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Category: Street protest

LA Pride 2020 becomes All Black Lives Matter!

Struggles between LGBTQ+ persons and POC have never intersected more!
Rather than celebrating the accomplishments of the gay rights movement, activists are now proposing that events to shift back to their very radical roots and highlight the struggles of Black Americans.

Los Angeles, city that celebrated the very first Pride fifty years ago has decided to use this golden anniversary not to celebrate one of the biggest Pride festivals in the world, but to to highlight demands for justice for all black lives, particularly black LGBTQ+ people.

So the All Black Lives Matter protest has happened!

The mural of towering letters spelling out “ALL BLACK LIVES MATTER” in the colors of the rainbow sat at the intersection of famous Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue.

Demonstrations and protests over the murder of George Floyd and police excessive force have unpacked intersectionality in the LGBT community.

Obviously the joint effort in breaking down the structural and institutional aspects of racism, sexism, masculinity, and other detrimental issues is a major step in the right direction.

And this really seems as a queer movement we truly want to be a part of!

Video : Reporting your event with mobile phones – Tips and recommendations

Tips from Rise For Climate

If you're planning an action or event, and want to know how to best cover it online using just your mobile phone (and a few other tools) -- here are some tips. With just a few steps, you can ensure that many people see and hear about what happened.

General Digital Reporting Tips

And here is also a planning checklist you can walk through with your team.

1. Capture the message and spirit of your event
  • Plan how you will showcase the major moments of your action and especially what the main story and purpose is.
  • Don’t take a photo when people are standing around not doing anything. Show people being hopeful, energetic, determined.
  • Try and include in your photos/video lots of elements, Like including important landmarks as well as your message in a single photo.
  • Interview people (with their permission) and ask them why they decided to take action.
2. Use a variety of shots, media and platforms to showcase the full story of your action.
  • Takes photos from far away, in the middle and close up. (Or up high)
  • Livestream if you’re going to have a big dramatic moment. It’s also ok to just shoot short mobile videos at key moments and upload them. Here is a guide with more details about video and live-streaming.
  • For videos, it’s best to hold the phone horizontally, (unless it’s an Instagram Story).
  • Decide  if you want to hire professional photographers and videographers also. This can really help.
  • Be strategic about which social media platforms you use. You don’t have to share on all of them. Focus on where you have the most followers and where people in your area go to get their information.
3. Some basic equipment can help.
  • Backup battery pack for your phone.
  • Monopod or tripod  for stability. Hold that phone steady!
  • Microphone for audio. (If you don’t have a microphone just be as close as possible to people when you interview). You can use a lavalier microphone for interviews or a shotgun microphone for general sounds. There are versions of both that you can attach to a phone.
  • Bring your own pocket wifi or at least make sure you have plenty of data on your phone.
4. Be Safe!
  • Go in pairs or as a team and make a plan how you will work together. Maybe one person focuses on Twitter while the other does livestreams on Facebook.
  • Have a plan for how you will meet up if you get separated.
  • Make sure you have a security plan in place (depending on your situation.)
  • For more resources on security best practices for filming sensitive situations, check out the organization Witness.
5. Encourage everyone to share their experience.
  • Remind participants to share on their social media about the event – and use the hashtag! It’s great to have coverage of an event from many perspectives.

Street Action 101

This article from wikihow offers a good insight into the 101 of organising a street action.

How to Protest

Three Parts:Organizing a ProtestGetting Prepared to ProtestProtesting Effectively and SafelyCommunity Q&A

When you just can’t stay silent on a particular issue, expressing your views through civil protest is a positive way to make a difference. Gathering with other people to collectively speak out against wrongdoing is a fundamental right and a powerful way to bring about change. See Step 1 and beyond to learn how to organize and execute a safe and peaceful protest.

Part 1

Organizing a Protest

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1

Set a goal. Protests can function as a way to spread awareness about an issue or put pressure on those in power to make a specific change. What do you hope to accomplish with your protest? Figure out who the audience of your protest will be and plan your strategy from there. You’re more likely to get the outcome you want if you take time to set a goal for achieving it.

