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.

  • Owl [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    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.