The decade from 2010 to 2020 was one that saw more people around the world participating in mass protests than at any other point in human history. And yet, looking back, the results of so many of these mass protests, the societal changes that followed, were the opposite of what protestors were demanding. In his new book, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, award-winning journalist and foreign correspondent Vincent Bevins asks: Why? In this special episode, recorded at The Real News Network studio in Baltimore, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez talks to Bevins about his new book and about his own working life as a journalist covering people’s uprisings around the world.
Link to Vincent’s book: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/vincent-bevins/if-we-burn/9781541788978/?lens=publicaffairs
Post-Production: Jules Taylor
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** (Disclaimer: This video content is intended for educational and informational purposes only) **
Is one of the issues here the difference between a protest rally and how that, if at all, becomes a broad based sustainable movement. They require structures, educational work, self-discipline, sacrifice, communication/ journalism departments, and grass roots recruitment to apply pressure and participate in power. Is that what was missing?
Realize that's exactly what the gov wants you to think.
Protest need to be in larger numbers and for the right things.
Unsure that castigation is a way to get people to observe, read, or experience any-thing. just saying
People calling for violence against politicians. Sure, that would really help, because thirld world country tactics always work to make things better for people? Actually doing something like starting worker co ops and starting exchanging services and finding ways to survive without working for CEOs would be much more useful than trying to scare sociopathic politicians into changing their ways. We need o dismantle the system, not to force the makers to change, we need to make the systems.
They 'work' to meet like-minded people (and government agents). Otherwise they only work if your 'protest' causes corporate government financial pain. It's all about the $$.
Fighting for change is pointless when 99% of people don't even know what kind of situation the country is in. People seem to think we live in a democracy. No, we have an illusion of a republic and a shadow government run by the intelligence agencies. Which 2 presidents tried to fight against. One was Trump, and the other was Kennedy. Our government was taken from us the second the C.I.A. executed a sitting president on live tv. He was going to go after the power of these agencies. It isn't a left, or right issue. It's the same issue all thoughout human history. It's the elites vs the people.
They never worked. Both sides are kabuki theater.
Don’t want to listen to radio on my iphone. Video is better.
They have worked in France sometimes in Germany and the Middle East. !! Of course they dont work in the usa or uk cuz NO ONE comes out in mass protest anymore they are to lazy and most dont care about society as long as they are doing ok. !!
Violence works. You have to put fear back in politicians; not just stand outside in unison and accomplish nothing
Great discussion!
Because nobody cares anymore.. They just want you to go back to work and make more cell phone cases.
If protests worked there would be no need for them still. The catch 22 of such things.
Protests only work when they are massive enough they disrupt the regular population in a way to make them think differently. But the media has captured attention so much that any disruption (even minor ones) to regular activities is now framed as a threat to civilization if it's not an approved protest like BLM. It's a catch-22.
The state is too powerful now and does everything to keep things the same. What will make change likely is some sort of major disruption in government. Maybe that will be the tipping points caused by the climate crisis. If you don't have a plan to step in when the government is on the edge of collapse, someone who does will.
35:25 until common “services“ are taken from parasites, nothing will change. Since no one is willing to use correct language, that is unlikely to happen. Why do you think education is not funded?
27:48 this period in history will be known as “the battle of euphemisms“. Nobody uses correct language.
Protest is when I say I don't like this. Resistance is when I put an end to what I don't like. Protest is when I say I refuse to go along with this anymore. Resistance is when I make sure everybody else stops going along too.
@20:01 I disagree about journalism, that you need it for Democracy to exist. That's a myth. These days it can exist with social media and local canvasing kind of stuff like it has been since sm came out. A majority of Journalism doesn't do their jobs anyway they admit to having agendas gloating they are PRIVATE. That being said you don't know who is telling the truth and who is advertising. At least with social media there's an algorithm.
"now"
Yes. Because "mass protests" really "worked" in 2003 to shut down what Proglodytes then called "Bush's" Illegal war for oil. Before it became Obama's and Hillary Rotten Clinton's illegal war for oil.