  • For example, let’s say you want to stage a protest at a local factory farm as a way to spread awareness about how animals are treated there so people will stop buying their products. In this case your audience is the public.
  • You may have a more specific goal, like trying to prevent an “adult” business from moving into your neighborhood. In this case the aim of the protest might be to put pressure on the property owner to lease the building to a different business of which the community approves.
  • In some cases your goal might be quite large in scale, like if you’re protesting a war or a governmental policy. In this case the protest can be used as a tool to show political leaders that their constituents want a change in policy.
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2
Choose a location. Find a location that is practical, symbolic or convenient – or all three. The location you choose should be the one that helps you reach your target audience so that the protest is as effective as possible. This could be the sidewalk in front of a business, a public street corner, the courthouse, the capitol building, or a park that has historically been used for protests in your city. Just remember that in order for the protest to be legal, the site you choose must be public.
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3
Pick a time to stage the protest. Protest at a time when you’ll be able to gather the largest crowd and have the greatest impact on your audience. For example, if you’re protesting a certain company’s business practices you’ll want to stage the protest when the CEO is present, which will probably be during business hours. On the other hand, if the goal of your protest is to gather as many people as possible, you might want to protest on a weekend when more people will be available to come.
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4

Get the necessary permits. Check with your city officials about whether you need to get a permit to protest in the location you choose. Each city has its own laws regarding how many people can protest and where they can gather. Do your homework and get the permits you need so that your protest won’t get disbanded before it can gain any traction.

  • In some cases the permit will set limits on how many people can gather, how much noise you can make, and where protesters can move about. If you disagree with the terms, you can contact an attorney to help you try to get them altered.
  • Some cities don’t issue protest permits. If you’re expecting a large crowd to come to the protest, you should alert the police department anyway. If they know what to expect they can help with crowd control and there will be less chance of conflict occurring.
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5

Plan the sequence of events. What actions will best help you achieve your goal? It’s important to have an agenda in mind for what will happen once everyone is gathered for the protest. Do some research on other effective protests and come up with a game plan that will help you target your goal. Here are a few ideas:[1]

  • Have community leaders introduce the protest and make speeches on the issue at hand.
  • Have an emcee who can lead protest chants and songs, and have bands play protest music.
  • Plan a march from one location to another. This is a classic form of protesting that helps bring widespread attention to a cause.
  • Implement performance art to help get your point across.[2]
  • Screen an informative video or documentary on the subject you’re protesting.
  • Consider having a sit-in or sleep-in – occupying a space until your demands are met.
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Publicize the protest. Take this important step to make sure your protest gets as much attention as possible. The aim isn’t just to encourage people to show up for the protest, but to capture that attention of the media, too. Pull out all the stops to spread the word starting a few weeks before the protest.

  • Post details about the protest on all your social media channels.
  • Make flyers about the protest and put them up around town. Target college campuses and other places where people likely to be interested in protesting your issue congregate.
  • Call local newspapers and radio stations and ask them to publish information about the protest and promote it on the air.

Part 2

Getting Prepared to Protest

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1

Bring protest materials. Make posters, fliers, visual aids, or pamphlets to help spread your message and communicate your concerns to others. During the protest, you can give out information on what you’re protesting to interested parties.

  • You might want to put the name of the group with which you’re affiliated on your protest materials. That way people who are new to the issue will know who to contact to find out more.
  • Consider coming up with a catchy slogan for the materials, something people can easily memorize and communicate to others.
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2

Wear protective clothing. You can keep yourself safer at a protest by dressing appropriately for the occasion. Dress for comfort – you might be standing or walking for several hours – and for safety, just in case you get jostled by the crowd or caught in the middle of an escalating conflict.

