General strikes
Tax strikes
____ing politicians who support the genocide
this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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When the government is powerful enough to cause genocides, that's a problem. It's far easier to just not give your money to a business that engages in such practices.
Not giving money to your government, however, is considered tax evasion.
Talk with people! Discuss it with your friends! Be aware that they might have a very different outlook on this, so be patient with people. Here is a list of things to do when discussing this with people supporting Israel:
- Don't berate them. These are your friends, not murderers. Direct your anger towards the actual murderers.
- Ask them if they believe Israel is mounting a heavy disinformation/propaganda campaign towards the west. If they do not believe this, it is relatively easy to prove, see example below.
- Show them the Twitter accs of Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. These guys are quite outspoken in their intentions.
- Show them examples of heroic acts of Palestinas, rather than just Palestinians suffering. This will help them respect Arabs, as that seems to be difficult for many Americans due to two and a half decades of Indoctrination that all arabs all terrorists.
- Also the obvious things (tens of thousands of children killed, not letting food enter, cutting off water, etc)
Example of Israeli disinformation: They created a fake hamas website (hamas dotttt com) whereas the real website was taken down from all of internet (hamas dottt ps). The fake one was heavily promoted by Israel's official twitter acc and several Israeli government officials on twitter and recieved heavy traffic during Oct 2023-end of 2024. Use the wayback machine or similar for this, I believe both sites are down now.
There has also been many, many other lies by the Israeli government. Find proved examples and show.
leave the country. You are paying taxes, purchasing goods and services, raising families, and just being here enables the genocide machine to continue churning. We have no representation here. It's all performative. But take their money away and oh boy do they notice that.
Ok moneybags what us poors?
I can't afford to leave either. Which means I can't fight back either.
Unless you're a billionaire or willing to go full Player 2, there's nothing you can do on a macro scale.
You can, in your little slice of the world, do good things. When ICE asks you if you've seen someone, you tell them you haven't. If you're walking past a business getting raided and see a brown person, you tell them to turn around and get away. If you run a school and ICE shows up, you stand up for the kids they're trying to kidnap. If you see ICE kidnapping someone, at minimum, film and post it. If there's a group of people willing to physically intervene, join them.
That's it.
Voting doesn't solve this because all Democrats have to offer is strongly-worded letters, and Donald uses those letters to wipe Elon Musk's ass. Their choice was aiding and abetting fascism or getting richer, and they chose the money.
Furthermore:
Be aware of local political groups in your areas that share values that align with yours. Generally, have a practice of being involved. Work out how your state and local elections and party machines operate, run for empty positions or support good candidates who will do the job, and not sell out to the local moneybags.
Attend protests. Sure, it might look like a bunch of people standing outside getting rained on with soggy cardboard signs, but protest works. It shows others that even though you may be afraid, you're still standing up for what you believe is right. Support protests you agree with - order them some pizzas or something.
There's no longer a choice about what to do - become an activist, or become complicit.
Attend protests.
Meh, not sure I agree on this one, unless you're part of the Marsha P. Johnson school of brick throwing and you're going armed. Protests accomplish nothing (apart from making it easier for ICE to identify people) without a credible threat of violence.
I disagree with you. Protests accomplish a great deal, and send an undeniable message when that message is appropriately scoped and targeted.
Protests show popular support for an issue in ways that are impossible to minimize or ignore, and they are effective in moving the needle on issues. Have a few tens of thousands of people take to the streets sends an undeniable message. Even getting a hundred people to chant something in a town square sends an undeniable message. Just because the outcome isn't immediately visible doesn't mean that nothing was accomplished.
NEVER go to a protest armed, that defeats the purpose. Why make a situation worse by making everyone surrounding the protest regardless of whether they're uniform, or just someone getting to and from lunch fearful for their lives? That's very bad advice. Additionally, gearing up almost automatically makes for a bad look. Half of what a protest aims to accomplish is to show the other side of an issue "We are here, we aren't something you should be afraid of, we are people like you" - how is that aim going to be achieved by masking up like a bunch of cosplaying militarized goons? You don't want that. I don't want that. Believe it or not, I doubt half of the people co-opted into ICE want that. And part of the message has to be "We don't need this in our lives"
Just take a look at the campus protests regarding the Palestinian Genocide. First off the students were made out to be violent, which as it turns out is largely untrue, then a bunch of pro-israel actual crazies showed up and started assaulting them (and random people) on the street. Not a good look, even with media minimization. By simply being there, and refusing to give up, they have raised awareness on the issue despite the personal cost. Those people have taken a great personal risk to do something about a situation they find ethically intolerable. I think that deserves respect, at the very least.
Be loud, focused and get your point across, but be respectful. I've seen police step in to stop potentially/violent counterprotestors on many occasions, believe it or not they do actually try to be neutral even in the face of provocation - so don't offer that kind of fear to anyone sharing the local environment whilst making your point. There's so little respectful middle ground remaining that it is critical to preserve it, because this is now a wasting asset.
This situation is now tilting towards the question of how much the lack of protest and visible popular opposition emboldens a group of self-serving individuals, before the cumulative risk becomes worse than the risk of protesting and possibly getting hurt. Constant, nonviolent protest in even the face of state violence is how to win this, and sure, that puts the protestors at risk. Risk is part of this equation, it's coming for us - for many it's already here - and can no longer be ignored.
I get that it's hard work. Sometimes it feels like nothing is accomplished, and it's not shocking and awe inspiring...but Hard Work is what's required to correct this trajectory. We spend so much time and effort making entertainment about one special person or one special moment that we've given ourselves a social impediment vs. truly understanding the kinds of efforts, risks and suffering it took to get to a more equitable society in the first place.
You and I will just have to agree to disagree on this. Have a good day.
👏👏👏
Become Luigi.
Vote with your wallet. Money is the only thing that matters to the people in charge here
Voting with your wallet is a lie, like recycling plastic
You can't do collective action individually. You can make the house hurt a little bit, but you'll never force them to change through what you buy. The house always wins, unless you get together to change the rules
I disagree with this. You can already see a recent example of Canadian consumers avoiding US imports, creating pressure on US companies, and the US government reacting by making moves to curtail the original tarrifs proposal.
Obviously the Canadian boycott was only one component but I believe it did have a meaningful impact.
Kind of agree with you re:plastics. Last time I read about it they could only be recycled once into inferior quality plastic. Ironically in this case I'd suggest voting with your wallet is a solution to the plastic problem since businesses will react to more consumers switching to responsibly packaged products like paper bags for fruit + veg from a local grocers. One of the large supermarket chains in the UK, Waitrose, switched to paper bags due to public pressure in the past few years.
The Canadian boycotts are not "voting with your wallet", they're collective action.
Canadians, together, decided to boycott American goods. Their leaders cancelled deals. Their local stores and suppliers decided they'd rather source from anywhere else. The Canadian government started working on trade deals with everyone else
The nation of Canada as a whole is boycotting American goods. They're not doing this individually, they have an organized response
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