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How soon until you think the riots and protests from Europe reach the USA? (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 days ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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[–] 92 points 5 days ago (24 children)

US doesn't have a social safety net for people to fall back on. So people here can't afford to lose their jobs by being out protesting for weeks.

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  • [–] 53 points 5 days ago (4 children)

    I wish I could upvote this more than once. Without social safety nets, the average American cannot do anything to jeopardize their job without losing health benefits or income - and most folks are living paycheck to paycheck.

    If mass firings happen, and people realize they will literally be fucked unless they can force the government to listen, then maybe we'll see wider scale protests.

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  • [–] 26 points 5 days ago

    I used to think that Americans are just too lazy and ignorant to protest, that it's just excuses, but... when COVID hit and tons of people got either fired or just couldn't go to work, suddenly there were protests everywhere. That made me reconsider my position in a big way.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    That is precisely what a revolution is about. It is about forcing the government's hand. If we worry too much about the idea of social safety nets while we protest, we will never get anywhere. Revolutions were never about being convenient or cozy. It's about fighting for a better tomorrow for the benefit of all who oppose tyrannical strangleholds.

    I don't understand why people feel they should comfortably protest without worry of losing their jobs and everything. When, you're going to lose them anyways one point or another and it won't be your fault either.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 days ago

    I hear you, but there's a material difference between

    • if I protest, I could lose my job, family healthcare, and roof over my head
    • I don't want to protest because it's inconvenient/discomforting.

    There's also a matter of critical mass. We've had it drilled in our head that unions are bad precisely to discourage group action. If I protest our use of AI at work, or if I want to raise a complaint against the local government, and I'm alone? That will 100% end with severe personal repercussions. If my team of 5 walk out, that's harder to fire all of us, but absolutely doable.

    If the entire division walks out, then we have some change leverage.

    Now scale this out to the ~340M Americans, and you can see the problem.

    Also, critical mass affects the area of effect - if utah loses their shit over something, how does that impact New York? Missouri? Answer, not really at all.

    So you need something that will get a critical mass of 340M people, across 3.1M sq miles (8M square kilometers). Can that happen? Sure.

    Sure it can.

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  • [–] 18 points 5 days ago

    We're also a settler colonialist state. We're set up from the foundation as a society that respects property rights over human life. People get shot for knocking on someone's door asking for help here. Our police torture and kill with impunity, and we imprison more of our population than any European country by far. It is hard to build strong working class movements but we have had some bright spots in recent history. But it's also true that rioting in a few US cities wouldn't have the same impact here as it does in France.

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  • [–] 23 points 5 days ago

    It's also a huge country that's very diverse, so one region or state isn't going to be aligned with others they don't even know to have solidarity.

    But there will start being hot spots for the same reasons in Europe. It's possible the US has better tools to control and pacify any movements (with work dependence - money and healthcare, being one of them).

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  • [–] 17 points 5 days ago (7 children)

    Ding ding ding. We can’t get healthcare if we’re unemployed, we’ve been broke for a long time, and we can’t pay the rent if we lose our jobs. Calling out to protest when our bosses can fire us for literally any reason means we’re inches from homelessness at any given time.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (5 children)

    This is more why you must protest and insist on change, than any possible excuse not to.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 days ago

    It’s a lot to ask people be homeless for “the cause” a cause with no defined leaders, demands, or support. Build a community where people know they’ll have a couch to sleep on, a meal in their stomachs and hope to be rehired once it’s said and done and you’ll get your revolution. Everyone wants to skip the build a community part and go straight to the uprising but it doesn’t work that way

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  • [–] 2 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    It's like we have to. Voting? People think voting is going to change things? Not when we've got an active tyrant looking to upset voting polls at the mid-terms or worse, the next general election. Especially when we have a political party that outright will not play things fair and square once they got power.

    Voting is like a passive aggressive way of change. We're past that point and we've been past that point.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

    US only has safety nets for the wealthy, gambled with large sums of other people's money on stupid shit and lost it all and fucked up the stock market for everyone and started a recession, there there, here's sone public tax money to pick yourself up

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  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago (2 children)

    We pulled it off with occupy wall street

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