https://www.threads.net/@nprpubliceditor/post/DIhOEQQOyqP
EDIT: Also worth noting that the next nationwide protest date for 50501 is May 1st
I sent a note to the public editor a couple days ago suggesting that while it was nice that they went to a single protest in NYC, they are missing the trend, that attendance and rallies and protests have been growing, even in deeply red parts of the country. That upward trend should be newsworthy. No response so far…
The message is that peaceful protests that don’t involve property damage, and major disruption to business don’t warrant respect or attention in America.
Within a capitalist system no one is going to pay any attention until you distrust the flow of capital in one form or another: stop traffic so people can’t go to work, shut down businesses, strike, slow down at work, target a CEO home, call in sick en masse.
Why would anyone pay attention if you’re just standing in a park holding signs?
Boycott boycott boycott. The most effective methods are strikes. But we need a higher level of organization for that, something I’m not seeing
Give it time. Women’s Suffrage started pretty tame before the firebombs.
“Aren’t news worthy enough”
News can and does keep dragging the same worthless news articles whenever they want so this is a lie
That’s like the entire purpose of a protests. How incredibly unethical of a journalist to even say something like this.
I love NPR but this stinks real bad. They should resign.
News does not need to be sensational to be important.
News programs need to report what is important, not what they think will catch eyeballs
There is a balance to be struck. News has a few vital cogs in the machine that it cannot continue without. It needs reporters, editors, news to report, readers who are interested, and an income stream to keep it all running. It doesn’t need to be profitable, but it does need to be sustainable. If you only ever report stories that nobody cares about, you will not make enough money to be sustainable. If you only report sensation, you will become corrupt. If you over-report on the same subject, readers will become numb to what you have to say. So while you are correct, news needs to report what is important, they also need to consider how their stories will impact their readers.
Removed by mod
We need to get more creative if not more disruptive. People are sign waving and gathering and occasionally there are special speakers, but it’s pretty much just an open air meetup. Images need to be bolder (not the photos, but the imagery) so organizations like NPR have more to be tell. This Easter weekend it would’ve been epic and very appropriate to have someone non-White dress up as Jesus, carrying the cross, and have people shout things like, “Vermin! Rapist! You’re poisoning our nations blood! Go back to Nazereth!” Depict the horrible rhetoric from the right that wouldn’t have made an exception for the Son of God because he wasn’t born here.
I also had an idea about a Nationwide effort to basically have a one-minute strike. One minute of doing absolutely nothing and everyone else would be quite freaked out by this, maybe even ask questions.
We can’t just make noise, we need to disrupt things.
From a total outsiders perspective (I don’t live in in the US) who has some experience in organising protests(doing so since I am 14, ran for a state rep. here,etc.): You need to find a more unified way of protesting. Yes,that can be creative,but the message has to be far more unified than it is currently.
To give you an example what I mean: I made the effort to look up foreign press coverage,some domnestic press coverage, social media and photos taken by friends of mine of one rather prominent protest location of the most recent ones.
So far I came across the following messages:
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Pro Palestina
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Pro Feminism
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Pro Ukraine
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Pro Supreme Court
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Pro National parks and environmental conservation
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Pro various, contending Democrats and some smaller Parties
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Pro Diversity
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Pro LGBTQ
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Pro Choice
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Against Deportations
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Against Supreme Court
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Against Trump personally
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Against the Reps
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Against science influence/budget cuts
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Against influencing universities
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Against Tate and Musk
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Against USaid Cuts
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Against US government cuts
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Against tariffs
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Against Milei
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Against Gun Violence
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Against Violence in Dafur
And surely a few more I am missing/forgot. Don’t get me wrong, the USA have a lot of pressing issues. But people will judge a book by it’s cover and while we all often pretend that the issue each one of us finds the most important IS the MOST IMPORTANT and anyone that doesn’t think the same is an idiot, we tend to not see the wood amgonst all the trees. Because there is one drawback in this stance: Everyone has it. And once you declare “this topic is the most important” the people who support the other 40 topics as the most important topics are alienated. Which leads to infighting, some not showing up, etc. (If this reminds you of Life of Brian, well, it’s a very factual movie in that regard)
But there is ONE main issue: The Trump government. While it can sometimes be useful to choose a cause that unites the people behind one even though that is not the main issue, these have to be choosen wisely. (Türkiye is one recent example: The problem is not that Imanoglu has been arrested. Nor was the problem about Gezi park back then. But it’s a cause that unites the people)
This needs to be done fast and much more coordinated and "reaching all areas of society " than it is currently visible. To give you an example: European Anti-Fascist protests are often formed by a coalition of trade unions, political parties (and we are talking not about “leftist” parties but parties than are rather “mid left”,e.g. Greens, social democrats, etc.), churches, sport clubs and similar social circles. Why do they bother? Because they all know if Fascism ever comes back it will get them all one after another. Just like it is now.
