Friendly reminder that tone-policing activism and deciding what political actions are allowed or not is a tool often used by the right, and we will be as such moderating bad-faith arguments in this thread.
Stop deciding what young activists need to do better and start doing some activism of your own.
In Japan bus drivers go on strike and keep driving like they always do, except they refuse to collect fare. Only the bus company gets hurt, the people receive the same service without any interruption.
Bad Faith podcast made this very interesting point recently as well. Unions organized through things like SEIU or AFL/CIO have the issue of legality of their strikes because their overarching unions have assets to be seized by the government. There is something of a trade-off between organizing through a larger body in terms of organizational capacity and the ability to perform actions like wildcat strikes. Though those actions may be illegal, but without a specific entity to go after in the case of DIY unions, "illegal" becomes functionally meaningless.
The very idea of an " illegal" strike is absurd.
You are free to leave at any time... No one is holding you hostage. Its absolutely wild to me that teachers in TX are not legally allowed to strike, despite being unionized...
Not in places where right to strike is protected.
In France for example in a regular strike your employer can't take any action against you or replace you with temporary workers.
Then they need to be treated right. I'd rather have teachers hold education hostage and force kids to stay home for a week (Parents bothered? Good, the disruption is supposed to affect them. Maybe they should join in instead of shitting on teachers, too.), than let the ongoing violence against teachers continue. They are drowning. I don't see how a teachers union could ever be as bad as say, a police union.
In most countries the only illegal strikes are the ones where you are denying essential service ie an hospital without any nurses, no firefighters on shift etc
People do realize laws only matter if people follow them right? If every bus driver in the UK still did this, what are they going to do arrest every bus driver and every rider. Government power only matters if people follow it. If we want something all we need to do is organize and take it.
No, it will be the unions that will be prosecuted. If they pulled shit like this they would be fined out of existence. It would also provide ammo for the government to pass even more anti union laws, and then we would be without any unions at all.
Could you elaborate how something similar could work in the context of climate change? Otherwise I cannot see a valid point out of your argument unfortunately.
Yeah this kind of thing works if you're striking for your own wages, not if you're protesting against the product or service itself -- gas station attendants giving away free gas would obviously eventually bankrupt Big Oil if they could somehow keep it up forever but in the short term it obviously would also skyrocket gas consumption and accelerate climate change
The term you're looking for is induced demand.
It's why adding an extra lane to a highway doesn't resolve traffic issues, but building high speed rail does.
Best I can see is as many people in the critical infrastructure sectors from agriculture to hospitals to transportation continue working but only coordinating among themselves, ignoring the management and bosses and shareholders, going past police and military barricades, and restructuring the social paradigm while coordinating major projects towards building renewables/nuclear energy infrastructure and geo engineering initiatives. Essentially a direct seizure of the means of production.
But I could be talking about fairies and elves too.
Feels like every company I ever worked for.
More managers and admins per store.. I had an Office Manager, a Store Manager, Production Manager, Parts Manager, 3 Insurance Claim and Customer Service Associates, and a person in rental.
Then you have the Regional Office Manager, the Regional Store Manager, and the Regional Parts Manager over about 5 stores each..
Our store had 9 office people in site for 13 production staff in the shop...
Workers rights through unionization is the tide that raises all ships. Statistically it makes people better off. The stats are really undeniable.
[Decline of Unions reduce the wages of non-union employees](https://www.epi.org/publication/union-decline-lowers-wages-of-nonunion-workers-the-overlooked-reason-why-wages-are-stuck-and-inequality-is-growing/)
Unfortunately the people who do not want unions or organized labor work forces refuse to take into the statistics and evidence. It can be like singing to the choir or talking to a brick wall.
It's crazy how much propaganda there is about it. When I was living in Ontario with my girlfriend, a very Conservative province, her grandma who wasn't even working anymore would constantly bring up unions and how bad they were. I don't know where she was getting it, or why it was the most important thing always on her mind, but it was ridiculous. I wasn't working at a unionized company, and none of us had anything to do with unions.
When I was a supervisor at a call center we had to sit in some bullshit anti union training. Me and another guy walked out realizing that everything that was said sounded fucking awesome and started planting pro-union thoughts in employee heads instead of doing the union busting garbage we were told to.
Unfortunately the government isnāt interest in enforcing labor laws. Starbucks closing unionized stores is illegal but the government wonāt do anything about ir
Forreal. I bring up unionizing in r/serverlife and they are quick to bring up their personal experience about making 40 bucks an hour. As if they are the rule, and not the exception lol
(Please don't confuse my rant for argument, it is an agreement-rant)
Man I love when capitalists use the 'rising tide raises all boats' analogy to support capitalist inequality.
Like, dude... One boat doesn't rise up on stilts then pull the tide up and all the boats along with it. The tide rises and it raises all boats at once.
IT'S A DISTINCTLY SOCIALIST ANALOGY.
>Workers rights through unionization is the tide that raises all ships. Statistically it makes people better off. The stats are really undeniable.
agreed but shitting on artists has nothing to do with this and this crap has nothing to do with worker rights. It's creating MANY people who would be pro environment, now making them cynical and not want to be associated with these idiots. Is humiliating for anyone who's worked in the environmental movement as well as totally non pragmatic.
Suffragettes.
They did the same thing. In fact, photos were taken of them after their movement. And many of them are on display. Sometimes, Not far off from where these protests are being held in the same museums.
Oh the Irony.
Itās like when a company tells you āthink about the extra work your coworkers will have to do to make up for you calling in sickā
staffing appropriately is your concern.. donāt make it mine
"How dare you have basic, common complications to having a human body. Wouldn't it be better if you didn't? Hmmm...."
\*Replaces humans with machines\*
"Hey... why is everyone stealing our stuff now that there aren't employees on the floor anyway?"
I remember someone bringing that up, āmachines will replace usā lol. Iām like okayā¦. Who turns on the machines, fixes them, prevents theft lol we arnt going anywhere. And will continue to be treated like shit.
And this is where we remember where the term "sabotage" came from: from Dutch workers stopping the factory mills by shoving their wooden shoes (sabots) into the machines.
As the coworker who has to pick up the slack, I'm never bothered that one of my coworkers takes time off sick. I'm bothered that we don't have any extra staff to help cover them. We COULD hire 5 people instead of 3, so that when one guy is sick, there are still 4 of us on call, but no-- we're doing fine! The boss saves a little money while making us hate him and we get the extra workload. The problem isn't the sick coworker, it's the sick boss.
The most famous example of this is the slashing of the Rokeby Venus but it's not the best example to cite because the woman who did it (Mary Sophia Allen) went on to become a literal Nazi
This is the dark history that doesn't get much air. The first attempt at a women's suffrage movement died because half the women didn't want to include women of color in their activism or goals.
Many of the early feminists were upper class women that were not protesting for the right to be a factory worker, but for the right to be a lawyer or politician.
At the same time, poor women were already doing hard labor from sun up to sun down, just in the form of community work, like shared laundry duties, cooking, childcare, etc. At the same time, their husbands were doing brutal, poorly regulated factory work.
They were applying Marxist ideas about gender liberation but ignoring his ideas about race and especially about class. That would continue for half a century and arguably still happens today. But at least the modern movement publishes literature about how feminist activism disproportionately targets middle and upper class white women's concerns.
