jbm 2 days ago

> Call your elected representatives

I have never seen this work for something this politicized.

  • matthewdgreen 2 days ago

    Elected representatives are going to be intransigent until a point in the very near future, when they realize they're about to be voted out en masse and their voters don't like them as much as they like another guy -- who isn't going to be on the ballot with them. So keep reminding them.

    • immibis a day ago

      That happened - it was 2024. It's really seeming like Democrat politicians don't actually care about winning elections. They did terribly and they're still doing terribly and not acknowledging they're doing terribly, when they should have the easiest job in the world running against Trump.

nemomarx 2 days ago

they did just shoot two elected representatives so I think we're a little beyond protests working

  • haswell 2 days ago

    The scale of the protests means the protests are already working. They’re as much about spreading awareness and mobilizing the voting public as they are about current events.

    I don’t see a connection between their efficacy and what happened in Minnesota, which was an event that is arguably all the more reason to protest.

    • nemomarx 2 days ago

      Good strategy if voting is still allowed in 2028, not super useful if political violence bubbles over into a coup or such.

      The scale of the protests is encouraging, but I remember the mass protests under Bush were about as large, and the war continued and he stayed in power. Organization needs to do something with the mass of people who are out in the streets to direct them.

      • miki123211 2 days ago

        Voting is always allowed. No matter how corrupt the country, no matter if it's ruled by a dictator, even in a "Free Democratic Union of Independent People's Republics", there's always going to be an election sooner or later.

        Whether the elections are fair and the opposition is even allowed to field a candidate... now that's a different story.

      • bobthepanda 2 days ago

        The real bellwether will be what happens in House elections in 2026.

        Trump was already divisive enough that the Republican majority in the House shrank in 2024.

      • NemoNobody 2 days ago

        Why did you pick Marx?

        Rhetoric doesn't match. Marx literally said that the only for the working class to overthrow their oppressors (business owners) was to make them not a live.

        He was very radical.

        • nemomarx 2 days ago

          I find Capital to be a fairly moderate look at the situation - a lot of it is essentially an economics textbook. Marx was almost an optimist compared to the power capital has today, if you look at his predictions.

    • abeppu 2 days ago

      Working to accomplish what goal for whom?

      I think largely they have not yet been effective at protecting immigrants.

      > They’re as much about spreading awareness and mobilizing the voting public as they are about current events.

      Right, so to some degree they "work" as tools for existing political groups in attracting attention, resources and possibly votes. But does it better enable those groups to actually help immigrants? Or does it just give political organizations a powerful talking point in the midterms?

      • pjc50 2 days ago

        The latter is probably the strongest route to actually doing something, because there's no accountability within the system until both Senate and House have flipped D.

  • jkestner 2 days ago

    Sustained protests are merely a part of what's necessary.

    Sure would help if the media would cover them to the extent that they did for George Floyd/Women's March/etc.

  • NemoNobody 2 days ago

    People power - that was an excellent display of it this last weekend. BLM, Civil Rights Movement, and Vietnam are the only ones comparable. All of those built up - Vietnam was bc it was the first time people could see war like that, and we were sending lottery drafted 18 year olds - those very big deals.

    This is solely in response to what has happened since January 21st of this year.

    That's incredible actually. Concerning for sure if you planned on people being sheep.

  • edm0nd 2 days ago

    technically he shot 4 elected representatives. 2 died 2 are in hospital still iirc.

    • edoceo 2 days ago

      Nit: 2 officials, 2 spouses.

      • thaumasiotes 2 days ago

        You don't think Jill Biden was the duly elected First Lady?

  • garciasn 2 days ago

    When someone attempted to assassinate Trump would you have lumped all of those against Trump into "they"?

    I don't support what the current administration is doing; not by a long shot. But to say, "they did just shoot two elected representatives," is disingenuous at best.

    • sculper 2 days ago

      The current administration explicitly condones violence against political rivals. "They" seems fair.

      • HideousKojima 2 days ago

        >The current administration explicitly condones violence against political rivals.

        Citation needed

    • orwin 2 days ago

      I have lumped every people with roughly the same ideology as the Trump shooter in a 'they'.

      I don't remember the exact sentence but it was something like that: "That's the issue with pandering to violent conspiracy theorists, if they feel betrayed they will aim that violence at you".

      Do you disagree with this characterization?

