I'm already hearing about protests and actions being planned in my area, and some talk about how this summer's reaction to it could be similar to or bigger than 2020. Personally I don't know. The 2020 uprisings were global because white supremacy and police brutality are global, but I feel like the US is so particularly backwards regarding abortion that you'd have a hard time getting protests going in other countries where the right to choose is more well-protected.
The BLM protests outside of the US were mostly irrelevant Lib posturing and signaling. No changes resulted from them.
Within the US they were brutally suppressed with mass violence and only the places with the most insurrectionary and violent riots made any improvements
solidarity movements in other places aren't entirely useless. they establish a continuity between the events in different places, drawing a common thread between the mass struggle here and there. key though is that the outcome of such actions should result in direct ties and open lines of communication between orgs or nothing is built on the display of solidarity.
Too bad in this case there were no organizations of note, very little building of relations & America has a distinctly unique relationship with race and blackness than almost anywhere else (certainly than Asia, Africa, Europe)
that's not entirely true - some lines of communication did develop between local orgs and elsewhere. but I can't keep following this line of thought without helping to doxx myself so I'm gonna shut up here.
We will see. I hope there is organizational memory of 2020 that didn’t make it a complete waste, but I am skeptical. If anything, if the protests were to happen again I think the US government would be even more adept at crushing it this time
I disagree, comrade. some of the best local organizers I know were radicalized by what they saw during the rebellion and there are entire orgs here that didn't exist before the rebellion. like, it's not all rosy - wreckers definitely strained relationships in the months since - but I've also seen capacity from this city I know for a fact it could not have produced prior to months of sustained action. there's no substitute for direct experience.
I hope there is organizational memory of 2020 that didn’t make it a complete waste
There always is. I wish I could communicate to you kids how much more militant the left got after Occupy Wall Street.
I make doomer post after doomer post. But this time I'll make an exception and I'll say I hope the protests are huge and productive.
Going to have to wrest them out of the hands of NGO Liberals who will be dead set on making the protests unproductive and neutered
Um... Now I'm sorely tempted to go doomer yet again. Instead I'll say - I hope not.
It's election season meaning vooters will be out in force. Protests and unrest need better timing, which isn't feasibly controllable, or more radical presence and core.
The timing of this leak is quite convenient for the Democrats. Apparently it’s dated 2/10/22 so they waited nearly 3 months until it was closer to election season
Best way to do that is by bringing your own banners and bullhorns and hijacking marches. Hijacked marches can take you anywhere, maybe to the port or the traintrack?
I think libs will try to coopt the movement into :vote: harder! like they did with BLM. Democrats do better than everyone expected but they still slowly erode everyone's rights while funding a police state.
I think it is going to be a hot summer, folks. Roe v. Wade has been around for 49 years now. Meanwhile, the median age of the US population is 38. What we're talking about here is taking away a right that has existed longer than the majority of US inhabitants have been alive. Liberals wrap themselves in the banner of abortion rights, but it is women who have to deal with this bullshit. Liberals, I have no faith in. If it were up to them, I'd say we're doomed, but it is not up to the them. It is up to the women, and anybody who doesn't think women know how to throw down is making a big mistake.
The opening salvo is going to look like a carpet bombing. At least 13 states have anti-abortion laws on their books that will spring into action immediately. In these states, there will be no drawn out battles in the state legislature to fixate people on the evening news. Instructions will be delivered to law enforcement the instant the gavel is swung, and the "justice system" will begin applying these laws to whoever the pigs drag out of their homes and offices. At the federal level, the Democrats seem more poised to use this crisis as a vehicle for re-election than they do to actually tear up any parliamentary roadblocks standing in the way. "Sorry sweaty, the filibuster is in the way."
We are in a situation much like the months preceding the George Floyd uprising. An unmitigated crisis met head on by a sclerotic political class which thinks only in terms of which way novel forms of reactionary opression will drive polling numbers and fund raising. The most reactionary states will begin taking the initiative to implement these policies, this violence will be resisted, the quivering media will plead for everyone to calm down and hash things out in a civil manner, and they will constantly be miles behind the political line coming from the streets. On the streets, "Abort the Court" will be popular. On the news, we'll hear about the Democrats plan to codify abortion rights into federal law sometime in 2025, with the implied threat of the Republicans simply gutting it the next time they take Congress.
One thing to consider is that there are a shitton of NGOs in the abortion and reproductive rights space. Many of them are closely linked to the Democratic Party since they are the only electoral option on the table. These NGOs will be organizing a lot of the demonstrations and rallies. They should be treated with skepticism, but we must also consider that there is a strata inside these orgs of genuine people trying to do good in a system which is bankrupt of ways to improve it. Also that the rallies will be happening regardless and we need to do everything we can to prevent them from becoming campaign rallies.
If any of you get your hands on a megaphone, the line is "We don't have time to wait around for congress to get off its ass and do something. Time is a privilege which has run out."
I'm not calling an imminent victory, but all these things are going to happen at some level.
OP your prediction couldn't be more different from mine.
I think it'll be a nothing burger.
There's not a moment like with George Floyd. This is leaking, oozing, trickling crackdown
Right first they've been warning us this was coming for years, Texas laws, the supreme court leak, then the supreme court ruling, then each state is going have their legislation.
Mentally we've ALWAYS been living in the new reality.
Abortion always has activated republican voters more than democrats. I think democrat leadership is going to be closet-relieved that the issue is finally settled.