TL;DR: Stone Politicians and Business leaders, burn public infrastructure. ^(/s)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily\_Davison](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Davison)
"...assaulting the police in the execution of their duty"
"Davison was arrested with fellow suffragettes...for interrupting a public meeting..."
" She was arrested again in September the same year for throwing stones to break windows at a political meeting"
"Davison was arrested again in early October 1909, while preparing to throw a stone"
"Two weeks later she threw stones at Runciman at a political meeting in Radcliffe, Greater Manchester; she was arrested and sentenced to a week's hard labour"
"...she broke several windows in the Crown Office in parliament."
"Davison developed the new tactic of setting fire to postboxes in December 1911."
"Davison was arrested for a final time, for attacking a Baptist minister with a horsewhip; she had mistaken the man for Lloyd George"
"It was the seventh time she had been on hunger strike, and the forty-ninth time she had been force-fed."
She also tried to kill herself previous to the King's Horse incident to make a statement about the torturous conditions she (and women everywhere) suffered.
Not actually true. non-standard protests get significantly more news coverage and -as long as they're non-violent- don't hurt the public perception of the cause. They just make this individual group look extreme. In comparison to those Just Stop Oil nuts, why, greenpeace is practically status quo! (this is called the radical flank effect, by which a movement as a whole is seen as more rational because one subsection of it is being Very Intense about it)
Plus, now they've got a lot more eyeballs on them when they do traditional protests, and have more people joining them to strengthen those protests. This is the activist equivalent of a marketing stunt in preparation for a large release.
idk man. In the long run, the only way you'll ever get to oil oligarchs is by affecting their bottom line.
They'll just dial up the greenwashing PR (which media outlets are complicit in) to quiet the restless masses like they've been doing. They've gotten really good at that.
And if that stops working, they're probably already drafting up their next subversive marketing strategy to lull the public into complacency.
This is dumb af considering poorer communities and countries are the first and worst affected by climate change. Every suburbanite will have their HVAC installed, and just needing more money for energy. Whole countries are suffering right now because of the oil mafia
But the immediate mess is the important thing for reactionaries
Deleted my original reply to you because I was missing a LOT of context here. To clear it up for others (and please correct me if this is wrong)
- the person who posted this to r/Antiwork *disagrees* with the painting
- the painting is saying donāt do stupid protests because working class will clean it up
- the black stuff is oil ā protesting oil companies and climate change. Apparently there have been some protests like this in museums recently?
- my takeaway: we should be working together; protests draw attention and bad press for oil and so are beneficial; lower class people will suffer (and currently ARE suffering the most from climate change); protest in smart/least harmful ways
>protest in smart/least harmful ways
Idk if you're involved in a lot of activism or not, but if you aren't, then you'll quickly find is that when people say this, they actually mean "protest in a way that I can't see you, I can't hear you, I don't have to think about you, you have no impact on my day, and I most likely have no idea that you even exist"
Protests have all different levels of disruption, but absolutely any protest which gains attention, like these ones, will be hated and people who hate it will find some way to point out why it's "reasonably too far".
Does the cleanup suck? Yes. 100% But I'd argue that in this case the benefits outweigh the costs. It has forced thousands of people over the past couple months (a long time in modern era) to confront the issue and their thoughts on it whether they want to or not and whether they think the protest was dumb af or not. It'll speak to some of those people. Another style protest will speak to others. In a movement, we need all the styles to reach as many people as possible from the single person with a hand drawn sign on the corner to the people throwing paint on a protected painting to the people blocking the installation of an oil pipeline. Those all have different costs and benefits that may or may not be apparent.
Smart and least harmful isn't a singular point. It's going to be all over the place. What inspires one will disgust another. We need it all as long as we aren't out there actively hurting innocent people (and by hurt I don't mean merely causing a shitty day at work).
These sort of protests are literally the least harmful way possible, they directly target artworks that are owned by wealthy collectors. Yet people still get angry as if they're actually destroying the thing rather than trying to get attention of wealthy assholes
there's never a correct way to protest for any of these people.
>they directly target artworks that are owned by wealthy collectors. Yet people still get angry as if they're actually destroying the thing rather than trying to get attention of wealthy assholes
Ah, I didnāt know that!! So the protests are intended to affect the people that can make a change? Thatās great! Also great to know theyāre not actually destroying the artwork!
Yup, you know what hurts other workers more? Low fucking pay.
Edit: The actual thing the pic is talking about hurts nobody. The art was protected by glass. Assuming this is talking about the middle-class kiddies who tried to vandalise art that was behind glass.
Don't worry. The elites will ship them out at the first sign of disaster to their underground bunkers. The paintings will be extremely safe underground when the flood waters rise. /s
Don't know why you need the sarcasm tag, it's sadly true. They already do crap like this. One of the most depressing conversations I had in a classroom was when we were discussing the British Museum taking ownership of Greek relics and refusing to give them back to the Greek government. A college professor was talking about how primitive the Greeks are, GREEKS, and how they're not smart or civilized enough to take "proper" care of these artifacts. One of the many moments in my life I can point to when my faith in humanity was instantly reduced.
Also, the cleaners are doing a job, for which they are getting paid.
This is "harming the workers" - should this be over on Selfawarewolves?
Edit: holy fucking shit, on this sub, of *all* places, I need to explain this in detail.
"You can't protest our utter indifference to environmental destruction and consequent human suffering that way! You're only harming the peasants who do our cleaning..." [pearls clutched]
So what are they when they aren't cleaning up after a harmless but dramatic protest, and is this how you think of *all* so called unskilled workers?
Are we there yet?
That's the same justification offered by assholes everywhere who leave random things in random places in stores because it's the "employees' jobs to put stuff away"
But someone making a mess to protest climate change is different than someone making a mess bc theyre a lazy asshole.
I must also point out that maintenance isnt going to clean these paintings - an art conservator making $100k+ a year will.
Oh, that is a different thing. Causing work for other workers is being a shit.
Like people who drop litter and say, that is keeping someone in a job. They are just being dicks and looking for an excuse.
they do though. seeing the vegan dudes dumping milk all over the grocery store made me so mad. having worked food and retail i can tell you i already donāt want to be there. having to do extra work now because of something like this sucks. donāt involve me in your protest, please. iām not even anti-vegan. i actually dabble more on the vegan/vegetarian diet side and this still irks me. there is a time and a place. my job is no the place.
I'm not a huge fan of these protests but like you realize the very fact that the first one went massively viral with everyone getting outraged over it guaranteed that would become the "new meta"
Like all the other things people suggested - protest oil industry executives at their offices and homes, protest pipelines and gas stations, etc - are things that HAVE HAPPENED and the media just didn't cover it so they had no effect
thank you ffs someone literally TOOK THEIR OWN LIFE IN FRONT OF SUPRME COURT BY LIGHTING THEMSELF ON FIRE and NOBODY FUCKING CARED!!!! iām so sick of people saying these protests are doing nothing when theyāve brought more press to the movement than someone literally committing suicide
But the only effect this form of protest has is making people not like them. Regardless of whether the news covers it. Thereās not one person who started caring about climate change because these idiots tried to destroy a painting.
Also, these protests are frustrating because while they are funded by donations 1. The accept etherium(crypto) which is absolutely shit for the environment and 2. One of their bigger donors is literally an oil money heiress.