And yes, 50501 is a good start,but support is lacking - because of the “most important topic” issues.
This goes both ways: If on one side you need to talk about unification of people - but you do also need to shed the political groups that are not helping but actually hurting the main cause. To give you an example (and this is not taking a stance in the Palestina issue, it’s just a good example that came up today during an interview): If your protest is associated with a group that uses the Hamas triangle and sees the Palestina topic as the one and only topic worth protesting for, they are hurting the main issue, their own issue (with an USA in full flight Fascism that protects Bibi doing whatever he likes Gaza will be “a summertime stroll” compared to what will follow) and alienate regular Joe and Jane as well as give the opposing side verbal ammunition to fight the whole movement. (Why I did choose this example: During the protest I looked up a foreign journalist did interview a spoksperson of some group - who was very well trained and did, despite her young age and obvious nervousness, an outstanding job- and some idiots wearing the triangle similar to the yellow jewish star worn during the Holocaust, screamed in the camera and tried to sideline the interview because anyone not willing to listen to their (very much genocidal) monologues would just tolerate children being killed.
Now, imagine Jane Average,40, who is afraid that her brother in law,who is an legal immigrant, gets deported, has more and nore problems putting food on the table due to rising costs, is afraid that her husband is loosing his job over the tarrifs and how the world will be for her daughters sees this. For years Jane Average has been voting democrats,yes. But she didn’t go out of her way to do so. She is now considering going to a protest - the first one in her life.
But what are they actually protesting for? And aren’t they all idiots like the one she saw on TV? And,unknown to her, her friend Juliet Somebody is also considering. If she would hear from Jane that she is going,she would go as well…etc.
TLDR: Unify your message, shed idiots, get the whole society behind one cause.
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We have been doing one day strikes.
One minute is nothing. One day is weak sauce but gets people in the habit of solidarity.
We need a week strike. Buy nothing, don’t go to work, nobody, anywhere in the country.
That would get their attention.
You mean the one day strikes where nobody was inconvenienced or even noticed because we just stayed at home and watched TV? A week long strike would be impactful but we need coordination and momentum. We also need noteriety. Simply not going outside for a week might not be noticed until a month later when economic numbers look funky.
A minute strike, in and of itself not super impactful economically, is incredibly easy to do and can be done wherever you are without impacting your own routine that much. When it happens though, in the moment, it should be a stark difference that nobody is moving or talking or driving. It’s also unlikely to get someone fired for doing it in the middle of a shift. If it catches on, it can roll into two minutes straight or one minute an hour.
It doesn’t have to be the only thing we do or the Pinnacle of what we do to fight back. I’m just saying, unless we can get 5-10% of the population to join in, particularly in red states, it will still be incredibly easy to ignore the protests.
This is brilliant - make the protests artistically interesting.
Most of the grown-up theater kids are already there anyway.
The main challenge will be making sure the message is still seen as serious. But I think your idea about showing how MAGA are on the opposite side as someone most of them claim to worship is brilliant.
I saw several old people last Saturday dressed like the Statue of Liberty… ? I guess we should have thrown red paint on them and called the local newspaper?
That’s actually not a bad idea now that I’ve written it out.
Seems to be more what is there to report on other than people pissed. There’s no clear organized message or demands. Everyone just rambling off their complaints. Needs more structure and leadership or it’ll wind up like occupy
If you want more people, you want less drama.
I want more change. To the progressive side. I want the fascists to go under.
Having more protests like the one from a couple weeks ago, where it was packed everywhere while having young and old, says a ton more than causing damage. The more drama, the more reason to send you to Guantanamo. Keep it peaceful and keep it huge is my very strong opinion.
I agree with you if press coverage is there. They’re not covering the protests because they’re not interesting, though.
That said, I’d call this lazy journalism. How about going out there to interview people? Start telling the stories of the people they talk with?
what really says a ton is somehow losing them money. like closing off a big highway in rush hour will probably get more attention (and possibly state violence). that would at least get them to consider listening.
I don’t know why we don’t just crash more legislative buildings
Did you know, that on every train crossings there are phone numbers that you can call to let them know something is blocking the tracks?
It sure would be inconvenient and/or disruptive enough to protest near commuter train crossings and inform them it’s unsafe for them to operate their trains. Shut down commuter trains (in a safe manner) and you’ll probably get some headlines.
Bingo. You get a gold star and a book of matches. Styrofoam and gasoline friend. Styrofoam and gasoline.
I just saw someone who suggested golf courses. Fucking brilliant I think.
Create something beyond your control. Something that does not need to be controlled.
I love NPR but have been watching them slide right continually for most of my adult life. Then NPR outlets (not npr itself but still) took major donations from the Koch brothers.
