They all are waiting on someone to fix it. They wont do anything until it comes to their door. By then it will be way too late for most of us.
Invite folks to join you at a protest, or canvassing, or almost anything else that is more than zero. A big chunk of the population can be hooked on action if somebody they know asks.
I am the token white guy where I work and none of my coworkers want to talk about it. They don’t want to protest. They think they are gonna be left alone. They are just one ICE encounter away from finding out but until then they will not step outside their bubble.
There’s 3 states. You could probably subdivide it further, but the basics are -
- Fuck yeah, make kings and inflict suffering
- can’t be bothered to deal with it for whatever reason
- How the hell can we stop the crazy train?
I’m proudly in camp 3, but holy fuck am I exhausted and depressed!
For me it’s at work where we don’t acknowledge what’s really happening and it is starting to drive me a little mad.
I work in a very diverse workforce, but for a very old fashioned company, and politics are not spoken of.
But I am surrounded by immigrants and people who are probably here on work visas, or are just dark skinned, and I have to think they are living with a constant background fear that is steadily rising but they never talk about it and I never say anything. I have a whole cycle of shame with it.
There is a way you can quietly, unobtrusively support these people: just get to know them. If you get to know people, and by this I mean really listen, and take interest in what they say when they speak of whatever is important to them, later on all the little ways you can help will arise from that personal, direct knowledge over time, and between now and then maybe you’ve made a friend.
I’m not saying drape yourself over their cubicle wall and ask them detailed questions about their national traditions until you’re glowing and they’re weirded out; I’m saying get interested in who they are and what they have to say, and try to do it as naturally as you can. If you’re not good at friendly small talk, at least know their names and greet them like you’re glad to know them. In whatever way it means to you, be a friend so that when friends are needed, you’re on their list.
Don’t think that this casual ongoing personal interaction is powerless: rather, it is the source of our greatest strength. Community is what is saving Minneapolis, community is what is defeating ICE, community is what is getting people spontaneously out on the streets in freezing weather to prove that together we – a whole lot of individual I’s – WE have no intention of quietly standing for this shit.
WE is the most powerful thing we have.
And it all starts right where you are now: wanting to help and having no idea how. But you asked. To me, that counts.
Getting to know people before the trouble starts is how you know the best ways to act in their behalf if they ever need it, in ways that do not trample their agency or cause humiliation or, god forbid, increase their dread. As a nation of citizens we have been set at each others’ throats for far too long, a division that only succeeds because we plant ourselves behind screens and let complete strangers tell us what to think and how to feel. In doing this, we have forgotten how to just be friends. So start there. Pay attention to others. Greet people when you see them, even a nod. Learn to listen. Take general interest. See who responds and who doesn’t. In time this will open every door that can be opened, and also allow those who have their own reasons for staying aloof the personal privacy they want.
I feel the whole shame thing, but if you can, give yourself permission to set it aside. Seriously. Everyone starts somewhere. You’re starting here, and honestly I’m grateful for every single one of us who is feeling just as lost and wondering right now what can I do to help? But you asked; you’ve already made a start. It’s a good one. No shame required. And if you have nothing better in mind, then the answer is, build community. However you can, wherever you can, in whatever small ways feel right to you so that when the shit starts you’re already known as an ally.
EDITED to add link
Most of my coworkers in my area are older and white, but the rest of the company is highly mixed. I know most of them are Republicans and are enjoying this sick show even if they’re not saying it. Most days I just want to scream.
Be the change you want to see then?
I’m in Canada but also a very diverse group of people around me at all times. I make it very clear with everyone that politics aside, I have all their backs regardless of race, colour or creed. Differences are what makes us stronger not weaker and anyone who is afraid of differences shows themselves as weak.
Work is already a compartmentalized space for many people. Some places, by rote, have no politics or religion on their daily, invisible walls in existence for decades before Trump in power was even a thought. To have that in the workplace is normal. Mileage varies, no doubt, there is no 100% with people.
Sometimes you run into That Person who breaks the rules and makes the entire room break eye contact, bow head, and disengage to focus on work. There’s a reason most people don’t talk to them.
Where this is going to resonate most, now, is for people who do most of their in person talking to others at their job. For people who only encounter non white people at their job.
For me, work is the reprieve zone from it all. I have a job to do, my focus is on it. At least until we too have Immigration & Customs Enforcement in our halls.
Again, compartmentalization. Not just to do a better, more focused job (how much this matters also depends on what the job is, to you) but to engage in a mental moment of reprieve from thinking about our fallen republic.
I just can’t be friends with people who don’t seriously want every republican drown.
Removed by mod
Fuck off with your chatbot
What’s the point of bots in here commenting?
There’s been more and more. The internet is basically walking dead. There are extremities that the infection hasn’t really overpowered yet like Lemmy, but Lemmy shares the same circulatory system as the other major organs of the body of the internet, so the infection will eventually overpower these spaces as well.
