Doug Jones Victory Dog Dance Party! Open Thread for laughing at Roy Moore

@Dimmy

Everyone seems to think that protests, by themselves, constitute effective activism. They don’t. They have to be combined with voter registration; with boycotts; with strikes; with campaigns for political office. Measures that will actually spook the people with money and power.

Of course protests by themselves might not be effective. Is anyone here — or elsewhere, for that matter — arguing otherwise?

Protests that accomplish this — like the Civil Rights marches in the US, and Gandhi’s salt march in India — can succeed. Those that don’t — like the marches against the War on Terror, and the Vietnam War, and Brexit, and the Occupy X movements — will always fail. It’s as simple as that.

What? Is the USA still fighting in Vietnam?

In point of fact, those opposing the Vietnam war protested in the streets, wrote letters, and even ran for the highest office in the land. You’ve heard of presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy, right?

We’re talking about THE PRIMAL FORCES OF NATURRRRRRRE (to borrow from Network ) so why on Earth would you think a few thousand “peasants” roaming the streets would turn those forces aside?

No primal forces of nature involved. It’s simply the structure of our political system.

The Guerrilla Girls have been protesting sexism and racism for decades — and it’s paying off.

In Florence, they’re bringing the works of women artists out of the basement

When it comes to art, the term “Old Master” is with us for a reason: For centuries it’s been the male artists who have attracted the interest of art historians. Great collectors and museums have paid scant attention to the existence of talented women artists from periods such as the Italian Renaissance.

But the landscape is changing, and nowhere more noticeably than in Florence, the city known as the “cradle of the Renaissance.” This past summer one of its most famous museums, the Uffizi, kicked off a series of exhibitions dedicated to the work of women artists from the past.

Eike Schmidt, who became the Uffizi’s director in 2015 after a stint at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, says he drew inspiration from the Guerilla Girls, a group of feminist art activists, who told him that many museums have the works of women artists, but they’re kept in storage.

https://www.rawstory.com/2017/12/in-florence-theyre-bringing-the-works-of-women-artists-out-of-the-basement/

The Guerrilla Girls are feminist activist artists. Over 55 people have been members over the years, some for weeks, some for decades. Our anonymity keeps the focus on the issues, and away from who we might be. We wear gorilla masks in public and use facts, humor and outrageous visuals to expose gender and ethnic bias as well as corruption in politics, art, film, and pop culture. We undermine the idea of a mainstream narrative by revealing the understory, the subtext, the overlooked, and the downright unfair. We believe in an intersectional feminism that fights discrimination and supports human rights for all people and all genders. We have done over 100 street projects, posters and stickers all over the world, including New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Mexico City, Istanbul, London, Bilbao, Rotterdam, and Shanghai, to name just a few. We also do projects and exhibitions at museums, attacking them for their bad behavior and discriminatory practices right on their own walls, including our 2015 stealth projection about income inequality and the super rich hijacking art on the façade of the Whitney Museum in New York. Our retrospectives in Bilbao and Madrid, Guerrilla Girls 1985-2015, and our US traveling exhibition exhibition, Guerrilla Girls: Not Ready To Make Nice, have attracted attracted thousands. We could be anyone. We are everywhere. What’s next? More creative complaining!!* New projects in London, Paris, Cologne, and more!

*I now see that my complaints lack creativity. Must fix.

https://www.guerrillagirls.com/our-story/

@Kat

Some good stories today, thank you!

Regarding Princess Pushy – she’s been out of the news too long by her lights, and not nearly long enough by mine 😛 . Sort of stunt she’d pull on purpose, knowing full well what would happen.

Ms. Markle politely ignoring it is probably the most deadly insult she can reply with. I do like this lass, a lot. 😀

Speaking of protests and placards, just now on Twitter there was an update from the asylum-seekers on Manus Island.

I hope this link works:

Not trying to make a point or anything here; just want to keep these guys visible. We could all use some of their dignity and stamina.

Don’t know if I’m making sense or not.

You’re making perfect sense. I agree; without 5 million people worldwide participating in the women’s march, I don’t think people would feel supported enough to step forward and speak out in the way they have been.

@Shadowplay

Some good stories today, thank you!

My pleasure.

IMO many Americans don’t know who Princess Michael of Kent is or what a golliwog is. So an incident that includes both of them is educational.

More info on Princess Pushy:

Her background also caused a stir. Born in Carlsbad, a German-populated town now part of the Czech Republic, her father, Baron Gunther Hubertus von Reibnitz, was reportedly a Nazi party member. Following the revelation of her father’s Nazi past, she told television viewers in an interview: “My shoulders are broad. I shall have to carry it. I wasn’t alive when all this happened, so I hope people will judge me on my performance, on what I am.”

