nobody gonna hold your hand and ask you nicely to please stop letting black kids get shot.
Elaugaufein
Member
Actually I've pretty consistently had a position against the militarization of police and them treating civilians as hostile, and I don't make exceptions to that based on skin color.
Welp
Frozenprince
Banned
Poetic
Chie Satonaka
Member
Elaugaufein
Member
Its funny you think that proves anything. Its entirely possible that I can both sincerely think that and think your protest logic is flawed. You have no idea how I spend my time or money for political causes but do carry on, I'm out since there's no point in discussion here. Treat it as a victory if you wish.
Frozenprince
Banned
You "I don't see race"d your way out.
Cease your constant attempts at some empty morla high ground
Please! You got caught and are now running away. Toodles.
I would be able to see the causal relationships behind the protest because I have a brain.
But I can see how that would be too much to ask of some people.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
Frozenprince
Banned
So glad you're back
Dudes always be wantin to dip after bein called out...
Messofanego
Banned
I think it's about time we all just went to some protests cause clearly some of us can't understand the point of it all. Build that empathy the direct way.
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