What is this generic ass nothing of a comment. How does this help anyone?
tHiS iS a ToPiC wOrTh DiScUsSiNg
Like no shit. Why do you think it was posted?
Looks like someone testing AI.
Everything happening right now is normal for the US, the only difference is 2 white people got killed this time so people started paying attention. The ones protesting are protesting Trump’s ICE when they should be protesting ICE.
I like how this ignores the massive waves of protests that have taken place since the very first ICE operations, and basically the entire story up to this point.
But hey if it gives you a way to shame white people for being white, while being white yourself, I guess it gives us all something to do, right?
This is not normal. Quit trying to convince people not to take action by pretending Trump is no different
This is very different. Democracy is genuinely under threat
There is no democracy when you are ruled by oligarchs
Everything happening right now is normal for the US, the only difference is 2 white people got killed this time so people started paying attention.
This is such bullshit
You say bullshit because you feel targeted by the statement. Your type haven’t been upset before Goode because you didn’t have to face it, and it’s easy to dismiss victims that don’t look like you.
Christ how you stay balanced on that edge all the time, must be exhausting.
Also, it’s Good, not Goode you child.
Her name was Good, not Goode. Shows how much you pay attention
It doesn’t fucking matter, you argument semantics while defending a police state
They’re a .ml user, should tell you enough right there.
I used to doubt such stereotypes when I started on Lemmy but now I don’t, every single interaction I’ve had with a .ml user has been an exercise in daycare for troubled youths. They are literal children, and have the most deluded, horseshoe-theory-personified, edgelord, leftist-MAGA takes I’ve ever seen online.
You have leftists because we make you feel like that bad people you are. We make you face the evil you support.
Everything? Really? That’s bold. I’ve been around for a while, and I personally can’t remember a time when 3000 armed, masked, untrained and unaccountable thugs were let loose by the federal government on individual cities to openly terrorize, incite, and murder the general population.
It can’t be more clear that he’s trying to normalize this. His message is that we shouldn’t do anything and just let happen because we didn’t do anything before this.
But really he’s just desperate that we don’t fight back. He wants Russia and China to win through Trump decimating the US.
You’re not fighting back, this will blow over in a few weeks and it will go back to business as usual, brown people getting targeted and harassed, white people not so much. Liberals protest individual cogs in the machine, as if replacing e a cog changes the function of the machine. Right now they are protesting Trump’s ICE when they should be protesting ICE. They are protesting Trump when they should be protesting the entire oligarchy. Liberals don’t mind fascism as long as they don’t have to see it.
And you’re not doing shit either but trolling, you’re such a tiny cog in the same system but don’t even realize it.
Go outside and learn to actually socialize and organize actual opposition and do something useful with your energy instead of trying to pretend you despise others so you don’t get sad when they say your words are dumb.
Whether you realize it or not, you are argu8ng for inaction. Stop that.
You can give up if you want, but don’t try to drag others down with you
I havnt given up, I’m protesting the entire system not just the one that dragged me from brunch
I think it’s more likely that they are trying to break through the walls of capitalist propaganda and make people realize that the USA has always been fascist-oriented and that getting rid of this latest symptom (Trump) will not fix that. After all, fascism is imperialism turned inward. We desperately need a wholesale movement away from capitalism and towards socialism to actually ensure that fascism cannot rise again.
Pretty standard .ml take.
Can’t help it if .world doesn’t know fascism when they see it
You’re the one that doesn’t see it. You’re out here telling people this is normal and not do anything
This is normal, you sit there in smug arrogance defending a police state as long as you don’t t have to think about it. Point to where I said do nothing, I said protest the entire system.
Yes, yes, America bad. We get it.
Hey, just out of curiosity, did anything noteworthy happen on June 4, 1989?
You talking about the US CIA color revolution that failed?
Kent State
1968 in general
So a thing from almost 60 years ago? That was a tragedy and eventually led to a course correction on Vietnam. Hardly an example of “business as usual”
Millions killed since Kent State by the state. Kent State is remembered because, again, it was a bunch of white people
In a single mass casualty event? Ohh nevermind you’re one of those ml accounts.
When the weak minded have no argument they always resort to ad hominem argumentum
It sounded like you wanted a concrete example within living memory
Well I can’t assume what the op meant. But I think the spirit is how what’s going on isn’t normal. And I think using an example like that is in itself unique and this is also not normal. Both of those things are rare and if anything prove the point that we shouldn’t be here and we should be alarmed with what is happening.
I’m well over 60.
I would think someone alive during Jim Crow would remember Kent State
How about the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Sudan, Myanmar, or any of the other countless places where US capitalism has incited genocide, murder, rape, and torture. Or is it only fascism when it happens inside our borders to white people?