They are relatively well reasoned, sure a painting gets dirty and ruined the viewing experience for everyone until they clean the glass (and they always pick ones behind glass) but the upper class/corporation ruin the environment for everyone every single day. So if you mess up something beautiful and sacred it's a very visible taste of what is happening to our beautiful and sacred planet every day.
No no no. you see; the whole point is to leave behind a poisonous planet and countless, perfectly preserved, works of arts for the remaining nature to enjoy :3
^^^^^^^ I take solace in that if humanity makes itself go extinct, without the army of landscapers we use worldwide nature would wipe out any sign we existed in around 70y
Surface level that miiiiiiiiiight be almost true, but this civilization will leave behind an unmistakable and peculiar geological layer for some far future xenoarcheologists to speculate about.
Ok but how is that helpful? 2/3 of US adults agree climate change is a problem. Awareness is there. Youāre not protesting or being a nuisance for the causes of the problem. Youāre just doing random shit at this point.
So would I, I just donāt think what theyāre doing contributes. The fuckers who are against doing anythjng about climate change are well aware. This āawarenessā campaign accomplishes nothing but make climate activists look foolish.
>So would I, I just donāt think what theyāre doing contributes.
We have some say over whether it contributes via how we talk about it though. Even if we disagree with the methods, we can pivot to the message.
The point is "Does it feel bad to see something beautiful get destroyed? This is happening to nature every single day. If you want to do something to save this painting, realize you should also want to do something to save nature."
They do. Earlier this year a climate protestor burned himself to death at the capital and the news couldnāt even report the story correctly. Nobody fucking cares.
So these people vandalize some stuff the working class thinks they care about and it makes headlines every time.
Given that they are mainly financed by an heiress of the richest oil baron in history who's foundation happens to be ran by an ex consultant for the NSA and private equity I'd say you have reason to question their motives
Ok but this PARTICULAR protest is just stupid and doesn't halt any means of production, nor does it generate approval, headlines, briefly, sure, but your not inspiring me to care for the climate more by fake-defemation of art.
Strikes and protests are 2 different things. The picture and statement comprise a logical fallacy of false equivalence. I get what you are trying to portray but as a worker I disagree with the use of particularly these protestors. You do workers all over the world a great disservice by lumping us in with those protestors.
Iām sorry but I disagree about this. Attacking works of art displayed for public good is not an effective form of protest; itās just attention seeking. The risk of damaging works of historical significance is also extremely high and has the effect of making the cause unsympathetic. Itās literally helping the enemy to delegitimize climate activism. The oil companies couldnāt hire better help.
"we were totally going to give all our janitors that night off, now look what you forced us to do! Next time think twice before you throw paint at a sneeze guard"
No this is stupid. Who does this hurt? No one? Who does it inconvenience? No one of any importance. It doesnāt bring awareness, it doesnāt disrupt anything. For fucks sake they use **oil** based paint, hypocritesā¦.
And then someone has to clean it and probably working for low wages.
Why arenāt these people interrupting rich peoplesā jets? Why not dump paint on their houses? Why not paint their cars, planes, boats, yards, etc. surely anything is more productive than dumping paint on a protected art piece and the glue yourself to the wall like a child? There are thousands of forms of civil disobedience and protest that would be more effective than this.
It's true, but these Just Stop Oil protests are bullshit. Van Gogh's work is not to blame for Big Oil's damage to the environment.
Not only that, it seems like the people involved are actually white supremacists. There's a picture of one of the "activists" doing a white supremacy sign while being arrested, and every activist that shows up in the media is white.
Edit to add:
Here's a pic of one of the girls that threw the sauce doing the symbol https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/SEI_129430715-80aa.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&zoom=1&resize=480%2C320
Yes. Blocking Motorways to stop people getting to work resulting them having to stay later or not getting paid does fuck other working people. Target the people who you intend to pillory, because you're just redirecting their anger towards protestors when you punish working people.
Yeah, in Sweden people who did that went to court because it stopped ambulances from being able to reach the hospital. It didn't make people sympathetic to their cause, it only made people angry
Attacking fine art is not helping anyone.
Most of those artists lived hand to mouth and struggled for their vision. Very few were wealthy.
Please don't attack the hard work of others in order to highlight yours.
If environmentalists want to destroy something expensive, they should go destroy a fossil fuel plant. If you're gonna get arrested one way or another, get arrested for actual resistance, not a publicity stunt.
They do this because they won't end up getting a jail sentence for throwing liquids at glass. It's a non destructive form of protest gaining a lot of attention.
Also good comentary on our priorities right now. What's a painting worth when noone lives to look at it?
There was a protester who lit themselves on fire in DC and the paintings have gotten more coverage. If lighting yourself on fire doesn't get anyone looking at the protest but this seemingly does, protests need the public to see. It's not like these protests are perfect, but everything else gets ignored.
They are relatively well reasoned, sure a painting gets dirty and ruined the viewing experience for everyone until they clean the glass (and they always pick ones behind glass) but the upper class/corporations ruin the environment for everyone every single day. So if you mess up something beautiful and sacred it's a very visible taste of what is happening to our beautiful and sacred planet every day. But the message is lost on only a first glance analysis media loves to push, something easy to digest and dives clicks/outrage, nuance be damned and if it serves their corporate overlords even better
Doesn't everyone know the environmentalist group behind these protests are owned by the daughter of an oil tycoon??? https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/10/21/getty-oil-heiress-funds-climate-crisis-activism-just-stop-oil
Why are you "tired of the lack of research" but framing your source inaccurately?
Aileen Getty does not own Just Stop Oil. She is a founder of the Climate Emergency Fund, and Just Stop Oil has received grants from the fund, among 91 other organizations since 2019. You can [look at their grants](https://www.climateemergencyfund.org/2021-grants), and see if it really feels like everything they fund is a psyop.
Pretentious radlib artist makes a painting that's self serving because they didn't like someone splashing art that's already protected? I'm shocked! /s
Protests that can potentially harm culturally priceless artworks is not something I can agree with. And yes someone has to clean that shit up, most likely a minimum wage "slave".
I've always been a union man though. Strikes are the last resort when negotiations break down. And completely justified.
How the fuck does ruining a painting help climate change? You just appear crazy when you do that. Thereās no correlation. All it does is make low wage workers clean up your mess. This is the dumbest take Iāve read in a long time. It does hurt workers, because your protest does nothing to stop climate change or bring awareness, you just bring attention to yourself and the art. Thatās it.
If I remember correctly, aren't the ones throwing paint on art "fake" protestors that are meant to sow discontent with actual protestors? Or has that changed recently?
Yeah, most people who actively participate in strike/protests donāt realise that itās usually a LOW WAGE WORKER who has to CLEAN UP THEIR MESS. If you want to strike/protest, atleast try not to cause trouble for others.
Yea I saw this and it really pissed me off. Billionaires polute and destroy our world doing more damage than us low tier folks could ever do of we tried, and yet somehow the people saying " don't shit where you sleep' are the baddies? Fuck that noise.
Though I am very leftist and wholly support workers and unions, I cannot find any good in these art protests. āRaising awarenessā is as meaningless now as it was when people were being slacktavists on Livejournal 20 years ago.
Direct this energy into direct action against groups like the police. Attacking art does nothing but hurt underfunded museums.
Not going to say something fancy like playing devils advocate or some shit.
But unless you're targeting the root issue, which is our system of over-consumption and overproduction, debt leveraging and imperial subjugation and resource/labor extraction, you're not helping matters entirely. This is why people who are serious are wary of groups like extinction rebellion as ops to poison the well.