:|
still probably the most factual news outlet but I temper my expectations.
Trump wanting to end PBS, NPR etc., calling them fake news does keep me supporting my local station tho.
I stopped donating when they aided the DNC in ignoring Bernie in 2016.
valid.
I say this in good faith, and I have a friend at NPR and I don’t hate them…
Should we protest at the news stations to make it easy for them to get pictures?
Seriously, would it work?
I have been saying this and I’m really glad to see others coming up with the same idea. News won’t come to us? Then we need to go to the news.
We need to march around their buildings, shout up at their windows, block access to their parking lots with our sheer numbers - make us impossible to ignore.
Isn’t fox news in new york? Make their little spectacles outside a nightmare!
It’s with doing anyway. They are the worst enablers of this madness.
My 2 cents. There isn’t a cohesive reason for the protests so reporting on it will be muddy. Devil’s advocate but it’s the same reason occupy Wall Street failed. The message got watered down. If the media can’t report on a clear, concise and unwavering requirement from the crowd then reporting on it is exceedingly hard to sell to the public.
If the media can report on Trump’s incoherent rantings and make that sound like anything more than hot garbage, then they can absolutely do the same for protesters with varying causes, who are nowhere near as incoherent.
They do need to be covered, though. The world needs to see that many here will never bend the knee and accept anything less than a real democracy.
This is why strikes are more newsworthy: they disrupt things.
With a protest news will cover:
- That it happened
- What the protest was about / why it happened
- How many people were involved
After that, you’re basically done, other than maybe taking some pictures of interesting signs or costumes.
With a strike you get all the above plus:
- What services are disrupted
- What is being done to end the strikes
- What’s being done to mitigate the disruption
- What people who are disrupted feel about the strikes
The disruption part is key, because disruptions lead to other disruptions and that leads to a new story.
Look at the coverage of the trash collectors’ strike in Birmingham
- First paragraph: the disruption being caused
- Second paragraph: more about the disruption
- Third paragraph: what’s being done to end the strike
- Fourth paragraph: what the strikers want
- Fifth paragraph: what the strike is about
- Sixth paragraph: what the authorities are doing about the disruption
- Seventh paragraph: more about the disruption
- Eighth paragraph: more about what’s being done to end the strike
- …
Or look at the coverage of the transport strikes in Greece. Again, because a lot of things are being disrupted, there’s more to talk about.
Part of the reason that disruption is key is that there’s a long chain of side effects. For example, with the garbage strike there’s uncollected garbage. That has a side effect of attracting rats and other vermin. People worry that that might have a side effect of causing disease outbreaks. That might have an effect on the already strained public health system.
In addition, the more disruption, the more pressure there is to fix it. That results in various people passing the buck / blame to other people, which results in more news-worthy things to write about. You get conflicts between different levels of government. Conflict is interesting, so it’s something that makes the news.
A protest on the weekend that doesn’t really disrupt anything just isn’t going to get the same level of coverage.
11 days until May Day which would be the perfect opportunity for a really disruptive general strike. But, I guess Americans aren’t concerned enough about the state of their country to really disrupt anything yet.
Protests too can be disruptive. They don’t have to be just people along the side of the road, building, etc. For instance, here’s thousands of people blocking a freeway in downtown LA as part of anti-ICE protests in February
(Did get more media coverage indeed due to being more disruptive)
Organizing a general strike is also more difficult in the US with union membership being so comparatively low. Greece and the UK both have around double the unionization rate (~20% vs ~10%). Not impossible, and would be great to see, but protests themselves are a tool that can help get there. Help people see that people within your community are just a pissed as you are and you’ll have a lot more people willing to join in. Unions are some of the people organizing various protests too. They are able to drive membership up because of it
Protests that block key roadways are generally not received well. People are often mad that they’re inconvenienced and will use moral arguments regarding potential disruption of emergency services.
At least with strikes, most of who you’re fucking over is your boss and not the people you’re trying to have side with you.
Blocking roads is not the only method of disruptive protest. There are a lot more options than that. Everything from sit-ins to much more creative disruptions
For instance, one technique that animal rights activists have successfully used before is gluing hands to tables to protest various things. May sound silly, but it gets outsized attention on both traditional and social media. For instance, it’s been a factor to help get over 330 coffee chains to drop their non-dairy milk upcharge (including some major ones like Starbucks, Dunkin, Tim Hortons, etc.)
This is my hope, too, but it’s happening slower than I’d like. Enthusiasm for https://generalstrikeus.com/was strong at first, but has slowed significantly. It’s always on my protest sign “Signs a strike card!” My hope is that the protests will grow and develop into momentum for a strike… I’m not sure what else to do…
Thing is NPR should be promoting protests and gs
Why?