Sort of feels like you’re just baiting here. We’re talking about domestic issues in this thread.
Previously, ICE was only set loose to terrorize, incite, and murder the brown population. So yeah, this is pretty much business as usual.
ICEA wasn’t previously “let loose,” the deportation process existed (and happened way too often), but people received due process.
Due process by who, Obama denied due process to 75% of the millions he deported
Typical .ml tankie bullshit take.
Does America have sordid events in her history? Yes.
But to take a “same shit, different day” stance isn’t just myopic, it assists the present admin by attempting to place the actions of the day in the “normal” zone.
The white people part breaks the inertia, the dismissiveness, the head in the sand aspect OP is referring to.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement are just out doing immigration and customs enforcement things, right? Right up until they shoot two white people in the head.
We’re talking broad strokes perception management here. Most of the public doesn’t have time, inclination is separate, to dig in like the people of Lemmy or the still earnest corners of Reddit, or the journalist/HCR/Robert Reich essay writing corner of Substack.
They vaguely know Immigration & Customs Enforcement are out deporting people. A layer deeper they might know it’s harassment of immigrants and that protestors are protesting. Let’s be real about what “immigrants” means to most Americans: brown people, mainly in the form of Mexicans and Haitians, are being rounded up and deported. But, for the most part, agree or disagree with immigration policy, they’re thinking Immigration & Customs Enforcement is doing that, what their name says.
Right up until someone clearly not fitting the immigrant profile is BAM shot in the head.
Why not Porter? I’m not going to try to argue that color doesn’t matter here. It does. But unlike Floyd, Porter is missing the fundamental piece that creates action like back in 2020: video. Good and Pretti had video. It’s why they target journalists first with the gas now. Video presence matters.
As for the two white people. The world is always more dismissive of women, we are forever placed in the “it’s her fault” zone, but even so. Pretti is unique because he’s also making conservative heads spin around. 2A, VA, a trade adjacent profession, a most trusted profession, an helping/service profession, and he’s a white man, the pinnacle of MAGA.
With Pretti, it’s a coffin nail on the idea that Immigration & Customs Enforcement is doing immigration and customs enforcement things. Pretti completely changes the narrative, for most.
This is just so dismissive of the ugly history behind ICE that I’m actually slightly disgusted.
This isn’t the historic Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That was the premise for what this is but that is not what this is.
They are Trump/Stephen Miller’s brown shirts. That’s new.
You’re wrong about this. It’s a reasonable position during the first Trump presidency, but under this one it is not “equal opportunity oppression”. White people of privilege being murdered in the streets by cops isn’t the new equality… It’s the new ceiling. It doesn’t mean everyone else has new company in the oppression floor, it means everyone now at the bottom will be shoved into darker depths than some might imagine.
The class war is no longer trying to hide.
There’s the top 10% and their brown shirts. And there’s everyone else, who should be toeing the line and at their jobs.
Exactly. AmeriKKKa has been a shithole for a long long while now. Hope they all rot.
You literally have emails showing it’s every fucking country doing this shit with each other because the rich hate you. Don’t be an idiot.
You realize that all working class folks, internationally, are your peers? And you just spat on ~300 million people, many of whom are suffering and many if not most of whom didn’t vote for that suffering. Have some compassion and solidarity for fucks sake. Did you wish the same thing on Greek people when their economy collapsed?
The Greeks didn’t cause death and misery to every country on the globe across their much, much older history. Compared to a nation founded on racism, death, and greed, they’re literal saints.
Oh shit, it’s one of those “anti-imperialist” takes again where they only consider the US and ignore everyone else’s imperialism. Big yawn. You realize this is 100% parroting Russian propaganda invented in the Soviet days, right? Go ask the Eastern bloc countries if they weren’t imperialist. Yes, America bad but don’t make it your whole personality 🙄
If you didn’t notice this post is about the US. But of course you are so enlightened that you are impervious to any form of propaganda, specifically the US version
Yaaaaawn
It’s that arrogant hubris that’s caused our current situation.
Will you name me a first world nation that wasn’t built on 2 out of 3 of those things? Are your politicians and billionaires also saints? Why are you going on like this after I brought up compassion and solidarity for other people in your socioeconomic class despite their nation of origin? Am I a greedy racist killer because my great great whatever grandfather had no option but to leave where he was for whatever reason (famine, war, oppression)?
I am really interested in your answers to these questions, because they are meant to be collaborative, despite what seems like your insistence to be antagonistic.
It’s about damage caused / duration of its existence. Find me a nation that perpetrated as much as the US has, in such little time. I’m waiting.
You guys are concentrated evil.
Well man, fuck you too than.
What is wrong with people who say shit like this?
Intentionally sowing discord?
Discord is when we point out that the country is fascists?