  • Wear comfortable tennis shoes.
  • Wear several layers of thick clothing so you have extra padding on your body.
  • If you plan to be on the front lines of a protest that could easily escalate into conflict, wear protective eyewear.
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3

Bring emergency supplies. Bring a backpack with a few supplies you might need. Bottled water and food are good to have on hand if the protest is going to last a long time. In addition to these staples, pack the following in your backpack:

  • A copy of the protest permit
  • Your identification card
  • A first aid kit
  • A bandana soaked in apple cider vinegar, stored in a plastic bag – this is said to help combat the debilitating effects of tear gas long enough for you to get to safety.
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4

Understand that protests are unpredictable. No matter what you’re protesting, there will be people who strongly disagree with your point of view. You may even encounter a separate group of protesters protesting the opposite side of the issue. At larger protests, police may be present to control the crowd and make sure things don’t get too out of hand. With all these different forces butting heads, be prepared for unpredictable things to happen.

  • Do research on the group you’re protesting with. If you weren’t one of the organizers, you should know the history of the group before joining the protest. If the group has every used illegal tactics or caused violence at a protest, you might want to think twice before joining them.
  • Most protests don’t end in violence, but it does happen sometimes. When people feel passionate about an issue, their behavior can be unpredictable. Stay alert and aware of your surroundings when you protest.
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5

Know how to interact with police. Make sure you know your rights as a protester and are familiar with how to deal with police in case you get stopped by an officer. If you stick to the terms outlined in the protest permit, you shouldn’t encounter problems, but you never know what could happen.

  • Do your best to follow the instructions given by both the protest organizers and the police.
  • If you believe your free speech rights are being threatened, speak to the protest organizer or call an attorney.
  • If a police officer asks if he or she can search you, you have the right to decline until a warrant is presented.[3]

Part 3

Protesting Effectively and Safely

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1

Be respectful at all times. A protest can be a very effective way to exercise free speech, make your voice heard and bring about change. However, being disrespectful to those against whom you’re protesting can undermine your group’s reputation and hurt the cause. Your arguments won’t be taken as seriously if disrespectful actions are taken. Avoid the following (and encourage fellow protesters to do the same):

  • Yelling insults at people who disagree with you
  • Vandalizing public or private property
  • Spitting or throwing water
  • Resorting to violence of any kind
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2
Decide how far you want to go. If you’re considering civil disobedience as part of your protest strategy, think carefully before taking action. Civil disobedience can be a courageous, nonviolent strategy for driving a point home, but it comes with serious consequences, like getting arrested. It’s important to know what you’re getting into before you choose to break the law in the name of your cause
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3

Gauge the effectiveness of your protest. When all is said and done, reflect back on the protest and decide what worked and what didn’t. Think about whether you reached your goal, and whether a different approach would be more effective the next time around. No matter what, be proud that you stayed true to your beliefs and exercised your right to be heard. Even if your protest didn’t bring about the change you want to see, speaking up about your cause is a step in the right direction.

  • It’s unlikely that a single protest is going to change everything in one blow. You’ll probably need to have follow-up protests. Consider approaching the issue from other angles as well. You could start a letter-writing campaign, lead a boycott, write a blog to voice your opinions, and take other actions to spread awareness and accomplish your goals. Don’t give up!

Food for Thought: “Why Street Protests Don’t Work”

This interesting OpEd appeared in The Atlantic

It dates back to April 2014 but most of the analysis would still be the same today. Brexit and Trump election have probably even driven the nail further. Or have things changed? Your comments are most welcome !!

Why Street Protests Don’t Work

How can so many demonstrations accomplish so little?

A Bank of India worker watches from a window as Occupy Wall Street protesters march along 47th Street in New York in September 2013. Joshua Lott/Reuters
Street protests are in. From Bangkok to Caracas, and Madrid to Moscow, these days not a week goes by without news that a massive crowd has amassed in the streets of another of the world’s big cities. The reasons for the protests vary (bad and too-costly public transport or education, the plan to raze a park, police abuse, etc.). Often, the grievance quickly expands to include a repudiation of the government, or its head, or more general denunciations of corruption and economic inequality.Aerial photos of the anti-government marches routinely show an intimidating sea of people furiously demanding change. And yet, it is surprising how little these crowds achieve. The fervent political energy on the ground is hugely disproportionate to the practical results of these demonstrations.