The people who are going to hurt most are poor women in red states who dem leadership can't give a fuck about.
Big demos that are just quiet, peaceful dances. Some direct action, but there is precious little direct action that actually stands to accomplish something on the matter. There's not really a way to deliver economic consequences against the boosters of the theocratic movement. We might see a few attempts to occupy state legislatures or something like that, but the libs are still creating trauma narratives for themselves about 1/6, so they'll shy away in horror to anything like that. Not that occupying a state legislature (or even the court) would attain anything.
The best case scenario coming out of this is that we continue to use it as a way of agitating people against the structure of American government by acknowledging that under this constitution, even their flimsy idea of democracy is impossible. Maybe some unions organize specific walkouts and boycotts to pressure the government on the issue.
And labor party that could organize national strikes and boycotts could shutdown the economy enough to scare politicians. However, that does not exist.
is the subjugation of women and abortion in particular not a global issue? but also... do the protests ...need to spread globally? we can have a rebellion here that doesn't have anything to do - on the surface - with political movements elsewhere. (it's our job as communists to link this struggle with that of workers globally, even when people don't immediately see the connection!)
I think the bigger question is when the building tension breaks. a lot of basic goods are becoming unaffordable for a lot of people and there's almost certainly going to be a recession in response to the fed raising interest rates. this forms the basis from which the public reaction to events like this SC ruling arise. so given the economic unease coupled with reactionary advances at the top levels of state policy, we have an explosive mixture brewing - especially with the memory of the Floyd rebellion so fresh in everyone's minds. this summer, the SC will rule on queer and trans issues - will we find a spark to catch this tinder in a trans protestor being brutalized by police? or perhaps not. the tension can just ride without an outlet for quite some time.
Could tap into the femicide protests in latin and south america I've heard of those
is the subjugation of women and abortion in particular not a global issue?
it is an issue in a whole lot of places, just like police violence. it's just that the US is, at least as far as "always the same map" countries are concerned, outstandingly horrible at both of these issues, so one can expect protests there to be stronger because pressure on people is greater than in a place where cops are still bastards, but only kill 1% as many people per year
I think global unrest this summer is going to be predicated on extreme weather events (heatwaves / wet bulb event?) and whether the food and energy shortage gets worse, regardless of whatever is going on in the states or with Roe v Wade (although that may be a factor that helps spark something in that country).
I think the obvious reasons in the global north were that last year and last summer in particular seemed like a turning point for the better - the economy (or at least the stock market and job growth) was doing better than ever, and people thought we were winning and really past the pandemic with vaccines (as opposed to now when they declare it, but everybody can feel things are shit regardless of how they feel about COVID)
I couldn't speak to the experience in the global south
Nothing substantial will happen. The media in this country has convinced people to accept 1 million covid deaths. Literally a million people were sacrificed to capital. Smoothing over the loss of abortion rights will be a piece of cake for them by comparison.
I'm with you, a global uprising is farfetched but it's also our only hope. The western left will never achieve anything imo. 99% chance humanity dives headfirst into climate genocide, 1% chance the PLA/allied global south forces land on American soil and we get the good ending.
On the other hand, even though COVID is manmade, it doesn't feel manmade. It's this virus, or at most it's all those annoying anti mask people.
This is directly coming from the state. People get angrier about that than a seemingly natural phenomenon.
Balkinization of the United States as an increasingly polarized and desperate population confront the imposed Christian law by fascist local governments. Lol, jk, probably more people will go to brunch or something, idk.
Abortion is already effectively illegal in around a dozen states and they're the ones most likely to ban it entirely. That should have already prompted riots, but so far hasn't (that I'm aware of).
Flipping Roe would mean it becomes illegal or highly restricted in another dozen or so states I'd guess. I really don't know what might happen. I can't see a large demographic migration because housing costs are too high.
I could easily see some odd thing we don't expect to catalyze another series of riots all over the country, but I have no idea when or how
The rest of the world will be rioting over energy and food shortages, possibly even the US. This summer has the potential to be very cool zone.
We all have to go to Alabama and Mississippi en masse and wreck havok. This shit about doing protests in Portland or NYC is fucking useless. People have to go to the places where poor women will be hit the hardest.
Solid point. At the end of the day, oppression can only be confronted where it is taking place. There is a lot that can be done in a supporting role, but getting Eric Adams to stamp some permits for a march from Union Square to Battery Park isn't going to cut it.
It's going to be a weird one.
The libs have a deep commitment to performative actions that'll accomplish nothing, and our nascent left is still struggling to unlearn that habit for themselves. The right has a far better understanding of how to take and wield state power, and when the state acts as the dogs of right theocratic sentiment, the libs are terrified to do anything to stop it.
On the other hand, the right has a psychotic fixation with extrajudicial violence and militia action (which is not worthless; it's why the state follows their demands more than the libs). But they're winning and still want to go out there and fight anyway. And if they actually do so, they're going to lose badly, because the people who show up to mass protest movements have way larger numbers and are, ironically, much better at fighting.
So we have this bizarre triangle where the libs will refuse to resist right-wing state violence, but win battles against right-wing extrajudicial violence, but the right will insist on extrajudicial violence as a solution anyway, which they'll constantly lose. And I think all of this is just going to increase the level of informal balkanization the US is undergoing, but the individual events along the way are going to be so damn weird to see unfold.
another wave of pink pussy hats. Hope libs didn't throwaway their original ones and have to knit more, wasteful.
