What an amazing day at the anti-Trump march! Ran into Ed Miliband, saw Jeremy Corbyn (@lilistprince got a pic I’ll get off them later) and saw the giant Trump baby! Wonderful atmosphere of people united in defiance at the racist, misogynist, orange bigot and the UK government’s appeasement of him. #fucktrump #trumpmarch #jeremycorbyn #edmiliband #resist (at Trafalgar Square)
bad news is that my train was canceled, but on the other hand I just learned that the Trump Baby Blimp will very likely allowed to be flown over London when the Orange One himself visits and the overwhelming glee I feel at these news cancels out any of my frustrations with public transport
I got no damn clue what the trump baby blimp is but I’m gonna trust you on this one
OH BOY LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE TRUMP BABY BLIMP
behold:
some excerpts from a BBC article about this wonderful thing:
“Plans to fly a giant inflatable figure depicting Donald Trump as a baby over London during the US president’s visit have been approved.
Mr Trump is due to meet Theresa May at 10 Downing Street on 13 July.
Campaigners raised almost £18,000 for the helium-filled six-metre high figure, which they said reflects Mr Trump’s character as an ‘angry baby with a fragile ego and tiny hands’.”
[…]
“Leo Murray, who is behind the crowdfunded idea, said: ’[Mr Trump] really seems to hate it when people make fun of him.
‘So when he visits the UK on Friday, we want to make sure he knows that all of Britain is looking down on him and laughing at him.
‘That’s why a group of us have chipped in and raised enough money to have a six-metre high blimp made by a professional inflatables company, to be flown in the skies over Parliament Square during Trump’s visit.‘”
[…]
“Max Wakefield, who is one of the people working on the project, said the group is ‘confident it will obtain all necessary permits’.
He said the initial crowdfunding target was just £1,000, but this was reached within 24 hours.
The extra cash will now be used to send the balloon on a ‘world tour’ and ‘haunt’ Mr Trump wherever he goes, he added.”
look at this thing. I fucking love the whole concept
They’ve changed his schedule so he’ll be spending much less time in London than originally planned. His team are trying to reduce the risk of him seeing it, as though political satire isn’t a popular and ages-old form with roots in the UK that has targeted every politician at some point or other.
He’s added an extra couple of days in Scotland though and tbh if he thinks he’s going to get a more welcoming reception there he’s got a fuckin’ storm coming.
did they not call him a cunt and fly mexican flags last time he turned up in scotland has he no learnt
They were actually in the building. They were doing a sit-in in the atrium. The charge was under this part of the DC code.
Penalty is up to a $500 fine or 90 days in jail if they are formally prosecuted. At least one Representative was arrested. Also, be more specific, it appears all of the protestors were women.
And although they were arrested, they got the cheers from the office workers, not the cops.
There isn’t a fundraiser to help pay fines yet.
Basically, keep it up for those of us who can’t risk arrest for whatever reason (health, disability, young children, sole breadwinner, etc).
is anybody else unsettled by how a lot of protests have turned into a “who can make the most clever sign” contest
right and i feel like that distracts from and decontextualizes the original intent of the protest. protest slogans become another thing to consume, another commodity to produce and to enjoy
it’s really alarming. i also come from a different school of protesting, where it’s like… 101 to not name names, show faces, etc. and the fact that people take photos of everyone’s faces and tag as many people as possible in their protest selfies is super alarming. you are doing the cops’ job for them.
I think this stems from two different, but not unrelated, issues:
1) A lot of this trend can be blamed on that damned Stewart/Colbert stunt rally. It might have been meant as a joke, but it turned out to be some kind of manifesto for moderation, a kind of stealth conservatism that feeds into the myth that agitation for political change is “divisive” and “uncivil” (and worthy of ridicule).
2) The Women’s March and the March for our Lives (where, if I’m not mistaken, most of the pictures of cute/funny signs are being posed for and taken) are more akin to parades than protests.
They remind me of the kind of events I was involved with in when I was teenager, working with Planned Parenthood to get a clinic built in our mid-sized Midwestern city. We reserved space in local July 4 and Memorial Day parades, tossed candy, and held up signs promoting women’s healthcare. We didn’t bury the pro-choice message, but it was definitely sanitized for max consumption. It was a(n effective) PR campaign, but wasn’t agitating for much in the way of radical change. (Abortion was legal; the bullshit laws limiting its practice hadn’t yet been put into effect; we were pretty much establishing a community presence until PP’s lawyers challenged all the illegal zoning bullshit that the city was throwing at us to keep PP from buying any real estate in the city.)
It was also a movement run almost entirely by middle-class and upper-middle-class white women, so while we faced some danger from the violent fringe of of the local anti-choice movement, we could count on protection from the local police.
Writing a pithy sign and smiling for the camera (and then posting the photo online) may not be something only white protesters/marchers are doing, but I imagine that even when POC are doing it, class privilege is playing a role in their decision making as well.
