All I see out there are gay rights, trans rights, whatever parades.
And people actually show up. like wth. given that it’s 5% population max.
Where are the worker rights parades?
US workers are 80% of the population (sans elderly, kids and disabled).
Why is noone doing it? Why is noone organizing Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear”?
Why does US east coastline still owned by billionaires and we have to ask permission to walk on that sand?
Where is healthcare for all?
Where are bike lines?
Why dont we nationalize and own the oil fields in US?
Where are mandatory 1 month vacations? (even fucking China has them). ?
Lots of people would march for those demands.
Wt guys? just fucking why?
Labor Day.
As for pride, it’s because they were (still are) stigmatized, shoved into the closet, persecuted, beat up, and even killed. It’s a moment for them to say we’re here and we belong. Maybe we’ll get to the day when no one cares.
As for the rest of the list, I think you’re vastly overestimating how much political time (as in Congress and similar state) this gets. It’s a parade, it’s not trying to write new legislation.
They took International Workers’ Day (May Day) away from us and gave us red hot dogs and Labor Day that isn’t a paid holiday and most people don’t get off work.
Oh, maybe you missed it but it’s because there’s an asshole in office.
5% of the population is probably the max that would be interested in a parade/march
Feel free to organize one.
Then you will have insight into why there are few. Or you will kick off a whole thing.
Organizing things is hard. I am sure there are lots of reasons.
“Why isn’t someone doing it for me already? You all suck.”
—OP
There has to be an org doing it. As a private citizen I don’t have resources.
Main problem is there is no push in that direction. People need to voice this is what we care about.
Yes! Sadly, at least as near as I can figure, this is on purpose.
People with disposable income can organize businesses, demonstrations, and communities. They may threaten the status quo.
People that must work daily to not starve cannot organize anything. They may not even know their neighbours. They are exposed and vulnerable.
Remember how in the early 2000’s, it seemed we were on the cusp of a great turning point? More people, not nearly all people, had access to good paying jobs and disposable income? It seemed progress may finally start. Then 2008 wiped many people out. The new wealth was concentrated. (I am leaving a lot out.)
Anyway, there are not as many people that can organize as one may assume. There will not be until fewer people are financially vulnerable.
I don’t it’s connected to income.
There are parties like wfh - u just need to tell them what what we demand
Lots of social-cultural issues make for great distractions from actual economic measures while also ensuring infighting among the population! so they get nothing done.
Feel free to start one.
I don’t have resources
Oh yes. And trans people are notoriously rich…
Just fucking do it. Post a coffee meeting on Facebook. Meet some people with similar ideas. Have them host some get together. Have a tiny protest in your town. Get more attention. Get more people. Wash rinse repeat.
You want worker representation? Do the fucking work.
I mean, resources can also include time, energy, contacts, social abilities, all of which are much more important than money when organizing a protest, especially a ‘small’ one. Ofc, your argument still stands that thz best way to get something is to work for it to be done, but it is reasonable to think that someone might miss resources in the broad sense as above, making it much more work relatively speaking.
Absolutely. But many hands make light work.
Can I just do some violence? It seems a lot less stressful
Hey go be pro-labor without trivializing gay rights. There is absolutely no call for that bullshit.
I know you’re in the US so it’s probably a lot more difficult, but find union activists…
Unions fight for these exact rights, and the reason most developed countries have vacations and healthcare are thanks to union action. Of course, America has fought very hard to keep these down.
Also, no need to shoot others down while you’re at it. No one is free until we’re all free, and this has always been a class war.
Disagree that it’s “5% of the population max” — I’ve seen estimates that around 10% of the population are lgbtq… but even assuming it’s 5%, in a country of 340 mil, that comes out to 17 million people. And a bunch of people at pride are straight, so it’s no wonder why they draw in such huge numbers each year.
Regardless… what does gay pride have to do with workers rights? Why does that make you mad — they’re not preventing anyone else from organizing? And from my experience, lgbtq folks are very vocal about workers rights specifically (given the discrimination they face in the workplace for being gay/trans/etc)
And unlike some other movements, there is a very rooted history of public demonstration by the gay/trans community given laws specifically preventing them from gathering in public. In many ways, pride parades represent gay/trans people reaffirming their rights to literally just be in public together without being arrested.
So yeah… I get that there should be more public demonstrations — I’m all for that. But leave gay/trans rights alone please lol
I don’t think they’re angry at pride parades, they’re angry that there’s no similar parades/demonstrations for workers rights, and using pride parade as an example to be emulated…
Op:
And people actually show up. like wth. given that it’s 5% population max.
Their view of pride parades sounds pretty negative to me.
