#political protests

[tree-whisper]

I’m not alone in noticing the similarities.

you can taste the fucking irony

[moonlayl]

[captainjonnitkessler]

Sometimes I wish we would start calling out the performative radicalism on this site for the poser bullshit it is. "Remember, it's always morally correct to kill a cop!" "Don't forget to firebomb your local government office!" "Wow, it sure would be a shame if these instructions on how to make a molotov cocktail got spread around!"

Okay. But you're not killing cops or firebombing government offices. You are posting on a dying microblogging website to a carefully-curated echo chamber that has radicalized itself into thinking that taking the absolute most extreme position on any subject is praxis but that anyone discussing the most practical way to effect actual change is your sworn enemy. You do not have the street cred OR the activist cred to be talking about killing cops, babe.

[thehansindiaseo]

Congress to launch nationwide stir

The Opposition Congress on Tuesday announced that they will launch a nationwide agitation on August 22 over US short-seller Hindenburg's latest report claiming a nexus between the SEBI chairperson and the Adani Group. The Congress is demanding the removal of SEBI chairperson Madhabi Buch following the accusations made by Hindenburg.

[afrotumble]

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"POUR LE PREMIER MAI - On aurait dit que la guerre était déclarée, le premier mai dernier, à Paris, alors que les troupes patrouillèrent les rues avec des chars d'assaut, des mitrailleuses. etc. Malgré in crainte générale, la journée fut plutôt calme, - from La Patrie (Montreal). May 16, 1934. Page 20.

[wonderlandmoonrose7]

I’m just here to remind everyone once again that we can’t stop protesting and boycotting and spreading the word for Palestine, even if it’s been a while. The people in power (mainly the Israeli and US governments) are relying on us losing steam.

And I do want to mention that a small bit of hope to be found among all of this is that things aren’t losing steam. I still see dozens of posts about Palestine every day, I see footage of protests almost every day, and the boycotts are working. I just want to encourage everyone that we just need to keep it up! I’ve seen so many social issues fade out over time, a week of outrage and then things settle down, but that isn’t the case here and I really respect everyone who’s still posting and protesting and seeking out information to end this once and for all. Focus on that hope, and use it to keep going :)

[thowawayuntilfurthernotice]

How much you wanna bet that the driver was either a cop or was friends with a cop?

[hussyknee]

Trying to explain what the fuck just happened in Lankan politics today.

The leftist party has won 159 seats out of 218 in the Parliamentary elections. The single biggest landslide win since we broke from the British and achieved universal franchise in 1948.

Any party achieving a super majority in the executive and legislative is, objectively speaking, bad. It disables checks and balances, which is a catastrophic thing for any democracy, and the only two other times it's happened for us has irrevocably eroded the fabric of civic rights and democratic freedom. Also, the reason the NPP won the North and East is that the colonized, genocided and subjugated people there have no faith in electoralism anymore. The way this government has engaged minority issues has been utterly abysmal and now they've been rewarded for it.

On the other hand:

The winners. Are all. Grassroots. Candidates.¹

We have voted out every single career criminal that's been barnacled into the Lankan political arena since before I've been alive. The fascist party has only three seats.² The other fascists didn't win a single seat. The neoliberal legacy party won none. There are only forty people in Parliament that represent any sort of dynastic political legacy. After 76 solid years of nothing but political dynasties.

This is barely five years after the Rajapaksas swept in and absolutely glutted the Parliament with their family members and cronies end to end.

This is the illegitimate interim government we had for most of the last 18 months. We literally, physically, chased the Rajapaksas out of the country and this fucking demon set up a puppet government just so he could finally sit in that goddamn chair and be the despot he'd always dreamed of in exchange for letting them all come back. He's now gone. His entire circle is gone.

THEY ARE ALL FUCKING GONE.

In US terms, just imagine that, five years from now, when Trump's GOP has control of everything, the entire GOP and the worst of the Dems are all purged from Congress and Senate, the Green Party in control of all three branches of government under a pro-union left-wing President and an unmarried female LGBT rights activist Vice President, and the Dems reduced to barely 20% of the House.

This is my anthropology professor. She joined politics from the small nascent leftist coalition to help keep the government accountable. She's now the Prime Minister and the most popular Parliamentary candidate in the nation's history. (Edit: She was knocked off first place by a dude in the final result. Boo.)

(On the other hand— the woman who helped make me a radical anarchist and literally helped write a book on political dissent and resistance...now is the state. Uh.)

But there are so many women in Parliament! We had the lowest female representation in a South Asian Parliament and some of them were from the list of seats reserved for parties rather than elected ones. Most were either anti-feminist conservative embarrassments, widows and daughters of elite politicians and neoliberal shills. It's still only an increase of a few percentage points (Edit: from the previous 5% to 10% in the final result!) but now we have elected academics, feminist advocates, activists! There Is a representative for Malaiyaha Tamils in the Central Province for the first time in history and it's a young woman! (Edit: now it's two female Malaiyaha MPS!!) This is the plantation community that still live in conditions closest to the slavery the British forced upon them two hundred years ago!

I'm like. Completely mindfucked. To be very very clear, the NPP coalition formed around the nucleus of the JVP that used to be communist but haven't been in 30 years, they're now just social democrats who are left of places like the US and UK, whose "left" is now center-right. They're only threatening to the Western mainstream media for some reason who can't stop bleating about how we have a "Marxist" government now. In reality, the actual chances for radical reform are still quite low, and the opportunity for further erosion is quite high with a super majority government regardless of affiliation.

On the other hand:

What the fuck.

Sometimes living through historical events is really damn amazing.

---

¹ Well, nearly. There are a few career politicians and a nepo baby but they aren't so bad either.