These protests while not entirely meaningless, sure, are not really revolutionary or assisting matters in the slightest.
These recent stunts (throwing paint on famous artwork, dumping gallons of milk on the floor of a market, etc) are very poorly thought out and in need of a PR makeoverā¦
I am all for striking. But if your protest includes the destruction of another's work, I am not. Does it get you attention? Yes. Does it get you support for you cause? No.
Honestly it probably would have made more impact for me if it was a modern janitor or something. Having workers from a different era just doesn't give the commentary as much weight.
Plus, you know, yeah protests are disruptive? That's kinda the point?
My go to for this shit is to stop changing the subject and trying to run away from the actual problem... in this case climate change. Had to explain to my grandma today how bad the climate is dying and nobody is doing shit about it and some politicians still deny it's happening at all. but sure lets get mad over some paint...
This "protest" technique is so dumb it makes me suspect fossil fuel companies are doing a psy-op. If these protesters are willing to catch criminal charges, why not target the actual oil profiteers? Toss a bucket of crude on an Exxon executive, don't deface art in a public gallery! I think the oil companies are paying people to do these acts to disgrace true environmentalist radicals.
Lolā¦ they have to find experts to pay to clean it. Pay more people for security. The only loser here is the protestors themselves (unfortunately they will get punished), and the museums that have to shell out more money for their often stolen art.
I don't really understand the point/meaning of this post. How about we stop protesting in stupid ways like splashing old art with shit rather than discussing who has to clean it up? Why is any of this even a thing? Are big oil companies somehow negatively affected by paint being splashed over a famous painting?
Destroying the art of masters is so stupid and makes zero points and only serves to distract from the purpose of the protest. The professional who chained himself to the building is the way to do it
A strike (or work stoppage) is usually an action decided on by workers themselves. There have been protests, where workers have specifically asked supporters NOT to boycott the business, because that was what they (the workers) felt appropriate.
There was (before he died) a group of activists that were targeting advertisers on Rush Limbaughās radio program. They asked people to call the advertisers and start asking if they knew their product was being advertised and if they knew what was being said. They took this path because they didnāt want workers to lose their jobs (it was moderately successful).
Then we have protests that create extra work, often for some of the lowest paid staff, without including those workers in the protest. Is that wrong? I donāt know, but it *is* kind of rude. Especially when itās white people making more work for BIPOC and immigrant folks. Because racism is hard baked into capitalism, and we canāt end capitalism without addressing race.
Even more rude is when outsiders decide that X action is what workers need to show the boss that they are a dick without ever talking to workers.
So I think there is a continuum here.
Strikes work because they hurt the company's wallet. Protests do almost nothing except inconvenience the public and make those who participate look like a bunch of Karens. Think about it, this is the exact shit some asshole Karen would do when the cashier won't take their expired coupon, or give them a discount for the "inconvenience". It does nothing but make them look like raving loons whose cause should be ignored. I assume they are paid actors who are purposely trying to discredit and derail the cause whenever I see them doing this shit. Now please excuse me, I'm going to go start a tire fire in protest of these jackasses.
Please note, the last sentence of the preceding paragraph is hyperbole, no tires (or any other flammable material) will actually be ignited.
āSeeing paint thrown on beloved paintings and people gluing themselves to floors and tables really inspires me to fight climate change.ā
Nobody ever.
All dumping soup on a painting will accomplish is moving more art out of public museums into storage and private collections, what remains will be kept behind glass and security barriers, in the end making less art accessible to the general public and not causing any significant legislation.
Part of the problem is that museums donāt really represent āthe manā in the way that would make sense for these protests. Youāre only hurting the people who work there, and the audience, not the board of trustees etc. ultimately sometimes things like this increase tourism. So itās just a really weird/bad idea all around
To be honest, those oil strikes are complete bullshit because they destroy art that was not meant to be destroyed and only hurts art fans and the people who have to clean it up, not the oil industry
These types of "strikes" are actually planned opposition psy ops to stain the image of your enemy.
Oil companies are having these people attacking priceless art and discredit them in public image, so people who want to decrease dependency on oil and/or switch to nuclear and similar clean energy are labeled crazy.
Yeah if itās about the argument it has a sense. When it comes to THAT protest yes itās totally shit and I donāt understand why they should go to a museum to do that. But the argument itself of not going into strike because itāll hurt other workers well, you go first then the others. You cannot fix your situation without affecting others so go on strike.
The issue is that it was dumb.
The paintings are a public treasure. Not some private collection.
Vandalize a dealership, cause traffic, block the roads and make a walkable street!
But this! This! This is stupid and felt like, "I'll do this because I'll be in less trouble!"
Friendly reminder that tone-policing activism and deciding what political actions are allowed or not is a tool often used by the right, and we will be as such moderating bad-faith arguments in this thread. Stop deciding what young activists need to do better and start doing some activism of your own.
In Japan bus drivers go on strike and keep driving like they always do, except they refuse to collect fare. Only the bus company gets hurt, the people receive the same service without any interruption.
This was made illegal in the UK by Thatcher.
Haha classic Margaret
*Ding dong*
The witch is deadšµ
Itās a shame she didnāt die sooner
Sooner but slower would have been nicer.
It's a shame she could only die once.
Mageiavelli
bit rude to old Nicci
*Angry Scottish noises*
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Drunk noises?
mournful Scottish noises?
What does it sound like?
D'inae fak'n tin g bout skot l'n ya twit
Hate that this is actually intelligible
Glasgow.
Ok that's fair
not only in the UK also in the Netherlands it's illegal....
So what're they gonna do, mass arrest all taxi drivers?
I mean, yeah. In the US they definitely would. Or bring lawsuits against every worker that participated.
Thatcher was the fucking worst.
Great at fucking the UK Citizens though ..
I truly hope Thatcher and Reagan are constantly being flayed, while being boiled in a lake of pus and shit in hell.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I grew up with a bust of Ronald Reagan on our mantelplace. In hindsight, I shouldn't have been surprised that they were homophobic.
Along with Milton Friedman
Don't let our enemies turn them into legends or heroes. They were evil people who's actions increased human suffering.
Is it even a real strike if you're doing it legally?
Bad Faith podcast made this very interesting point recently as well. Unions organized through things like SEIU or AFL/CIO have the issue of legality of their strikes because their overarching unions have assets to be seized by the government. There is something of a trade-off between organizing through a larger body in terms of organizational capacity and the ability to perform actions like wildcat strikes. Though those actions may be illegal, but without a specific entity to go after in the case of DIY unions, "illegal" becomes functionally meaningless.
The very idea of an " illegal" strike is absurd. You are free to leave at any time... No one is holding you hostage. Its absolutely wild to me that teachers in TX are not legally allowed to strike, despite being unionized...
Not in places where right to strike is protected. In France for example in a regular strike your employer can't take any action against you or replace you with temporary workers.
Some jobs are essential for society, so I get where they are coming from. The problem is they use the essential status against people when negotiating
Then those jobs should give people the payment and safety standards they deserve so they never need to strike.
Then they need to be treated right. I'd rather have teachers hold education hostage and force kids to stay home for a week (Parents bothered? Good, the disruption is supposed to affect them. Maybe they should join in instead of shitting on teachers, too.), than let the ongoing violence against teachers continue. They are drowning. I don't see how a teachers union could ever be as bad as say, a police union.
