this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2025
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It used to be that nonviolent protest was intended to provoke a violent suppressive reaction from the state. It might be uncomfortable to some but I think the white moderate that MLK agitated against are the same people concern trolling over the optics of various forms of nonviolent protest now.
Agitation is the point. Provoking violence from the state is the point.
This is exactly it. There is a literal fight that the protests represent, that some commenters here (no offense intended, we're all on the same side) can't see past; and there is a symbolic fight.
The symbolic fight defines how we think of ourselves - which I do think is important, that we are the true voice of the American project - but also how the rest of the country views Trump's illegal use of military troops. The Mexican flag does not help either symbolic goal. It's counterproductive.
Those people are legal nonresidents you dipshit. They are protesting against the deportation of legally present foreign nationals. That's the entire fucking point of the protest. What you're calling 'bad-optics' is just flat out racist jingoism. There's nothing wrong or illegal about flying another country's flag, except through the racist logic of mass deportation. There isn't anything wrong with protesting as a legal non-resident against your own targeted deportation.
Libs are afraid of Trump taking power under the delusion of some foreign invasion, and their genius strategy to stop him is to hide away anyone who gives latin-american vibes? Put away all the cultural and national symbolism so that we can say 'look, there's no invasion, there aren't any latin-american immigrants here'? This is like people advocating for trans rights by arguing that it's extremely rare to be trans. Ok, yea maybe that's true, but it's not a problem to be trans anyway, why does it matter at all if there are a lot of them or not? And if someone was running around scaremongering about marxists transing the youth, wouldn't it then suddenly be a problem for libs if trans people were loudly and proudly displaying their identities?
Jesus christ, we are so fucking cooked. If this many liberals are totally bought in to this 'bad protest optics' shit, they will 100% be collaborating with the fascists.
You don't combat racism by whitewashing your protests.
You're saying protestors shouldn't use Mexican symbols in their protest because it will be used as reactionary fodder for fascists. That's the definition of whitewashing.
My point is that the protestors are there specifically to protest against the forced deportation of legally present non residents under racist, jingoist pretexts. Those people aren't illegal, but they're being deported because of their foreign status (particularly mexican and hispanic foreign nations). Flying the mexican flag (especially next to american national symbols) is meant to assert their right to be here, and that the community of LA stands with them for their right.
You're suggesting that they instead waive american flags so that it looks like trump is abusing US citizens with the National Guard, when the whole point of the protest was to resist the forceful deportation of immigrants. If they were to 'make it look like they're US citizens' then that would defeat the purpose of that demonstration.
Liberals (idgaf if that's you or not) want to make this about Trump's militarized crackdown on protests because that's what materially affects them, ignoring the reason we're in the streets protesting in the first place.
lmao, that's not what reactionary means. Just fuck off already.