² Goddamn it, Baby Rajapaksa and Sri Lanka's answer to JD Vance have wormed their way in using the list of Constitutionally reserved party seats for non-elected members. FUCK the National List.

[reasonsforhope]

Literally begging anyone who can vote in US elections to vote, and to vote against Trump. Which means voting for Harris, not abstaining or voting third party.

My family actually did move here from an authoritarian country, where voting literally didn't matter, they literally did throw out your vote, and they literally did assassinate citizens who spoke out against them.

We would all very much like to keep living in a country where those things are not the case!

You know, the same things that Trump and his stooges have openly said they want to do. And two of the main propaganda lines for why people in the US shouldn't vote, which is a lie.

Voting matters. The parties are not the same.

And make sure to vote in down-ballot races!!!

And like. The fact that voting matters in the US is a very real reason for hope. It is something you should genuinely appreciate. We can make a difference.

And a lot of people risked their lives or even died to earn that right, and it's a right not everyone has.

[politijohn]

Stand with Palestine // Oct 2023

Chicago, IL

London, UK

Sanaa, Yemen

Mexico City, Mexico

Jakarta, Indonesia

The Hague, Netherlands

Barcelona, Spain

Geneva, Switzerland

Colombo, Sri Lanka

New York, NY

[kvtnisseverdeen]

THE WORLD STANDS WITH PALESTINE 🇵🇸

[defleftist]

Thrilled to see someone carrying on the tradition of protest folk music. Keep fighting the good fight!

[robotpussy]

"No protester should be able to evade justice by wearing a face covering

That's why we're banning them.

Offenders could receive up to a £1,000 fine and a month in prison."

mask off, full blown fascism

[manichewitz]

some photos i took from emerson college’s encampment for palestine. most of these were taken only a few hours before the boston PD attacked hundreds of protestors and brutally arrested 118 students, most of whom were poc, jewish, and/or queer.

anyone who spent any amount of time in the encampment will tell you just how much it brought us all together—there was always food, music, arts and crafts, and hundreds of messages of support written in chalk.

after the BPD was done brutalising us for peacefully protesting, they power washed down the walls of the encampment—all of these messages are gone. theyre trying to erase what happened, but they’ll never truly be able to. everyone saw, and everyone will remember.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"La "troupe de choc" communiste a commencé ses exploits," Le Petit Journal (Montreal). October 1, 1933. Page 3. ---- Les événements suivent leurs cours, exactement comme l'avait annoncé "Le Petit Journal", voilà deux semaines. Le premier parmi les cent "dévoués de la cause" a été arrêté samedi matin sur les marches de l'hôtel de ville. Il y aura ensuite des femmes qui se laisseront conduire en prison ! --- Nous annoncions en primeur, il y quinze jours, l'enrölement, par les communistes, d'une troupe de choc destinée à une série de manifestations contre l'administration des re fuges fréquentés par les célibataires de la Métropole. On se rappelle que les membres de cette troupe devaient, à tour de role, aller s'asseoir sur les marches de l'hôtel de ville et attendre là qu'on les arrête pour ensuite les traduire en cour. Le but de cette arrestation et de cette comparution devant le tribunal étant d'avoir l'opportunité de faire savoir publiquement aux autorités qu'un séjour à Bordeaux était préférable à l'existence menée dans les refuges.

DEBUT'S D'ACTIVITES Or, samedi matin, ont eu lleu les débuts de cette troupe de choc dont Montréal n'a pas fini d'entendre parler, semble-t-il. Vers huit heures et demie, vendredi soir, en effet, après une démonstration enthousiaste, voire une véritable ovation faite en son honneur au local communiste de la rue Montcalm, un nommé Félix Malo, accompagné d'un officier du parti, partait pour commencer sa faction sur les ches de l'hôtel de ville et y attendre l'arrestation. Cing heures plus tard, environ, à une heure et quinze minutes exactement, la police hendait, devant l'entrée principale de l'hôtel de ville, rue Notre-Dame, l'homme que le sort avait désigné, jeudi après-midi, pour ouvrir le feu des hostilités. L'homme arrêté a donné comme adresse de son domicile, le numéro 1914 rue Maisonneuve.

Samedi matin if comparaissalt devant Son Honneur le Recorder Morrison et plaidait non coupable a l'accusation de vagabondage portée contre lut. Son procès a été fixé à jeudi, 5 octobre.

ET APRES ? Et après, qu'adviendra-t-il ? Chose certaine, le procès qui va suivre no manquera pas de piquant. La chose relève maintenant de l'administration judiciaire, mais quelle qu'en soit l'issue, on peut anticiper de l'inédit et du pimenté. Et cela n'est encore qu'un début; on n'a pas oublié que les communistes réservent une centaine de causes semblables aux autorités. Est-ce que les deux factions en présence tiendront leur bout jusqu'à la fin? Il ne semble pas que la troupe de choc, du moins, soit disposée à laisser refroidir son ardeur.

DES FEMMES AUSSI ! Bien plus, des femires se sont offertes et ont été acceptées pour prendre part à ces manoeuvres sensationnelles. Voilà qui est encore moins banal. L'opinion publique, qu'on cherche évidemment à émouvoir par ces démonstrations, ne manquera pas de manifester sa curiosité, sinon son hostilité, devant un tel mouvement.

Il est difficile de se prononcer encore sur l'issue probable de cette guerre en miniature, mais on peut prévoir que les autorités, devant l'avalanche de causes que les communistes préparent, devront employer des moyens énergiques pour y mettre fin ou, encore, satisfaire aux réclamations des manifestants.

Ne doutons point que ce sont la justice et le bon sens qui l'enporteront.

[A typical anti-communist screed - including shock that women would join the protests! - against what amounts to a serious of nuisance protests by young members of various Communist-aligned groups.]