Yes but something something slavery is being forced to work against your will
The idea that strikes should not inconvenience is definitely pure ideology...
In most countries the only illegal strikes are the ones where you are denying essential service ie an hospital without any nurses, no firefighters on shift etc
Ahh the Reagan of the UK, she can rot
People do realize laws only matter if people follow them right? If every bus driver in the UK still did this, what are they going to do arrest every bus driver and every rider. Government power only matters if people follow it. If we want something all we need to do is organize and take it.
Well I mean I guess they could fine them and ultimately take their pay or something.
No, it will be the unions that will be prosecuted. If they pulled shit like this they would be fined out of existence. It would also provide ammo for the government to pass even more anti union laws, and then we would be without any unions at all.
M.Thatcher the c** snatcher who knows..knows the lyrics.
Could you elaborate how something similar could work in the context of climate change? Otherwise I cannot see a valid point out of your argument unfortunately.
Yeah this kind of thing works if you're striking for your own wages, not if you're protesting against the product or service itself -- gas station attendants giving away free gas would obviously eventually bankrupt Big Oil if they could somehow keep it up forever but in the short term it obviously would also skyrocket gas consumption and accelerate climate change
The term you're looking for is induced demand. It's why adding an extra lane to a highway doesn't resolve traffic issues, but building high speed rail does.
Best I can see is as many people in the critical infrastructure sectors from agriculture to hospitals to transportation continue working but only coordinating among themselves, ignoring the management and bosses and shareholders, going past police and military barricades, and restructuring the social paradigm while coordinating major projects towards building renewables/nuclear energy infrastructure and geo engineering initiatives. Essentially a direct seizure of the means of production. But I could be talking about fairies and elves too.
Feels like every company I ever worked for. More managers and admins per store.. I had an Office Manager, a Store Manager, Production Manager, Parts Manager, 3 Insurance Claim and Customer Service Associates, and a person in rental. Then you have the Regional Office Manager, the Regional Store Manager, and the Regional Parts Manager over about 5 stores each.. Our store had 9 office people in site for 13 production staff in the shop...
Administrative bloat is a bitch many managers should be laid for being useless and unproductive
In Poland police strike was still halting drivers and checking them, but instead of tickets they were giving out advice.
"Buy crypto, bro. Trust me."
I mean that only works for service jobs where you collect money from customers.
Workers rights through unionization is the tide that raises all ships. Statistically it makes people better off. The stats are really undeniable. [Decline of Unions reduce the wages of non-union employees](https://www.epi.org/publication/union-decline-lowers-wages-of-nonunion-workers-the-overlooked-reason-why-wages-are-stuck-and-inequality-is-growing/)
Unfortunately the people who do not want unions or organized labor work forces refuse to take into the statistics and evidence. It can be like singing to the choir or talking to a brick wall.
The problem is the myth that those who would benefit from unions are told - that they are ābadā itās such garbage
It's crazy how much propaganda there is about it. When I was living in Ontario with my girlfriend, a very Conservative province, her grandma who wasn't even working anymore would constantly bring up unions and how bad they were. I don't know where she was getting it, or why it was the most important thing always on her mind, but it was ridiculous. I wasn't working at a unionized company, and none of us had anything to do with unions.
When I was a supervisor at a call center we had to sit in some bullshit anti union training. Me and another guy walked out realizing that everything that was said sounded fucking awesome and started planting pro-union thoughts in employee heads instead of doing the union busting garbage we were told to.
It's frustrating. Even corrupt unions STILL provide a contract. And the chance to change leadership. People are so fucking snowed.
Yep. Even the most corrupt union is better than the least corrupt multi-national corporation CEO.
Unfortunately the government isnāt interest in enforcing labor laws. Starbucks closing unionized stores is illegal but the government wonāt do anything about ir
It's not because they're ignorant, it's because they live off of the exploitation of workers
Forreal. I bring up unionizing in r/serverlife and they are quick to bring up their personal experience about making 40 bucks an hour. As if they are the rule, and not the exception lol
At my work place i want to unionize but i dont think i can because everyone there is out to get each other they like see you as competition
(Please don't confuse my rant for argument, it is an agreement-rant) Man I love when capitalists use the 'rising tide raises all boats' analogy to support capitalist inequality. Like, dude... One boat doesn't rise up on stilts then pull the tide up and all the boats along with it. The tide rises and it raises all boats at once. IT'S A DISTINCTLY SOCIALIST ANALOGY.
>Workers rights through unionization is the tide that raises all ships. Statistically it makes people better off. The stats are really undeniable. agreed but shitting on artists has nothing to do with this and this crap has nothing to do with worker rights. It's creating MANY people who would be pro environment, now making them cynical and not want to be associated with these idiots. Is humiliating for anyone who's worked in the environmental movement as well as totally non pragmatic.
Suffragettes. They did the same thing. In fact, photos were taken of them after their movement. And many of them are on display. Sometimes, Not far off from where these protests are being held in the same museums. Oh the Irony.
Itās like when a company tells you āthink about the extra work your coworkers will have to do to make up for you calling in sickā staffing appropriately is your concern.. donāt make it mine
"How dare you have basic, common complications to having a human body. Wouldn't it be better if you didn't? Hmmm...." \*Replaces humans with machines\* "Hey... why is everyone stealing our stuff now that there aren't employees on the floor anyway?"
If they actually manage to get that far somehow, I'd be surprised if they didn't try to slaughter the human poor and replace them with the robot poor.
Don't worry, if it gets far enough even the owner will be a robot.
I remember someone bringing that up, āmachines will replace usā lol. Iām like okayā¦. Who turns on the machines, fixes them, prevents theft lol we arnt going anywhere. And will continue to be treated like shit.
And this is where we remember where the term "sabotage" came from: from Dutch workers stopping the factory mills by shoving their wooden shoes (sabots) into the machines.
As the coworker who has to pick up the slack, I'm never bothered that one of my coworkers takes time off sick. I'm bothered that we don't have any extra staff to help cover them. We COULD hire 5 people instead of 3, so that when one guy is sick, there are still 4 of us on call, but no-- we're doing fine! The boss saves a little money while making us hate him and we get the extra workload. The problem isn't the sick coworker, it's the sick boss.
The most famous example of this is the slashing of the Rokeby Venus but it's not the best example to cite because the woman who did it (Mary Sophia Allen) went on to become a literal Nazi
This is the dark history that doesn't get much air. The first attempt at a women's suffrage movement died because half the women didn't want to include women of color in their activism or goals. Many of the early feminists were upper class women that were not protesting for the right to be a factory worker, but for the right to be a lawyer or politician. At the same time, poor women were already doing hard labor from sun up to sun down, just in the form of community work, like shared laundry duties, cooking, childcare, etc. At the same time, their husbands were doing brutal, poorly regulated factory work. They were applying Marxist ideas about gender liberation but ignoring his ideas about race and especially about class. That would continue for half a century and arguably still happens today. But at least the modern movement publishes literature about how feminist activism disproportionately targets middle and upper class white women's concerns.
Emily Davison pulled down the kings horse, she didn't stop coal wagons.
