this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025
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BLM is a great example. I remember being so mad, and wanting something to change, and there was a huge, massive cultural shift for it. I remember thinking how if everyone would unify behind one thing, we wanted one systemic thing to change - demilitarization of the police as an example, we could probably have done it. Everyone chanting and demanding the same one thing. Then we move onto the next, and the next, and the next.
Instead we got a list of like, 24 things that random people collected from chat rooms and online forums that they demanded. There was no way anyone was going to see a list that large and just say "Yup okay we're on it". But people wouldn't budge, their thing was the most important, it was all or nothing - and so that's what we got. Nothing. We could have had some huge systemic change there and instead nothing happened.
Occupy, BLM, protests, they're all well and good but they depend on people unifying. This here, this is the thing we want. Make it a bill and push it through now. It won't encompass everything. It won't be perfect. But it's progress. Instead we just go back and forth, and they know all they have to do is wait out the outcry until people get bored and they move on, so we can keep the status quo.
I'm less frustrated by the catalog of demands (plenty of them were reasonable on their face). I was more distressed at how a series of local protests, marches, and sit in near St. Louis and Baltimore became a bunch of national talking heads claiming to be leading the organization or in touch with those that were.
As soon as BLM became a clothing brand, it was over. Nevermind how many actual activists were arrested on paper thin charges or straight up murdered, while campaigners in LA and NY just grandstanded in the moment.
You're talking lobbying which is fine in it's own right. But it's expensive and the sort of activity that's ripe for grifting.
Asking people for money, for free labor, and for donations in kind is necessary for an effective legislative change. But it's also a great opportunity to get paid self promoting.
Whether it's Oral Roberts saying he needs a million dollars to save his church or God will call him back to heaven. Or Kamala Harris saying she needs you to donate time/money to her campaign right now or we lose democracy. It's all a ripe opportunity to play on anxiety in order to commit fraud.