French authorities confirmed that a protest against police violence set to take place in Paris on Saturday could not go ahead due to police shortages. NGOs say the ban signals a “more and more repressive” approach from authorities.
It almost seems like a trap, they are all but saying “please stop protesting we can’t take it any more”, a protest becomes a coup/revolution if the authorities refuse to concede to the demands and are overwhelmed by the protesters
People protesting and then certain groups “joining” them and burning cars and breaking windows requires a police presence.
Stop burning shit.
And yeah it won’t stop the protest from happening just because the French authorities banned the protest. Probably a few people will get arrested though.
Yes I have and that was basically the point of my comment.
It isn’t the protestors burning shit it’s other bad actors. But whether it’s the protestors burning stuff or the other bad actors is really irrelevant. Either way stuff is getting damaged so there needs to be a police presence.
It’s such a common maneuver when you want to undermine a person or a movement’s legitimacy that we even gave it a name.
In the United States MLK talked about this in so many words. He described perfectly how many people will say that they agree with your goals but not with your methods. And if you were to ask what their methods are, it would involve waiting. The problem with that is that waiting doesn’t fix anything.
Oh, that’s an easy one. You framed the problem wrong. When you decided to talk about the problem in terms of the protests, you decided that the actual problem was not important. So that was basically irresponsible.
And the outcome of your framing decision is anti-democratic. If the only thing we look at is the protest, then it’s easy for people to say and believe that a fringe element of looters or rioters is unavoidable, and therefore either the police should have more power to deal with protesters or protests themselves ought to be canceled.
It’s certainly possible to discuss protests and avoid the above pitfalls, but it definitely requires careful consideration.
It is entirely possible to talk about who is burning shit and care about the protests and care about the protestors and care about the businesses that are being destroyed. Just because I didn’t mention every single one of those things in a comment doesn’t mean I don’t care about them.
Please do try to mention them anyway, because not doing so comes across as callousness, regardless of how you actually feel about it.
Your argument is a valid viewpoint - you want positive change for the people protesting, but you want it without any of the wanton violence or burning that goes along with rioting; correct?
However, it is also true that you were: (1) placing the onus of non-violence on the people who were wronged, and protesting here. (2) assuming there was some way for the people protesting, to seperate themselves from the bad actors who engage in these riots with the sole purpose of destroying and looting shit. (3) assuming that there are other easily available methods were the masses could change the system they’re in without any of the rioting. (4) assuming that the powers that be (legislative bodies/lawmakers/policy builders) willingly engage in these methods in good faith, for which history already has plenty of counter-examples.
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