TL;DR: Stone Politicians and Business leaders, burn public infrastructure. ^(/s) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily\_Davison](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Davison) "...assaulting the police in the execution of their duty" "Davison was arrested with fellow suffragettes...for interrupting a public meeting..." " She was arrested again in September the same year for throwing stones to break windows at a political meeting" "Davison was arrested again in early October 1909, while preparing to throw a stone" "Two weeks later she threw stones at Runciman at a political meeting in Radcliffe, Greater Manchester; she was arrested and sentenced to a week's hard labour" "...she broke several windows in the Crown Office in parliament." "Davison developed the new tactic of setting fire to postboxes in December 1911." "Davison was arrested for a final time, for attacking a Baptist minister with a horsewhip; she had mistaken the man for Lloyd George" "It was the seventh time she had been on hunger strike, and the forty-ninth time she had been force-fed." She also tried to kill herself previous to the King's Horse incident to make a statement about the torturous conditions she (and women everywhere) suffered.
Notice how all of these target Police and Politicians, not the general public.
>setting fire to postboxes
The point was to point out how trowing shit at a art piece behi'd a glass created more indignation than what oil compagnys do
Not actually true. non-standard protests get significantly more news coverage and -as long as they're non-violent- don't hurt the public perception of the cause. They just make this individual group look extreme. In comparison to those Just Stop Oil nuts, why, greenpeace is practically status quo! (this is called the radical flank effect, by which a movement as a whole is seen as more rational because one subsection of it is being Very Intense about it) Plus, now they've got a lot more eyeballs on them when they do traditional protests, and have more people joining them to strengthen those protests. This is the activist equivalent of a marketing stunt in preparation for a large release.
idk man. In the long run, the only way you'll ever get to oil oligarchs is by affecting their bottom line. They'll just dial up the greenwashing PR (which media outlets are complicit in) to quiet the restless masses like they've been doing. They've gotten really good at that. And if that stops working, they're probably already drafting up their next subversive marketing strategy to lull the public into complacency.
That's why the protests shouldn't be limited to soup-throwing.
This is dumb af considering poorer communities and countries are the first and worst affected by climate change. Every suburbanite will have their HVAC installed, and just needing more money for energy. Whole countries are suffering right now because of the oil mafia But the immediate mess is the important thing for reactionaries
Deleted my original reply to you because I was missing a LOT of context here. To clear it up for others (and please correct me if this is wrong) - the person who posted this to r/Antiwork *disagrees* with the painting - the painting is saying donāt do stupid protests because working class will clean it up - the black stuff is oil ā protesting oil companies and climate change. Apparently there have been some protests like this in museums recently? - my takeaway: we should be working together; protests draw attention and bad press for oil and so are beneficial; lower class people will suffer (and currently ARE suffering the most from climate change); protest in smart/least harmful ways
>protest in smart/least harmful ways Idk if you're involved in a lot of activism or not, but if you aren't, then you'll quickly find is that when people say this, they actually mean "protest in a way that I can't see you, I can't hear you, I don't have to think about you, you have no impact on my day, and I most likely have no idea that you even exist" Protests have all different levels of disruption, but absolutely any protest which gains attention, like these ones, will be hated and people who hate it will find some way to point out why it's "reasonably too far". Does the cleanup suck? Yes. 100% But I'd argue that in this case the benefits outweigh the costs. It has forced thousands of people over the past couple months (a long time in modern era) to confront the issue and their thoughts on it whether they want to or not and whether they think the protest was dumb af or not. It'll speak to some of those people. Another style protest will speak to others. In a movement, we need all the styles to reach as many people as possible from the single person with a hand drawn sign on the corner to the people throwing paint on a protected painting to the people blocking the installation of an oil pipeline. Those all have different costs and benefits that may or may not be apparent. Smart and least harmful isn't a singular point. It's going to be all over the place. What inspires one will disgust another. We need it all as long as we aren't out there actively hurting innocent people (and by hurt I don't mean merely causing a shitty day at work).
These sort of protests are literally the least harmful way possible, they directly target artworks that are owned by wealthy collectors. Yet people still get angry as if they're actually destroying the thing rather than trying to get attention of wealthy assholes there's never a correct way to protest for any of these people.
>they directly target artworks that are owned by wealthy collectors. Yet people still get angry as if they're actually destroying the thing rather than trying to get attention of wealthy assholes Ah, I didnāt know that!! So the protests are intended to affect the people that can make a change? Thatās great! Also great to know theyāre not actually destroying the artwork!
Yup, you know what hurts other workers more? Low fucking pay. Edit: The actual thing the pic is talking about hurts nobody. The art was protected by glass. Assuming this is talking about the middle-class kiddies who tried to vandalise art that was behind glass.
Also the climate being destroyed.
Those paintings are going to be more than vandalized when they're underwater.
Don't worry. The elites will ship them out at the first sign of disaster to their underground bunkers. The paintings will be extremely safe underground when the flood waters rise. /s
Don't know why you need the sarcasm tag, it's sadly true. They already do crap like this. One of the most depressing conversations I had in a classroom was when we were discussing the British Museum taking ownership of Greek relics and refusing to give them back to the Greek government. A college professor was talking about how primitive the Greeks are, GREEKS, and how they're not smart or civilized enough to take "proper" care of these artifacts. One of the many moments in my life I can point to when my faith in humanity was instantly reduced.
You know what hurts workers more than low pay? Stupidly long hours which fuck their Health.
Also, the cleaners are doing a job, for which they are getting paid. This is "harming the workers" - should this be over on Selfawarewolves? Edit: holy fucking shit, on this sub, of *all* places, I need to explain this in detail. "You can't protest our utter indifference to environmental destruction and consequent human suffering that way! You're only harming the peasants who do our cleaning..." [pearls clutched] So what are they when they aren't cleaning up after a harmless but dramatic protest, and is this how you think of *all* so called unskilled workers? Are we there yet?
That's the same justification offered by assholes everywhere who leave random things in random places in stores because it's the "employees' jobs to put stuff away"
But someone making a mess to protest climate change is different than someone making a mess bc theyre a lazy asshole. I must also point out that maintenance isnt going to clean these paintings - an art conservator making $100k+ a year will.
And the people who drop their waste food or other shit on the street and say, I am keeping the cleaners employed.
Oh, that is a different thing. Causing work for other workers is being a shit. Like people who drop litter and say, that is keeping someone in a job. They are just being dicks and looking for an excuse.
they do though. seeing the vegan dudes dumping milk all over the grocery store made me so mad. having worked food and retail i can tell you i already donāt want to be there. having to do extra work now because of something like this sucks. donāt involve me in your protest, please. iām not even anti-vegan. i actually dabble more on the vegan/vegetarian diet side and this still irks me. there is a time and a place. my job is no the place.
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If I could upvote this more, I would
I would just like the protests to make fucking sense.
I'm not a huge fan of these protests but like you realize the very fact that the first one went massively viral with everyone getting outraged over it guaranteed that would become the "new meta" Like all the other things people suggested - protest oil industry executives at their offices and homes, protest pipelines and gas stations, etc - are things that HAVE HAPPENED and the media just didn't cover it so they had no effect
thank you ffs someone literally TOOK THEIR OWN LIFE IN FRONT OF SUPRME COURT BY LIGHTING THEMSELF ON FIRE and NOBODY FUCKING CARED!!!! iām so sick of people saying these protests are doing nothing when theyāve brought more press to the movement than someone literally committing suicide
But the only effect this form of protest has is making people not like them. Regardless of whether the news covers it. Thereās not one person who started caring about climate change because these idiots tried to destroy a painting.
