One misconception I had about civil disobedience from what I’d learned in school is that it’s a reliable means of drawing attention to your cause: your willingness to expose yourself to legal consequences will communicate to the public how critical you consider the issue to be.
What I learned from witnessing it first-hand is that officials and the media will invent their own narratives about your actions out of whole cloth, and the statement the public thinks you’re making may bear no relation to your intentions.
One misconception I had about civil disobedience from what I’d learned in school is that it’s a reliable means of drawing attention to your cause: your willingness to expose yourself to legal consequences will communicate to the public how critical you consider the issue to be.
What I learned from witnessing it first-hand is that officials and the media will invent their own narratives about your actions out of whole cloth, and the statement the public thinks you’re making may bear no relation to your intentions.
Civil disobedience is not meant to draw attention. It’s meant to fight back without violence.
Drawing attention is a protest or a boycott.
Civil disobedience can overlap with both direct action and protest. But that’s my point: we were only ever taught about the latter.
Ok fair, yes.
Sounds about right.
When it comes to the media the well is poisoned. We need to teach an entire population how to consume new media and we cant do it fast enough.
Eventually, though, that will stabilize. Then there will be cultural revolutions in that space.
What is thia “new media” for you? Because for many it means sources that tell an alternative truth. Usually written in Sankt-Peterburg.
And there use to be these things call tabloids, what is your point?