World News

You are still arguing from the perspective that activism needs to please people or else it’s “embarrassing” or “shameful”. I do agree that there is activism that displeases people, I think that is still valuable and nothing to be ashamed of.

No, I'm very clearly saying these are "more likely to cause friction and disagreement than sympathy for a cause." For some reason you have committed to this weird hypothetical where the people currently sitting in jail have some other secondary organization they use for grassroots organization, which was a stretch when you first brought it up. I'm only speculating that you made that situation up because deep down you understand the need to disassociate yourself from these protests, and it's increasingly clear to me that you see their value in some kind of shell game strategy, where no one knows who's pulling the strings. But again, you made that up, not me.

But I can acknowledge that there are people that do not see that as something that should be supported. Different forms of activism have different target groups and different wanted effects. It’s just a rational thing to address different target groups and produce different effects under different names.

And water is wet. I'm saying that these protests are stupid and counterproductive. You're now veering off into platitudes that don't actually contribute anything to the conversation.

I want the issue front and center in the public discussion. You and I are both aware that people aren’t 100% of the time participating in the public discussion but spend time doing their own thing. Which is partially influenced by what is happening in the public discussion. If climate change is a topic, even if just tangential, that still helps influence people to think about it in the times they spend outside of the public discussion.

And what you still haven't grasped is that climate change is not a problem because people don't know about it. This isn't some kind of pink ribbon campaign where we're bringing attention to an issue that's too often ignored as nonexistent. Climate change is front and center, it's all encompassing, and it's deeply imbedded with the way that our entire global economy operates. The reason we can't deal with climate change isn't awareness, it's capacity and political will. If you bring up that I'm not eating enough fruit, and I tell you that I can't afford to buy fruit on my current salary, then pelting me in the face with oranges isn't going to get me to eat more fruit. It's just going to piss me off.

Painting Stonehenge or pouring soup on a priceless piece of art isn't doing anything to shine light on bad actors, or to challenge us to think about the problem differently, or to provide more information, or anything else like that. It's just blind rage. The people who weren't allowed to sit in whites-only cafes didn't protest by dumping piles of trash in the street, they protested by sitting in the whites-only cafe and refusing to move. They didn't protest having to sit in the back of the bus by painting the walls of the town hall. They protested by sitting in the front of the bus and refusing to move. They protested as throngs of people in the streets and marching across the country. This is two spoiled little shits spraying paint because they want to be the center of attention, and per your very words because they don't want us to be able to do anything except focus on them. This kind of protest is absolutely, unequivocally ridiculous.

Again I want to thank you for your work, we need people like you. But I don’t think that’s all we need. It has become apparent that just silently working on this at the grassroots level hasn’t shown the necessary progress. So people have decided to express their opinion in more loud and disturbing manners.

No offense, but you can take a hike. There is so much actual, tangible work that happens behind the scenes that I'm actually stunned you'd say something so flatly asinine. We are making progress, and we're doing it within existing governmental systems. We're doing it with marketing campaigns. We're doing it with land acquisition. We're doing it by working with these organizations, and these organizations, and these organizations, and these organizations.

Which really just reiterates that it's not awareness that's the problem. It's capacity. And painting a rock is like taking a shit in the middle of the street to protest climate change. Like, what the actual hell are you expecting to come from painting Stonehenge? And you're trying to tell me that hundreds of thousands of people working tirelessly day in and day out to solve this issue isn't enough, but a bunch of spoiled brats painting rocks is going to make a difference? Give me a fucking break.

Again, this protest isn’t about sympathy. I don’t think anyone is having the illusion that a majority would be happy about this kind of protest. But I think “no one gives a shit” is pretty evidently a lie. People very demonstrably give a shit about Stonehenge being orange for a little while.

I have no idea why you keep trying to twist my words. I'm saying that by doing this the only people who are going to sympathize with the cause the protestors are trying to highlight are the people who were already sympathetic with the cause the protestors are trying to highlight. And what I'm saying to you is that you're not convincing anyone who's not already convinced. In fact, you're probably pissing some of your allies off in the process, so it's quite literally counterproductive to do stupid shit like this. It hurts more than it helps.

So again, don't come back with that same platitude that protests have to be inconvenient to be effective. I'm not saying they shouldn't be. I'm simply saying that this is a stupid form of protest that does more harm than good and likely alienates some of your potential allies while converting and convincing absolutely NO ONE.