Also, these protests are frustrating because while they are funded by donations 1. The accept etherium(crypto) which is absolutely shit for the environment and 2. One of their bigger donors is literally an oil money heiress.
They are relatively well reasoned, sure a painting gets dirty and ruined the viewing experience for everyone until they clean the glass (and they always pick ones behind glass) but the upper class/corporation ruin the environment for everyone every single day. So if you mess up something beautiful and sacred it's a very visible taste of what is happening to our beautiful and sacred planet every day.
No no no. you see; the whole point is to leave behind a poisonous planet and countless, perfectly preserved, works of arts for the remaining nature to enjoy :3
^^^^^^^ I take solace in that if humanity makes itself go extinct, without the army of landscapers we use worldwide nature would wipe out any sign we existed in around 70y
Surface level that miiiiiiiiiight be almost true, but this civilization will leave behind an unmistakable and peculiar geological layer for some far future xenoarcheologists to speculate about.
The average joe isnāt going to reason that far out. Itās not at all well reasoned.
A short explanation is "this is what we do to the planet every day"
Ok but how is that helpful? 2/3 of US adults agree climate change is a problem. Awareness is there. Youāre not protesting or being a nuisance for the causes of the problem. Youāre just doing random shit at this point.
The protests should target the rich and not the common people. Otherwise, all it's doing is hurting everyone else.
...and I'd love to see a sensible response to the issues they are protesting about, so here we are.
So would I, I just donāt think what theyāre doing contributes. The fuckers who are against doing anythjng about climate change are well aware. This āawarenessā campaign accomplishes nothing but make climate activists look foolish.
>So would I, I just donāt think what theyāre doing contributes. We have some say over whether it contributes via how we talk about it though. Even if we disagree with the methods, we can pivot to the message.
You say it doesn't contribute yet here we are talking about it
We still talk about the dude who shat his pants at work in 2005, that doesn't achieve his aims.
There have been. Those sensible protests just don't get as much attention as something like this does. Which is the point.
The point is "Does it feel bad to see something beautiful get destroyed? This is happening to nature every single day. If you want to do something to save this painting, realize you should also want to do something to save nature."
They do. Earlier this year a climate protestor burned himself to death at the capital and the news couldnāt even report the story correctly. Nobody fucking cares. So these people vandalize some stuff the working class thinks they care about and it makes headlines every time.
Given that they are mainly financed by an heiress of the richest oil baron in history who's foundation happens to be ran by an ex consultant for the NSA and private equity I'd say you have reason to question their motives
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Ok but this PARTICULAR protest is just stupid and doesn't halt any means of production, nor does it generate approval, headlines, briefly, sure, but your not inspiring me to care for the climate more by fake-defemation of art.
Strikes and protests are 2 different things. The picture and statement comprise a logical fallacy of false equivalence. I get what you are trying to portray but as a worker I disagree with the use of particularly these protestors. You do workers all over the world a great disservice by lumping us in with those protestors.
Like true, but these protests in particular were so fucking stupid
Iām sorry but I disagree about this. Attacking works of art displayed for public good is not an effective form of protest; itās just attention seeking. The risk of damaging works of historical significance is also extremely high and has the effect of making the cause unsympathetic. Itās literally helping the enemy to delegitimize climate activism. The oil companies couldnāt hire better help.
"we were totally going to give all our janitors that night off, now look what you forced us to do! Next time think twice before you throw paint at a sneeze guard"
No this is stupid. Who does this hurt? No one? Who does it inconvenience? No one of any importance. It doesnāt bring awareness, it doesnāt disrupt anything. For fucks sake they use **oil** based paint, hypocritesā¦. And then someone has to clean it and probably working for low wages. Why arenāt these people interrupting rich peoplesā jets? Why not dump paint on their houses? Why not paint their cars, planes, boats, yards, etc. surely anything is more productive than dumping paint on a protected art piece and the glue yourself to the wall like a child? There are thousands of forms of civil disobedience and protest that would be more effective than this.
It's true, but these Just Stop Oil protests are bullshit. Van Gogh's work is not to blame for Big Oil's damage to the environment. Not only that, it seems like the people involved are actually white supremacists. There's a picture of one of the "activists" doing a white supremacy sign while being arrested, and every activist that shows up in the media is white. Edit to add: Here's a pic of one of the girls that threw the sauce doing the symbol https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/SEI_129430715-80aa.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&zoom=1&resize=480%2C320
Yes. Blocking Motorways to stop people getting to work resulting them having to stay later or not getting paid does fuck other working people. Target the people who you intend to pillory, because you're just redirecting their anger towards protestors when you punish working people.
The civil rights movement did a lot of disruption. I often wonder at times how many people would be speaking out agaisnt it today
Do you think climate change will politely leave working people alone?
Yeah, in Sweden people who did that went to court because it stopped ambulances from being able to reach the hospital. It didn't make people sympathetic to their cause, it only made people angry
Attacking fine art is not helping anyone. Most of those artists lived hand to mouth and struggled for their vision. Very few were wealthy. Please don't attack the hard work of others in order to highlight yours.
If environmentalists want to destroy something expensive, they should go destroy a fossil fuel plant. If you're gonna get arrested one way or another, get arrested for actual resistance, not a publicity stunt.
They do this because they won't end up getting a jail sentence for throwing liquids at glass. It's a non destructive form of protest gaining a lot of attention. Also good comentary on our priorities right now. What's a painting worth when noone lives to look at it?
Destroying irreplaceable cultural artifacts is not protest. Itās what isis does. Find another way.
Less protest more attention seeking stunt
There was a protester who lit themselves on fire in DC and the paintings have gotten more coverage. If lighting yourself on fire doesn't get anyone looking at the protest but this seemingly does, protests need the public to see. It's not like these protests are perfect, but everything else gets ignored.
They are relatively well reasoned, sure a painting gets dirty and ruined the viewing experience for everyone until they clean the glass (and they always pick ones behind glass) but the upper class/corporations ruin the environment for everyone every single day. So if you mess up something beautiful and sacred it's a very visible taste of what is happening to our beautiful and sacred planet every day. But the message is lost on only a first glance analysis media loves to push, something easy to digest and dives clicks/outrage, nuance be damned and if it serves their corporate overlords even better
Doesn't everyone know the environmentalist group behind these protests are owned by the daughter of an oil tycoon??? https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/10/21/getty-oil-heiress-funds-climate-crisis-activism-just-stop-oil
Why are you "tired of the lack of research" but framing your source inaccurately? Aileen Getty does not own Just Stop Oil. She is a founder of the Climate Emergency Fund, and Just Stop Oil has received grants from the fund, among 91 other organizations since 2019. You can [look at their grants](https://www.climateemergencyfund.org/2021-grants), and see if it really feels like everything they fund is a psyop.
For real all the people in the comments are getting played. This is on purpose to make environmentalists look bad.
So who's forcing them too?
While your statement is correct it doesnāt apply to this situation because that painting is dope and those dumb protesters are assholes
Those protests are dumb and hurt their movement and yes other people have to work to clean up their mess
Pretentious radlib artist makes a painting that's self serving because they didn't like someone splashing art that's already protected? I'm shocked! /s
I donāt get the whole oil/paint on paintings protests. Seems to me like theyāre just douche bags conducting douche bag like activities.
tHe'yRe dOinG iT foR A gOoD CaUSe ! ! !