Notable exceptions of course exist: In Egypt, Tunisia, and Ukraine, street protests actually contributed to the overthrow of the government. But most massive rallies fail to create significant changes in politics or public policies. Occupy Wall Street is a great example. Born in the summer of 2011 (not in Wall Street but in Kuala Lumpur’s Dataran Merdeka), the Occupy movement spread quickly and was soon roaring in the central squares of nearly 2,600 cities around the world.

The hodgepodge groups that participated had no formal affiliation with one another, no clear hierarchy, and no obvious leaders. But social networks helped to virally replicate the movement so that the basic patterns of camping, protesting, fundraising, communicating with the media, and interacting with the authorities were similar from place to place. The same message echoed everywhere: It is unacceptable that global wealth is concentrated in the hands of an elite 1 percent while the remaining 99 percent can barely scrape by.

Such a global, massive, and seemingly well-organized initiative should have had a greater impact. But it didn’t. Though the topic of economic inequality has gained momentum in the years since, in practice it is hard to find meaningful changes in public policy based on Occupy’s proposals. By and large the Occupy movement has now vanished from the headlines.

In fact, government responses usually amount to little more than rhetorical appeasement, and certainly no major political reforms. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, for example, publicly validated the frustrations of those who took to the streets of her country, and promised that changes would be made, but those ‘changes’ have yet to materialize. The reaction of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the protests in his country was more aggressive. He accused the opposition and protesters of plotting a sophisticated conspiracy against him, and tried to block Twitter and YouTube. Earlier this month, Erdogan scored a huge victory in Turkey’s local elections. The same dynamic has played out during demonstrations against violence in Mexico City and corruption in New Delhi: massive marches, scant results.Why? How can so many extremely motivated people achieve so little? One answer might be found in the results of an experiment conducted by Anders Colding-Jørgensen of the University of Copenhagen. In 2009, he created a Facebook group to protest the demolition of the historic Stork Fountain in a major square of the Danish capital. Ten thousand people joined in the first week; after two weeks, the group was 27,000 members-strong. That was the extent of the experiment. There was never a plan to demolish the fountain—Colding-Jørgensen simply wanted to show how easy it was to create a relatively large group using social media.

Anti-government protesters wake up in their encampment in Bangkok. (Reuters/Damir Sagolj)

In today’s world, an appeal to protest via Twitter, Facebook, or text message is sure to attract a crowd, especially if it is to demonstrate against something—anything, really—that outrages us. The problem is what happens after the march. Sometimes it ends in violent confrontation with the police, and more often than not it simply fizzles out. Behind massive street demonstrations there is rarely a well-oiled and more-permanent organization capable of following up on protesters’ demands and undertaking the complex, face-to-face, and dull political work that produces real change in government. This is the important point made by Zeynep Tufekci, a fellow at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University, who writes that “Before the Internet, the tedious work of organizing that was required to circumvent censorship or to organize a protest also helped build infrastructure for decision making and strategies for sustaining momentum. Now movements can rush past that step, often to their own detriment.”

There is a powerful political engine running in the streets of many cities. It turns at high speed and produces a lot of political energy. But the engine is not connected to wheels, and so the “movement” doesn’t move. Achieving that motion requires organizations capable of old-fashioned and permanent political work that can leverage street demonstrations into political change and policy reforms. In most cases, that means political parties. But it doesn’t necessarily mean existing parties that demonstrators don’t trust to be change agents. Instead, as I have written elsewhere, we need new or deeply reformed parties that can energize both idealists who feel politically homeless and professionals who are fully devoted to the daily grind of building a political organization that knows how to convert political energy into public policies.

As many have noted, social media can both facilitate and undermine the formation of more effective political parties. We are familiar with the power of social media to identify, recruit, mobilize, and coordinate supporters as well as to fundraise. But we also know that clicktivism and slacktivism undermine real political work by creating the feel-good illusion that clicking “like’’ on a Facebook page or tweeting incendiary messages from the comfort of one’s computer or smartphone is equivalent to the activism that effects change.