OP compares it to 80% of the population being workers, yet no-one is showing up for those rallys. I guess OP fails to see why workers do not feel the same urgency to attend rallys that lgbtq people do.
I see where OP is coming from. Workers are being treated increasingly worse, but there seems to be no collective response so far. Sure, workers are not being discriminated against and murdered (yet), but if that’s the standard for protests, it’s unreasonably high.
I feel like ever since the term shifted from “gay liberation” to “gay pride” it has hindered the movement in a lot of ways. Liberation tells you what this is about, pride tells you… You’re proud? Good for you. Lots of people are proud, but not all people need liberation (or, at least, not everyone thinks they need it).
I vote we go back to calling it Liberation, and instead of bickering over why people are at the queer event and not a workers event, we start organizing monthly or bimonthly events, a queer/LGBT liberation event, a women’s liberation event, a worker’s liberation event, Hispanic Liberation event… Let’s pepper the calendar with parties and parades and protests while drilling into people’s minds that we are all deserving of respect, autonomy, and liberation.
Not sure how well I said all that. I’m about 5 boozy horchatas in, and I hate to do the “as a gay man” thing, but I feel like I should mention I am, in fact, a gay, and I quite enjoy pride and what it stands for
instead of bickering over why people are at the queer event and not a workers event
I see a lot of people in the thread interpreting OPs statements this way, but that just doesn’t seem like what they’re saying at all. They didn’t say anything negative about queer events, and they’re not asking why people are at them, or implying that those events should be less popular. They’re asking why workers rights events aren’t even more popular, considering their relevance to the vast majority of the population.
That’s one of the reasons I didn’t comment on the post itself, and only replied to another person. Because I can’t quite tell which way OP was leaning on that, and I didn’t want to be uncharitable.
Read the news. There’s loads.
We’ve been convinced to slap fight about identity politics, many times necessarily so because unfair pressure is being applied via abuse by those in power
This results in blocking any dialogues about class consciousness
At the same time there is propaganda that goes against class consciousness: labor unions have been utterly destroyed both literally and from an optics standpoint (many Americans distrust the concept), consumerism runs deep in our blood to push the idea that we need more capital and glorify excessive “baller” lifestyles, poor is pushed to be seen as a moral failing, etc
A couple reasons:
- Most people are not emotionally invested in their job, the way they are with their identity.
- People are afraid that demonstrating will either cost them their job directly, or move them to the front of the line for the next ‘layoffs’
- Income inequality causes infighting.
- Small Business owners are often the first group to feel pain from workers rights, and major corps are last.
- Lobbiests, politicians, and major (social) media networks working together to suppress the movement.
There are other reasons too, and none of them are ‘good’ reasons, but they are all realities.
We’ve been seeing the slow rebuilding of the American labor movement, but it is a shell of its old self.
A lot of the established unions have been resting on its laurels and only narrowly protecting its members while new unions are in building mode, trying to get unions established.
But now it should be so much simpler.
We have internet, we have social networks etc.I feel like there is 0 direction for labor rights
All I see out there are gay rights, trans rights, whatever parades.
And people actually show up. like wth. given that it’s 5% population max.Because the playbook to destroy democracies has already been written. You don’t destroy a democratic nation by attacking it, you destroy it by getting it to attack itself.
Fascist know that if they can just turn the majority against a specific minority, then they have a foot in the door. You can’t uninvite the vampire from your home, once you let them have their way with the minority, the rules have changed, and those rules will eventually be changed for everyone.
If you protect the neediest minority group that protection extends to everyone. If we ignore that need, then it’s only a matter of time before everyone needs that protection.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have workers rights parades. I’m saying that gay rights and trans rights are workers rights parades, because they are our fellow workers. I think a lot of modern leftist groups think of minority rights as vestigial or as a distraction. When in reality every trans rights parade should be protected by a sea of factory workers willing to stomp on some fascist for attacking the solidarity or the working class.
Hell yeah. When the right asks you which group’s rights you want to sacrifice to save your own rights, you tell them to eat shit. They’re going to come for your rights too, especially if they succeed in taking away those other people’s rights. There is no sufficiently small in group for conservatism.
I’m saying that gay rights and trans rights are workers rights parades, because they are our fellow workers.
Exactly. LGBTQ+ folks are the current target for the authoritarians and fascists, but all of us non-billionaires are on the target list.
We will all be abused, beaten, broken and sometimes murdered, unless we push the fascists back into their holes.
We must stand together.
Labor organization and demonstrating happens all the time. The doo-doo ass in Chief just called in the fucking stormtroopers to deal with the now two-day long demonstration against ICE and mass deportation in L.A…