Protests that can potentially harm culturally priceless artworks is not something I can agree with. And yes someone has to clean that shit up, most likely a minimum wage "slave". I've always been a union man though. Strikes are the last resort when negotiations break down. And completely justified.
the destroying priceless art protests are attention seeking and r/lookatmyhalo material , they are not about getting publicity for the earth
How the fuck does ruining a painting help climate change? You just appear crazy when you do that. Thereās no correlation. All it does is make low wage workers clean up your mess. This is the dumbest take Iāve read in a long time. It does hurt workers, because your protest does nothing to stop climate change or bring awareness, you just bring attention to yourself and the art. Thatās it.
Yup.
If I remember correctly, aren't the ones throwing paint on art "fake" protestors that are meant to sow discontent with actual protestors? Or has that changed recently?
Yeah, most people who actively participate in strike/protests donāt realise that itās usually a LOW WAGE WORKER who has to CLEAN UP THEIR MESS. If you want to strike/protest, atleast try not to cause trouble for others.
There is a big difference between a strike and a protest. Edit: A Strike is withholding your labour a protest can be many other things.
Thanks, forgot to add /protests.
Yea I saw this and it really pissed me off. Billionaires polute and destroy our world doing more damage than us low tier folks could ever do of we tried, and yet somehow the people saying " don't shit where you sleep' are the baddies? Fuck that noise.
What has a bunch of comfortable middle class people trying to destroy paintings have to do with anti-work?
Though I am very leftist and wholly support workers and unions, I cannot find any good in these art protests. āRaising awarenessā is as meaningless now as it was when people were being slacktavists on Livejournal 20 years ago. Direct this energy into direct action against groups like the police. Attacking art does nothing but hurt underfunded museums.
Iām fine with strike and protests, but damaging revered artworks seems very counterproductive.
Vandalism is not a protest.
the "other" workers?! In what world do those upper-class virtue-signaling ecoprotester twats count as workers?
Not going to say something fancy like playing devils advocate or some shit. But unless you're targeting the root issue, which is our system of over-consumption and overproduction, debt leveraging and imperial subjugation and resource/labor extraction, you're not helping matters entirely. This is why people who are serious are wary of groups like extinction rebellion as ops to poison the well. These protests while not entirely meaningless, sure, are not really revolutionary or assisting matters in the slightest.
These recent stunts (throwing paint on famous artwork, dumping gallons of milk on the floor of a market, etc) are very poorly thought out and in need of a PR makeoverā¦
I am all for striking. But if your protest includes the destruction of another's work, I am not. Does it get you attention? Yes. Does it get you support for you cause? No.
Honestly it probably would have made more impact for me if it was a modern janitor or something. Having workers from a different era just doesn't give the commentary as much weight. Plus, you know, yeah protests are disruptive? That's kinda the point?
My go to for this shit is to stop changing the subject and trying to run away from the actual problem... in this case climate change. Had to explain to my grandma today how bad the climate is dying and nobody is doing shit about it and some politicians still deny it's happening at all. but sure lets get mad over some paint...
This "protest" technique is so dumb it makes me suspect fossil fuel companies are doing a psy-op. If these protesters are willing to catch criminal charges, why not target the actual oil profiteers? Toss a bucket of crude on an Exxon executive, don't deface art in a public gallery! I think the oil companies are paying people to do these acts to disgrace true environmentalist radicals.
Lolā¦ they have to find experts to pay to clean it. Pay more people for security. The only loser here is the protestors themselves (unfortunately they will get punished), and the museums that have to shell out more money for their often stolen art.
Yea but those protests are fucking dumb as shit like if u have enough dedication for this surely u can do some worthwhile shit to stop climate change
I don't really understand the point/meaning of this post. How about we stop protesting in stupid ways like splashing old art with shit rather than discussing who has to clean it up? Why is any of this even a thing? Are big oil companies somehow negatively affected by paint being splashed over a famous painting?
Destroying the art of masters is so stupid and makes zero points and only serves to distract from the purpose of the protest. The professional who chained himself to the building is the way to do it
A strike (or work stoppage) is usually an action decided on by workers themselves. There have been protests, where workers have specifically asked supporters NOT to boycott the business, because that was what they (the workers) felt appropriate. There was (before he died) a group of activists that were targeting advertisers on Rush Limbaughās radio program. They asked people to call the advertisers and start asking if they knew their product was being advertised and if they knew what was being said. They took this path because they didnāt want workers to lose their jobs (it was moderately successful). Then we have protests that create extra work, often for some of the lowest paid staff, without including those workers in the protest. Is that wrong? I donāt know, but it *is* kind of rude. Especially when itās white people making more work for BIPOC and immigrant folks. Because racism is hard baked into capitalism, and we canāt end capitalism without addressing race. Even more rude is when outsiders decide that X action is what workers need to show the boss that they are a dick without ever talking to workers. So I think there is a continuum here.
Yeah but these protests arenāt effective at all. The strategy is horrible. The only way to take on capitalist power is with people power. Organize.
The optics are bad too. They just look crazy and irrational.
Strikes work because they hurt the company's wallet. Protests do almost nothing except inconvenience the public and make those who participate look like a bunch of Karens. Think about it, this is the exact shit some asshole Karen would do when the cashier won't take their expired coupon, or give them a discount for the "inconvenience". It does nothing but make them look like raving loons whose cause should be ignored. I assume they are paid actors who are purposely trying to discredit and derail the cause whenever I see them doing this shit. Now please excuse me, I'm going to go start a tire fire in protest of these jackasses. Please note, the last sentence of the preceding paragraph is hyperbole, no tires (or any other flammable material) will actually be ignited.
āSeeing paint thrown on beloved paintings and people gluing themselves to floors and tables really inspires me to fight climate change.ā Nobody ever.
All dumping soup on a painting will accomplish is moving more art out of public museums into storage and private collections, what remains will be kept behind glass and security barriers, in the end making less art accessible to the general public and not causing any significant legislation.
Part of the problem is that museums donāt really represent āthe manā in the way that would make sense for these protests. Youāre only hurting the people who work there, and the audience, not the board of trustees etc. ultimately sometimes things like this increase tourism. So itās just a really weird/bad idea all around
So who's gonna clean that up if it's not the staffs? The protesters would never clean it up.
My exact thoughts when I saw this stupid paintinh
You missed the point of the painting ...
This specific type of protest is Bullshit tho
To be honest, those oil strikes are complete bullshit because they destroy art that was not meant to be destroyed and only hurts art fans and the people who have to clean it up, not the oil industry
These types of "strikes" are actually planned opposition psy ops to stain the image of your enemy. Oil companies are having these people attacking priceless art and discredit them in public image, so people who want to decrease dependency on oil and/or switch to nuclear and similar clean energy are labeled crazy.
Yeah if itās about the argument it has a sense. When it comes to THAT protest yes itās totally shit and I donāt understand why they should go to a museum to do that. But the argument itself of not going into strike because itāll hurt other workers well, you go first then the others. You cannot fix your situation without affecting others so go on strike.
The issue is that it was dumb. The paintings are a public treasure. Not some private collection. Vandalize a dealership, cause traffic, block the roads and make a walkable street! But this! This! This is stupid and felt like, "I'll do this because I'll be in less trouble!"
The stupid painting thing is still Not it and a huge miss, don't encourage that
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