What we’ve witnessed in recent years is the popularization of street marches without a plan for what happens next and how to keep protesters engaged and integrated in the political process. It’s just the latest manifestation of the dangerous illusion that it is possible to have democracy without political parties—and that street protests based more on social media than sustained political organizing is the way to change society.

Why Protest Someone Who Agrees With You? Here’s Why.

From Huffington Post

Whether it’s taking over government offices, or shutting down Wall Street or infiltrating TV shows to force a confrontation, sometimes political protests can be really inconvenient. And at times they target powerful people who already agree with the protestors! What’s the point of that?

Well, sometimes if you have a problem, you can work hand-in-hand with institutions that can help, through lobbying, and petitions, and meetings and fancy dinners.

But that doesn’t always work. Powerful people don’t like to talk about issues that make them uncomfortable.

For example, in 1982, a reporter asked Reagan’s press secretary if the president was aware of the AIDS epidemic. He answered, “I don’t have it. Do you?” And then he laughed, and moved on.

Problems that matter to people in the margins can get laughed at, or forgotten or set aside for more palatable topics. The issues get stuck. Getting them unstuck requires a large amount of force. It takes an uncomfortable action to make people talk about uncomfortable topics.

The Reagan White House was laughing about AIDS for most of the 80s, so ACT UP forced them to take it more seriously by shutting down Wall Street to demand better treatment and a national AIDS policy. Within months, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop sent a mailer about AIDS to every home in America. It was the largest mailing in history.

Even when powerful people agree with protestors, sometimes important problems get marginalized. It still takes a disruptive push to bring a topic from the margins to the center of everyone’s attention.

That’s why protestors chained themselves to the White House fence to protest Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Obama had been saying for years that the military ban should be repealed but it wasn’t happening. So a group that included Dan Choi took action. Now obviously, one disruptive protest doesn’t solve a problem all by itself. But it keeps pushing the conversation. Centering the issue. Keeping it moving so it never gets stuck. Within a year of that protest, DADT repeal was signed into law.

Rude, uncomfortable, disobedient protests are particularly effective for people in disadvantaged positions. We tend to talk about Stonewall as the beginning of the modern LGBT liberation movement. But there was a riot at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco three years earlier. Trans people had endured widespread harassment for years, and when a cop tried to arrest a trans woman just for being out in public, they finally fought back in a violent multi-day protest. It was messy and scary. But immediately afterwards, the San Francisco Police Department created COG, the first known trans support group in the country, along with the country’s first trans-focused social service agency.

Compare that to the polite rallies at the time. During the ‘60s, Frank Kameny organized some very professional, respectable protests in Washington DC. And although they formed the basis of later actions, you’ve probably never heard of them — and neither did people at the time. So Frank stepped up his tactics. In 1970, he led a protest against the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting, asking the APA to stop treating homosexuality as a mental illness. The next year, he crashed the meeting, grabbed the microphone and issued demands. That’s when things changed. The next year, the APA invited him to speak. And the year after that, the APA removed homosexuality from the DSM.

Every major advancement for people on the margins has required some disobedience. Yeah, it makes people uncomfortable. Sometimes it makes allies uncomfortable. And sometimes it makes the people taking the action uncomfortable. But that discomfort is the point.

It would be nice if there was a polite, palatable way for people who have limited access to power to affect change without hurting anyone’s feelings. But when people who do have access to power aren’t willing to talk about an important issue, and that issue is stuck, it’s never going to get any momentum unless you give it a strong shove.

It’s what we’ve seen over the last few decades with LGBT liberation. It’s what we saw with Occupy Wall Street. It’s what we see with Black Lives Matter. It even goes back to suffrage, when women were beaten and killed when they tried to force their way into government buildings. Suffragettes were accused of “militant hysteria.” Woodrow Wilson called them “obnoxious.” But as Laurel Thatcher Ulrich wrote, “well-behaved women seldom make history.”

If you’re a member of any group that’s been shut out, pushed aside, forgotten or made fun of, you’ll never change anything by following the rules. The rules are what marginalized you in the first place. You’ve got to break a few of them if you want to make history. And more importantly, change the future.