Discussion for article #241677
āOr Elseā is too vague of a demand. Itās like what the OWS movement screwed up: no clear one demand or two demands that everyone rallied around. If you canāt be clear what you really want to see changed, you canāt expect the change to happen.
It was a 20,000-person meetup.
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In order to have a successful movement one needs a lot of things including a coherent and focused message, a counter-argument that is more than āitās the right thing to doā or ābecause X says soā (most in the GOP couldnāt give a ratās fart about civil rights), and so much more. Unfortunately, a lot of those elements get lost on people who have largely been taught that protests and marches work.
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I bet a lot of white folks are hoping it means, or else weāll go back to Africa.
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āOr elseā means: or maybe not.
The demand is for justice, obviously, not for something called āor else.ā Sheesh.
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These messages arenāt aimed at the GOP. Weāre never, ever going to get these people, and I really canāt understand why some folks think we should try. Few on the left complain that the gay rights movement didnāt try hard enough to convince the religious right, yet those same folks seem to think racial minorities should try to move racists. Weāre never going to convince the GOP that civil rights for minorities is a thing that matters. The focus isnāt on trying to convince those who remain purposefully unconvinced of the obvious, itās to get our supposed allies, the ones who constantly nitpick, bitch and critique the hell out of every attempt by minorities to seek social justice, to finally wake the fuck up and join us. Clearly, in that regard, thereās a whole hell of lot of work to be done.
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I thought the white reaction was a little overblown. The āor elseā springs right out of movies. And the āor elseā usually is violence. The only other time you hear it is with parents talking to kids, and even then the āor elseā is sometimes violence. Itās never āor elseā¦cookiesā.
But as Artemisia said, to have a successful movement, you need to have a coherent message. And you need to have organization. The civil rights movements were organized. They had methods and plans, and everyone involved knew what was expected of them. Seems like now, when we have ten thousand ways to communicate instantly, people just think showing up is enough.
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The answers included violence. What is it with white males thinking violence solves problems?
āOr elseā is usually a threat of violence.
Justice or else weāll have more marches.
This is a civil rights movement. I agree that the slogan āJustice or elseā¦ā seems a bit misguided, because it will be taken as a threat. I always liked the motto, āThere can be no peace without justice.ā I think thatās what the sloganeer was trying to echo, but it seems a little tin-eared.
Any threat that ends in āor elseā is deliberately ambiguous. If any thought is given to its phrasing at all it is probably meant to communicate an unspoken, un-named fear. Unspoken fears are interpreted by the listenerās life experience. They become ārealā fears only when constructed within the listenerās imagination. So, if the observer sees the phrase āor elseā in the context of loud angry gathering of people that he does not personally know or understand then it is understandable that violent images might come to mind. In another setting the same observer could see the same phrase used by a banker dressed in a suit and tie as quiet threat to separate him from all his worldly possessions. Both situations are designed to incite fear but one would not associate a fear of garnished wages or foreclosure if one were to see a group of strangers marching down the street chanting and waving signs that said āor elseā.
We also have to convince the people who arenāt really committed to the cause to commit, and unfortunately, crying āracismā or āhomophobiaā does not always work on that front. For instance, in the Alabama voter ID issue, rather than talking about racism or civil rights, the Left needed to hit the GOP with how their own arguments (which sounded reasonable) were complete garbage. One of the GOPās arguments for why they supported the closure of so many DMV sites has to do with the budget shortfall. Rather than arguing that the whole me is purely racist, the first thing that should be done is to counter the argument being made. What should have been said is āIf this is about the budget, why not eliminate a position at every DMV and close the DMV offices for a day across the board. No, this is about shutting down democracy and you are specifically doing that through the destruction of Blackās voting rights.ā While doing that wonāt convince a dyed in the wool Republican, it will counter their supposedly reasonable arguments and reach people on the more liberal side of the GOP and those who have left the GOP.
And while people did not chastise the LGBT Community for not reaching out to the Evangelical Community, there were those of us who chastised them for constantly using the attack of homophobia and transphobia to attack others. A reasonable argument would be more useful than an attack that will be perceived as an attack. We need to weave the issues of equality into our arguments in a manner which does not seem like an attack while still being on the offensive.
This is a civil rightsā¦gathering. If it were a movement, everyone there would know what to say, and there would be leaders at the front. Thatās my point. To get progress, you need organization and clarity of purpose.
Forget how vague āor elseā is. What does āJusticeā mean? It could mean a lot of things to a lot of people, and not always the same thing. Youāve got to narrow your focus to specific goals, like voting rights, police violence, pay gap, education gap. Thereās so much to work on, you canāt try to throw a blanket over the whole thing.