Post #2144013

2026-04-15 19:01 UTC

#4 Worst Protest Chant: "When [Bla Bla Bla] Is Under Attack, What Do We Do? Stand Up Fight Back" Chants that over-promise and engage in hyperbole risk doing more harm than good. This chant may help install a sense of solidarity in some, emphasizing that we are collectively resisting. But ow are we fighting back, exactly? Because right now, at the time of this chant, it looks like we’re walking in a circle on the sidewalk around the empty state capitol building, or waving signs on an overpass that nobody down below can read anyway. Is this fighting back? Is fighting back in the room right now?? Sometimes this chant cycles through multitudes of various people and things under attack (Women’s Rights! Education! Health Care! Trans Rights! Immigrants! Voting Rights! Voting Lefts!) and goddamn, suddenly that’s a lot more fighting back than we might've bargained for. We already knew it’s all under attack anyway. Are we fighting back by making lists??? Related: “If we don’t get it? Shut it down!” Let’s get real for a sec, are you REALLY gonna shut it down though? Because if you chant this, you need to actually have the interest, willingness, and capacity to shut it (whatever IT is) down. And chances are high that you're not gonna get IT! Then, if you don’t shut IT down, nobody’s gonna take you seriously the next time IT happens, and you don’t get THAT either! https://archive.org/details/top-5-worst-protest-chants

Replies (1)

@riotmuffin@ni.hil.ist 2026-04-18 17:04

#3 Worst Protest Chant: “Money for jobs and education, not for ” Like, sure, that’s a reasonable reform I guess. Money for education and not war would be a good thing. Jobs, on the other hand, let’s talk about that. Who wants more jobs??? Most people only want a job if they want more money, and we [billionaires excluded] only want more money if we want a better quality of life (but that’s too long for a chant). “Money for weed and education,” now that would be a better chant. (But also some people have had terrible experiences in the imperial education system, and let’s not discount that either!) The biggest problem with this chant though is that it’s another implicit endorsement of capitalism and the current system where a bunch of epstein-class elite fucks decide where to spend money that could feed, clothe and house the entire world many times over. And this gets to why protests often feel icky to me and lots of my friends - why are we out here begging for scraps?!? Why are we letting them decide in the first place?? Lets TAKE what we need, goddamit! They’ve stolen from us since 1492!! Class War and Expropriation, Not Genocide and Occupation! https://archive.org/details/top-5-worst-protest-chants

Open ##2144014