Ha, ha, we will.

http://people.com/royals/princess-michael-of-kent-controversial-royal-family-member/

Somebody left a gift-wrapped packahe at Mnuchin’s Bel Air home; bomb squad called; box contained shit.

https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/national-international/Suspicious-Package-Addressed-to-Treasury-Secretary-Steven-Mnuchin-466199153.html

Merry Christmas.

They’ll throw away the key … surely?

Typical neo-Nazi: so useless that he can’t even kill himself successfully. I hope he has life-altering injuries which make him wish he had succeeded.

It’s very thoughtful of someone to send Mnuchin horse manure. A house like that is likely to have a garden, so that’s a lovely gift. Don’t look a gift horse in the, uh…

@wwth

Youre making sense indeed. Protests act as a statement of “WE ARE HERE WE ARE HERE WE ARE HERE!” a la Horton Hears a Who.

And it can be a vital piece in the puzzle. I agree with you about the women’s march and Weinstein. Dimmy was wrong to claim that anyone here is arguing that marches alone are effective, but I’m speaking from experience of *others* telling me to just “have a massive angry protest in order to stop Brexit.”

It needs more than that. Right now we are battling a right wing media that is powerful and stubborn, politicians so corrupt they think its perfectly fine to lie to everyone and then lie about lying, and then of course there is the suspected but not quite proven Cambridge Analytica and Russian interference question.

And don’t even get me started on Jeremy Corbyn the so called “Opposition” leader.

@Shadowplay

I’m actually glad he didn’t manage to kill himself. He would have gotten off too easy if he did. But i don’t trust the prison system to rehabilitate him either.
I guess it’s too much to hope people take a look at his friends and internet activity.

Happy Christmas or any other holiday that is happening right now.

@Mish

For the same reason as you, I haven’t really bothered to look into Cambridge Analytica. Plus, researching bot networks and such doesn’t really interest me anyway.

Jeremy Corbyn. Hoo boy, sit down for this one. I’m not totally against him but I don’t trust him. Everything about what he has been doing lately screams “I want to be in power no matter the cost to anyone else.” He also seems to be a living human example of what happens when a fanbase puts people off the product itself. Some Corbynites are so fanatical that they will straight up abuse anyone who doubts his political prowess or “integrity”. There is very much an personality cult thing going on within the Labour Party and I don’t much care for it.

I understand why people like him. He’s got positive radical ideas for a more equal society (despite overlooking cases of misogyny and anti-semitism within his own party…) which I can on board with, but at the heart of it all he and his front benchers are spin doctors, supported by faithful pundits and blogs, online papers like the Independent and The Canary (which is so far left wing it’s basically modern day Pravda for the English speaking world).

Brexit is his downfall. He flat out refuses to oppose the Tories and enables any vote they want to win by whipping his MPs to abstain. He’s actively letting them get away with shit but the Labour PR machine has pumped his followers full of the same tired excuses: “Tories are a majority and he’s not running the show, what do you expect him to do?” or “He’s playing the long game!” or “If he stands against the Tories he’ll alienate Leavers and Labour will lose the next election!” or “He has to wait for public opinion to turn first but he’s really a pro European! Really!” Blind faith. Nothing but blind, stubborn faith and they too seem to only care about Labour winning the next election. The damage done from Brexit is second place priority for them.

Bear in mind he does nothing to actually try and turn public opinion despite his popularity. He just makes statements like “Labour Brexit will be far better than Tory Brexit” (which is bullshit because leaving the single market and customs union, which he has repeatedly said he wants Britain to do, means that absolutely nobody except the rich will get anything from Brexit at all. You can’t have Brexit AND end austerity but saying so falls on deaf ears).

Its incredibly clear to me that he actually wants what the Tories want due to being a die hard socialist. EEA rules mean he can’t implement the level of state ownership he desires so he wants out, but he doesn’t want to lose Remain voting Labour supporters so he pretends Labour doesn’t have a clear position at all. Or rather, he throws a bone to both pro and anti EU groups to make them both think he’s on their side. Seriously, for every Corbynista who is convinced he secretly supports Remain there is another who’s equally convinced he’s a Brexiteer. This enormous act of doublespeak does not scream “integrity” to me.

People are quitting the Labour Party in droves due to his Brexit stance but he is yet another figure who surrounds himself with sycophants, so he doesn’t see it. He’s convinced that he can win an election on the back of “look how the Tories wrecked UK with Brexit!” and not be called out for how he sat on his hands and let them get away with it all. Opposition is more than just voting on a Bill. He doesn’t do jack shit and he’s managed to convince a chunk of people that a Labour government is more important than millions of people not having their lives turned upside down.

That’s why I don’t trust him. And I’m flat out furious with the rabid section of his fanbase. They are splitting the Remain movement by siding with a charlatan and placing him on a pedestal above all else.

End rant.