  • potato3732842 2 days ago

    Publicly they'll wring their hands and tell us a bunch of BS about how violence outside of the state is bad and whatnot but behind the scenes they'll go back to their research people and their focus groups and try and get to the bottom of whether it was just one crazy or an outlier who's of an existing trend in opinion they ought to care about. Same as they did when that CEO got shot.

    • Avshalom 2 days ago

      They haven't even done the usual hand wringing this time.

      Publicly they've been claiming that he's some left wing extremist despite all available evidence.

  • apparent 2 days ago

    Only one person shot two elected representatives, and AFAIK, his pronouns are not "they". There is zero evidence that he is part of some larger plan, and I have seen zero evidence of anyone cheering on his heinous acts (unlike with a recent left-wing murderer, who was lauded as upstanding and handsome).

    • matthewdgreen 2 days ago

      I watched large portions of the right wing immediately denounce the killings as a left-wing assassination. I don't think any of these people truly believed that left-wing assassins conducted a targeted execution of two Democrats in a tightly-divided R/D state legislature: I think it was a very deliberate effort to confuse the news reporting and minimize the damage of their divisive rhetoric, until something else (a war) pushed it out of the spotlight.

bigyabai 2 days ago

My elected representative gets (credible) death threats if they resist executive monarchy.

  • sjsdaiuasgdia 2 days ago

    TBH, I want such reps to be loud about that. We need to stop pretending that the right is not leveraging stochastic terrorism. The problem doesn't go away by ignoring it.

    Yes, that's risky. Some people might get hurt. A lot of people are being hurt, and will continue to be hurt, by the current situation. We all have to make our own choices about when principles and long-term outcomes outweigh our instinct for self preservation.

  • Avshalom 2 days ago

    Gas station clerks get credible death threats for not selling people alcohol before noon on Sunday and manage to show a hell of a lot more spine.

    • bigyabai a day ago

      Gas station clerks typically don't face off against paramilitary organizations with the intent to kidnap them if they refuse their demands.

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deadbabe 2 days ago

[flagged]

  • RHSeeger 2 days ago

    It seems like it would be possible for state and local forces (police) to arrest and imprison ICE agents that are acting illegally. Specifically, arrest them for kidnapping when the nab people off the streets. Sure, they'll get out because they can lie and pretend they have cause; but they could be locked up for a while at least. And do it enough, and maybe they'll start thinking twice before acting stupid.

    • dttze 2 days ago

      I have bad news about the police. They are exactly the same as ICE. If they fight it would be more like gang warfare over turf and money, since that is all they really are.

    • unyttigfjelltol 2 days ago

      Your outrage is not that ICE is acting illegally but that they are enforcing US law. Having local law enforcement launch some kind of insurrection is the kind of myopic nonsense you would have condemned a few years ago, even months. Heck, for the last 50 years the Imperial Presidency also was a bipartisan consensus.

      It looks different when it's your ox getting gored, but the solution is actually temperance, restraint and dialog.

      • janalsncm 2 days ago

        Protests are usually messy and there’s not one single reason people are upset.

        Some people are upset with the deportations (US law).

        Some people are upset about rescinding visas due to political speech (violation of norms).

        Some people are upset because due process is being violated (law).

        Some people are upset because the law enforcers are hiding their identities (norm/law).

      • RHSeeger a day ago

        I hear story after story about ICE kidnapping folks, wearing masks, not showing ID (in fact, being told _not_ to wear id). And story after story of those folks being held without the ability to consult a lawyer, or see their families, etc. And story after story of people being deported without due process. And story after story of judges saying very clearly that this is illegal. And ordering it to stop. And yet it continues.

        So no, I'm not outraged that they are enforcing US law. I am outraged that they are breaking US law in the name of enforcing it. And I think they should be forced to stop it. And clearly, the judicial branch telling them it's illegal isn't getting them to stop.

  • distortionfield 2 days ago

    This is the natural end result of giving the president qualified immunity for acts in office. There is now no reason for them to follow the law.

    • lesuorac 2 days ago

      How?

      None of these individuals are the president.

      It's the effect of qualified immunity for non-presidents.

      • blooalien 2 days ago

        Mostly because they're acting as agents of the president's agenda, and as such, even if one were to prosecute them for their crimes, the president would just blanket-pardon them all and executive-order that they're immune to any legal enforcement against them, and the toadies in D.C. would roll over and allow it all to happen.

  • [removed] 2 days ago
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