I dunno. As one of the youngest of the baby boomers, whose “Silent Generation” mother took her to protests the way some other mothers teach their kids to bake cookies, “Sign making” and “Speech giving” were two of the essential skills she considered vital to effective protesting.
If you’re going to be one of a large crowd, and there’s a chance that news reporters and cameras will be there, the odds of you getting picked for an interview, to speak your mind, are slim. If you make a good sign, the chances your “voice” will be “heard” are much better.
(Granted, my family is White, and we were upper class at the time, so I’m not saying it isn’t an Well-off White culture thing. But it’s nothing particularly new, for “These Days”).
A million or more could march against the President when he visits in February.
Donald Trump’s visit is going ahead – and now we have a date.
In the face of overwhelming calls for it to be cancelled, the Prime
Minister is ploughing ahead with plans to welcome the disgraced US
President – despite him promoting far-right groups in the UK and beyond.
After (presumably disgruntled) sources leaked the date of the trip,
anti-racism campaigners are now planning what they hope will be among
the biggest demonstrations in British history, set to rival the anti-war
protests of the early 2000s.
The demonstrations will converge on the US Embassy and 10 Downing Street.
Put it in your diaries: the 26th-27th February 2018.
According to reports in the Sunday Times, which broke the story, Theresa May has been somewhat, ahem, economical with the truth:
“Despite claims by Theresa May that no date has been set
for the US president’s first visit to the UK since entering the White
House, the trip has been in the diary for at least 10 days, according to
those familiar with the plans.
“The timing of the visit, which is expected to coincide with the
opening of the new US embassy in London, remains unchanged despite last
week’s diplomatic row.”
A million or more people could join the demonstration, according to organisers.
That figure doesn’t seem impossible, given that nearly two million people signed the petition calling for Trump’s proposed visit to be downgraded.
The Stop Trump group said on Facebook:
“If Donald Trump attempts to sneak into the UK to open
the US Embassy on 26/27th February 2018 and also pop into see Theresa
May at Downing Street – he will be met by a million of us attempting a
citizens arrest of him for incitement to racial hatred.”
Owen Jones launched the demonstration on Twitter:
DROP WHAT YOU’RE DOING: Donald Trump is set to
come to Britain on *26th/27th February*. Let’s make this the biggest
demonstration in British history. Sign up here NOW: https://t.co/zK8jERfOE2pic.twitter.com/rVdFP8sNso
Left Foot Forward will be covering plans for the protest over the coming months. Watch this space.
Now let’s make this the biggest protest in Britain’s history. Join the Facebook event here, and see you on the streets…
I was thinking about Jon Ronson’s book about public shaming and about recent debates about political tactics and something came together:
When making arguments about ethics, white men consistently ignore power as a lens of analysis. For many of them, actions are either right or wrong regardless of power differentials between the people involved, the stakes for those with less power, and the options they have available to them.
Protesting to have Milo disinvited from your campus therefore becomes *just as bad* as Milo’s own actions towards marginalized people, despite the vast disparities in harm done and options available. (This is not a strawman. When y’all say, “This makes you just as bad as them,” that’s literally what you’re saying.) That Milo’s talk, as planned, would’ve caused serious, measurable, and irreparable harm to specific students, and that protesters had exhausted all “proper” channels for months beforehand, doesn’t seem to matter in this analysis.
All that matters is the specific action taken. “Preventing a person from speaking.” “Destroying property.” “Public shaming.” These actions are seen as unethical regardless of who did them and why, what consequences they face if they do not take these actions, and what other options–if any–they have available.
I keep coming back to MLK’s quote about riots being the language of the unheard. For the most part, people resort to tactics that fall into ethical grey areas because other tactics are unavailable or have already failed. I’m sure that there are people who do so despite having better options, just as there are always people who act unethically in other ways.
But unfortunately, for an outside observer with no skin in the game, it’s very hard to tell whether or not that’s the case. I saw so many posts patronizingly chiding Berkeley students for not trying other tactics before protesting and/or destroying property (although most did not destroy property, and the oft-used phrase “violent protest” implies much more than that). They had no idea of the lengths to which the protesters went to utilize “appropriate” means to keep themselves and their community safe. It didn’t work. They remained unheard.
Any ethics that ignores the role of power will privilege the powerful. Our Republican members of Congress don’t need to riot, set fires, and block the streets in order to get what they want. They do appropriate, ethical things like draft policies and have debates and vote. Because they have the power to. The specific actions they take–drafting policies, debating, voting–are not seen as inherently unethical things to do. Yet they’ve destroyed lives, families, and communities. They’ve achieved a level of destruction that even the rowdiest masked protesters never could, not that they’d want to.
NFL team owners used the same tactics that slave masters used to use on plantations by making an example out of one and scaring the rest into place. They blackballed Colin Kapernick and thought that will scare the other black players into submission and to their liking. Not knowing this ain’t the past……fuck u cuz niggaz ain’t getting scared into submission anymore. We recognize the power we have and our use of it is long overdue.
Everythang above. We ain’t scared of that shit no more. We got the power and we gon use it.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
You must be logged in to post a comment.