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fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:

I keep reading Letter From a Birmingham Jail. Dr. King lays out the purpose of a protest. I can't help but notice how divorced the #NoKings movement is from those tenants.

If a protest doesn't have a call to action or a means of pressure to bring decision makers to the negotiating table, then it's not a protest. It's a gathering.

I fear so much of mainstream "direct action" is a way to keep us busy and feeling accomplished. We don't know any better because we don't have real activist leaders.

Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.