What did you guys not learn about civil disobedience?

It's non-violence, but it breaks the laws "designed to keep things civil." It's meant to disrupt, it's means to obstruct, it's meant to annoy the shit out of the people you are protesting.

I haven't seen any civil disobedience. Which is weird because the boomers did it all the time.

A protest isn't civil disobedience. Boycotts aren't civil disobedience.

A crowd of hundreds blocking a bridge is. People blocking entrances to government buildings is. People surrounding bases is. People flooding the capitol or disrupting the discourse of policy is. The reason they use the military and ICE is because they are terrified that people will remember that even 1% of the US doing this far outnumbers them.

One misconception I had about civil disobedience from what I’d learned in school is that it’s a reliable means of drawing attention to your cause: your willingness to expose yourself to legal consequences will communicate to the public how critical you consider the issue to be.

What I learned from witnessing it first-hand is that officials and the media will invent their own narratives about your actions out of whole cloth, and the statement the public thinks you’re making may bear no relation to your intentions.

Mlk jr got cameras.

Malcolm X got results.

I was taught that the founding fathers' did not take into account a two-party political system when they designed the system of checks and balances.

School is indoctrination. I'm surprised so many of my peers don't realize it.

When I was in China (country of birth), they did national anthem like either weekly or daily. I think it was every week, they would also do a flag raising ceremony. They then did a weird ceremony where first graders did wore little red scarfs, which I as an adult looked it up and its apparantly called the Young Pioneers program where they attempt to brainwash children into their "communist" ideology. ("communist" in quotes because it wasn't even real communism). So yea I always get weirded out by these weird rituals.

Then when I immigrated to the US, they do the "pledge of allegience" and the national anthem of the US, of course, being a foreign national at the time, I didn't do the pledge, but just stood up to sort of fit in, but I remained silent. I thought these rituals, national anthem, pledge of allegience, making kids wear red scarfs, was normal, just part of every country.

Then I grew older and went online and apparantly Europeans tell me the flah of allegience wasn't considered normal.

I eventually got US citizenship derived from my mother's naturalization. I did eventually get attached to the concept of the constitution and rule of law, checks and balances (I did NOT have any attachments to the US administrations or congress btw, that's a whole differe t thing). But there was always something very uncanny about the way they teach things.

They keep saying "freedom" "freedom" all over everything they teach, and when they teach civics, teachers say that "police cannot do X if they don't have probable cause" "you have rights" "innocent until proven guilty", but we know for a fact that these things do happen, but of course, they are brushed off as "mistakes", and yet cops don't seem to get held accountable.

So again, I slowly see the same pattern all over again, different country, similar indoctrination.

And to top it all off, while the US (pre 2025) was considered "democratic", schools are anything but. Schools admin and teachers always have a lot of draconian rules and some doesn't even make sense.

Like wtf is school uniform, teaching conformity and just "obey" the rules, no questions asked? Also, you aren't allowed to wear any outerwear even if its winter and you're cold unless you purchase the school's sweaters, wtf? This is a liberal city btw. So much for freedom. Freedom to get a fucking cold.

Security cameras everywhere in school, they had fucking security patrolling inside the school, like wtf its K-12.

The fucking police the bathrooms so much. They sometimes LOCK THE FUCKING BATHROOM because "drugs". LOL FUCK YOU. I'M GONNA PISS ON THE FUCKING FLOOR. (sry for caps).

Its just, when you've seen so much shit from schools in 2 different nationalistic countries, and also have to deal with your abusive parents' bullshit, you quickly develop the pattern recognition to recognize authoritarianism.

Public school is indoctrination. (And private school would be much worse, especially religious ones). Sad that people don't recognize this.

I remember learning about people like MLK with respect and admiration for his methods, but also being taught to not use our first Amendment Rights to stir up trouble. It was definitely a conflicting message, and probably the reason everybody today recognizes that we have an extremely serious problem, but nobody wants to start the trouble that will finally deal with it.

We won't have to, though. They want trouble, and they will have their trouble, even if they have to instigate it.

There was actually a pretty good comment here once about how MLK and Gandhi only really succeeded with progress when a visible and difficult threat to the system was perceived.

Civil rights stagnated until the ramp up with the march to Washington and widespread riots from groups like the black panthers were damaging public society.

Similarly, Gandhi had trouble convincing the British to even consider independence until widespread communal violence swept the nation in the aftermath of WWII.

Both figures were touted as succeeding in history books due to their non violent movements, but in reality they simply became the center of attention for media at the time which solidified them as icons of their respective movements.

Ironically, both were assassinated which means their opposition definitely viewed them as a a powerful political threat, and not just some supporters for peace.

checks and balances is not a lie it just does not work when folks don't do their job. its like they did the patriot act because bush jr. didn't do his job. No system can work when a significant amount of the components are bad actors.