Protests do work, in fact that's how the US got all its amendments, and stopped the imperialist war on Vietnam. The important point, is that this takes place outside of electoralism / officially sanctioned actions within bourgeois democracy. Protests and activism also meet fierce resistance from US police, the domestic enforcers of capitalist rule, primarily because it's outside of their rigged "vote for capitalist puppet" game.

Nowadays liberals are doing their best to cripple the anti-war movement again by discouraging protests, and increasingly corral people into voting. They stood against the Iraq-war protests, just as they stand against pro-palestine protestors now.

[–] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Hey I agree with you on pretty much everything else, but the Vietnam and Iraq war protests are bad examples of efficacy. They were necessary, and should have been bigger, but both those wars went on for like 20 years.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 12 points 6 days ago (1 children)

With Vietnam I think the US protest movement played a significant role in the defeat(the docu Sir no Sir! has a good overview of it), less so with recent US wars. But that's also due to the size and growth of the US police state, it's imprisoning of activists, and it's better ability to minimize the efficacy of protests.

But ya I agree with the US rightward turn since the 1980s, it's union and anti-war movements have been on life support. The historian J Sakai thinks that US unionism fully died by then (especially if you look at stats like strikes per year, which dropped to single digits).

[–] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 5 points 6 days ago

Yeah the decline of union membership is what I feel really limits working class political power in the US. We've basically ceded all our power (I understand the reasons are not so simple), and our concept of solidarity. I don't know how we can really build any persistent (and effective) movement without organized labor.