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In reply to the discussion: Protests temporarily close malls, shut down trains [View all]PosterChild
(1,307 posts)...the sit ins at segregated lunch counters during the civil rights era isn't appropriate. It is at best self-aggrandizing, and at worse insulting.
First and foremost, the Greensboro and subsequent sit-ins were targeted to a very specific, well-recognized, and easily identified injustice. The protesters were actually defying the injustice they sought to overcome and were putting themselves in jeopardy of arrest and mob vengeance. They were provoking an overreaction on the part of the segregationists that dramatized the injustice and compelled people who were complacent to take a stand and turn against segregation. The were heroic and effective.
In contrast, what injustice are these protesters confronting and defying? Holiday shopping? Apparently so, since their slogans and statements demand us to "stop shopping", " think twice before spending that dollar" and to eschew "materialism". In other words, people who are literally just going about their business and enjoying the holiday spirit are being specifically targeted for going about their business and enjoying the holiday spirit. If these folks had any inclination toward sympathy for or understanding of "the movement" they most probably have made up their mind against it.
"Materialism" may not be an entirely virtuous life-style choice, but it is not an injustice in and of itself, and it doesn't make one complicit in the injustices of Ferguson. Confusing and conflating concrete and manifest injustice with something so abstract as "materialism" and to punish the general public for it is a losing "strategy". If "strategy" actually has anything to do with it at all.