They just got defunded, for one. For another, the collapse of our government seems imminent?
How does that affect the newsworthiness of a protest? It seems like you just came up with two bigger, higher priority stories that they should be covering.
Because people need to rise up
So what they’re saying is… there’s another way to get their attention. Challenge accepted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_protests
We might need something more, because the Bush anti war protests didn’t do very much.
I’m not saying that she is intentionally being shitty, but there is a good chance her board is. This is a deep dive in who is on the board of NPR from last year. Scroll down to see NPR specifically and notice the bolded or linked people and who they’re tied to.
In a way, it’s good that the protests aren’t getting a whole lot of coverage. That means that they are peaceful enough that they’re boring. That’s what we want: PEACEFUL disruption.
Pretty sure the protests will start getting more attention when the administration starts firing tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowds when their bad-actor plants start causing issues.
I disagree. They should have more coverage because they are peaceful and people will feel safe enough to come join. What they can show:
- The dates for the future and how many have happened in the past
- Talk about what the signs are saying and get responses from the Republicans. You know, like when Bide was “too old.”
- Give the general mood.
- Send reporters to ask why people are there.
This is journalism 101 and she is super, duper wrong.
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Past and future protests can be covered in press releases. Not worth sending a reporter for.
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The cameras show the signs. That’s the point of the signs. Opposing politicians don’t want to comment.
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General mood can be covered in seconds by images.
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Why people are there again is covered by the signs and the aim of the protest. Unless people got lost on their way to the anti-hedgehog protest in the next street.
- Press releases aren’t very good if the press doesn’t cover them
- They show some signs. And a handful of signs don’t convey just how many people are all shouting in unison. Cherry picking the witty quotes is like a BuzzFeed list.
- Nope. Hard no. A picture speaks a thousand words, but those words are up to interpretation by the viewer. It can mean different things to different people. Photos don’t convey the chants, the yelling, the questions, and the raw emotion of a crowd.
- Cherry picking a few signs missing the whole point of the protest in that MILLIONS are demanding answers and change. The reason of the protest isnt what’s written on the signs. It’s that we are large swaths of people organizing and demanding change or answers. That they need to answer to the citizens at large. And not just the quips on a sign.
And that’s not even representative of how many different fucking signs there are and if media pick up those that are more niche and don’t align with the protests at large.
If only those assholes covered trump the same way and not report every little fart he or his administration expresses. There is a reason that fox talks about the d’s being evil and trump is a monarch over and over, it’s because it usually takes 7x for someone to hear what is being said. But you know that, don’t you.
Everything the President says is consequential, because he is the head of the largest(ish) military in the world, America hasnt been shy of economic and military imperialism over the past 25 years, and the Americans have decided to give their political head extreme power. To ignore him would be to ignore the gorilla in the room just because that gorilla is deranged. Excuse me, the gorilla in the room is deranged, that is NOT a gorilla anyone should be ignoring. The media are doing their job by reporting the White House. The Americans fucked up their one useful job by allowing him to be the most powerful man in the world. Again.
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Okay but I’m sure you can answer many of those questions without the article right? So why send journalists constantly to rehash something people aren’t going to end up reading?
Maybe the compromise is a monthly roundup of protests on general, so there’s no attention fatigue?
Who says people wouldn’t read it? If they interviewed people on the ground, I would absolutely read that. Also, if they had the dates listed and people counts of last ones, I would read that too to see how it’s comparing and if it’s getting more tailwind. People are always saying they haven’t heard about the protests until they finally do. I’m sure there are tons that haven’t heard about them because NPR isn’t even covering them.
Why would you stick up for less coverage? That makes no sense in this community.
The issue is they aren’t disruption.
They are peaceful, which is good. But they are not disruptive.
They aren’t disruptive yet. I assume the plan is to start without disruption as a way to amass numbers, gain support, and show how widespread the opposition is. As time goes on, the protests will move away from the weekends, which will automatically make them more disruptive.
I think when the actual disruption starts is when the likelihood of push back, and them no longer being peaceful, increases. And, as you said above, peaceful is good.
Yes, keep it peaceful
Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world
Maybe you could actually go see it so you don’t have to report “hundreds of” or “several” protestors when many thousands showed up.
The Wall Street Journal reported it as “thousands” and called them “massive protests”: https://www.wsj.com/video/thousands-of-anti-trump-protesters-gathered-around-the-world/ED93CD21-F4F3-4B1F-9DDC-1FB2F710228D?mod=automatedsubsection_trending_now_video_pos3
It’s the same excuse they use for not posting rape stories and knife attacks in germany, unless it is an immigrant of course.
I generally agree with the Argument of significance when there’s about 100 rapes daily that you cant report everything, but the argument falls flat once they decide to still post them when it fuels division.
