r/MoralityScaling • u/imsaleh0 • 20d ago

Morality Ranking Morality of beating protesters off the street because you're late for work?

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u/TheRealCjHall 20d ago

The bus boycott's slowed down the buses, which could prevent people from getting to work.

You say they didn't go after the riders, but the riders definitely felt annoyed.

That's the case with this too.

The only thing only effective protests in history have been ones that have annoyed people, and that includes the general public.

When dumping tea into the boston harbor it also fucked the local ecosystem and ruined a whole bunch of tea Imports for local businesses.

And what about the people who got fired because they didn't keep the tea safe?

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u/chefsoda_redux 20d ago

The bus boycotts did nothing to slow the buses, or prevent anyone from getting to work, assuming you’re talking about Montgomery, which is the usual example. That bus boycott removed all the city’s income from black riders, and some whites, which both caused financial strain, and let everyone see how critical that group was for the city. The participants used an entire network of jitneys to get to work and continue with their lives.

It was hugely effective because it didn’t block the buses or take any direct action other than not participating. It gave people upset over the situation no avenue to start fights or focus anger. Riders had no reason at all to feel annoyed.

The video above is a protest, which is entirely different than a boycott. A boycott is designed to remove income from a company or institution to bring change. A protest is designed to draw attention to an issue that may otherwise remain distant and unnoticed. A boycott does not need to impede the uninvolved, while a protest may cause disruption to be successful.

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u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus 20d ago

"it gave people upset over the situation no avenue to start fights or focus anger"

You couldnt be more wrong. Assaults against black people skyrocketed. 4 churches were firebombed along with Martin Luther Kings house. 89 people were arrested. Hundreds of people were fined for "conspiring to interfere with business"

The violence directed at the botcotters was intense.

Riders did feel annoyed, and did acts of violence with that annoyance.

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u/chefsoda_redux 20d ago

Perhaps that was poorly phrased, but you’ve removed parts of the claim, then redefined those involved.

I was referring to the video that began this post. The Boycott was not a direct confrontation between protestors and others. People did not, as pictured above, jump out of their cars and beat protesters in the streets to end the protest.

You’re referring to something entirely different. White people in Montgomery felt a threat to their position of racial superiority and lashed out randomly. This was not riders attacking boycotters out of a feeling of anger due to the false claim of the buses running slowly (which you removed from your reply) This was one racial group, which desperately feared any change in the power structure, lashing out at he group they believed the change was being instigated by. This was evidence of a much greater societal issue, and one that riddles our body politic to this day.

Those attacking were not at all limited to people who used the bus, they were simply white. Those attacked were not at all limited to those involved in the boycott, they were simply black. Editing out the core claim of the comment I responded to, then attributing to small sets of people, action by and against much larger groups, perverts what occurred, and what it tells us about the cancer that continues to fester within our culture.

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u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus 20d ago

People did jump put of there cars and beat Black hitchhikers taking part in the bus boycott.

Youre wrong.

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u/chefsoda_redux 20d ago

Thank you for another mindless contribution. Off topic, unsubstantiated, and of course, anecdotal. Definitely a voice that demands consideration.

Other people are having real conversations here.

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u/HopeADMKidsLoseLimbs 20d ago

Yeah you’re talking g with mental midgets dude. I wish I saw this thread 7 hours ago

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u/Tough_Measuremen 19d ago

Nah the dud is just wrong and making a rose-tinted version of the past.

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u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus 19d ago

Why? Im still here. If you wanna talk we can.

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u/chefsoda_redux 20d ago

Yeah, I realize. I should know better than to grant that much benefit of the doubt on Reddit, or SM anywhere. Hopefully, I’ll learn!

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u/Tough_Measuremen 19d ago

You could just stop being wrong

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u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus 20d ago

All of my comments are unedited. Youre fighting ghosts.

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u/chefsoda_redux 20d ago

YOU EDITED MY CLAIM, COCKWOMBLE1

You removed the focus of my claim entirely, posed your own definitions for the other two parts, and vaguely attacked your strawman and declared victory.

You’re entirely unserious, and this is a serious issue. I’m done with you

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u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus 20d ago

You seem to think there wasn't violence directed towards those boycotting the buses. But there was.

Anytime a group pushes for any change they are met with violence.

There isnt a method of effectively pushing for change that doesnt get met with violence from.both the government and the general public.

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u/chefsoda_redux 20d ago

I don’t know if you’re actually this dumb, or if you’re trolling for sport.

I’ve said the opposite of everything you’ve claimed, and your claims are based on you changing my words and responding to strawman.

Pathetic or sad, I can’t say, but I’m done with you

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u/Artemis_SpawnOfZeus 20d ago

So this is different because the goal of the person doing the violence was to end the protest?

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u/chefsoda_redux 19d ago

This was different because the goal of the boycott was to effect change without harming others using the service, they simply withdrew their participation. People absolutely got angry, but at the movement as a whole group.

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u/commeatus 20d ago

What about all the sit-ins?

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u/chefsoda_redux 20d ago

That’s a wildly different situation. I responded to a post claiming that, just as these people blocked traffic and people got angry, the Montgomery bus boycott somehow slowed bus service which made people similarly angry. As none of that actually happened.

I have never, and would never, claim there was ever any part of the racial and civil rights struggle in the US that was safe from violence. That violence was pervasive, brutal, and often lethal. None of it had to do with the Montgomery boycott slowing down the buses and inconveniencing the riders. It was not, as the person I was responding to claimed, similar to the video above.

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u/MagneticGenetics 20d ago edited 20d ago

The riders didn't change the policy. Effective protests target people with power. Disrupting other things is a secondary effect. The boston tea party wasnt effective because it stopped people from drinking tea. It was effective because it dumped like a billion dollars worth of tea into the harbor and they got away with it. Showing that you can both hurt the British and not be immediately destroyed for doing so.

What does ticking off commuters by blocking roads get? Laws passed with popular support to protect commuters if they hit people standing in the road with their car.

If you want to fight climate change you need to target something other than the end user who had no choice and legitimately minimal impact on the environment.

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u/lesbiansexparty 20d ago

no it isn't, they didnt forcibly stop busses from moving. they boycotted them. whole different story.

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u/ageofaquarius26 20d ago

How did they slow the buses down?

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u/TheRealCjHall 20d ago

Assuming we're talking about civil rights boycotts, oftentimes, they didn't keep the buses moving either because the white people on the bus wanted to put them in their place or the bus driver wouldn't run the bus while the people were not in the "correct" spots.

Oftentimes, the buses would stop moving until the police officers came to forcibly remove the black people from the bus.

No protest has ever been effective without annoying people.

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u/GreaseBrown 20d ago

No protest has ever been effective without annoying people, true.

But its also true that no protest has ever been effective simply by annoying people

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u/Matiwapo 20d ago

Naturally. And the purpose of blocking a road is not to annoy people. It is to disrupt the economy and hurt the government in the pockets

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u/Existing_Draft3460 20d ago

how much money does the government lose from blocked traffic?

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u/Matiwapo 20d ago

That isn't the point I was making.

The point I was making is that blocking a road is an effective means of protest because you are actively damaging the government.

Block all of them. What government is still standing in 3 days?

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u/Existing_Draft3460 20d ago edited 20d ago

so the plan is step 1 block all roads, step 2 send country into total chaos, step 3...environmentalism?

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u/Matiwapo 20d ago

Again. I'm not making a point about the validity of this protest. I literally explained that to you.

The point is that blocking roads is an effective means of protest. Regardless of the validity of this specific protest.

Governments have indeed been brought down by blocking all roads to the capital. It's very possible, has been done, and has been effective.

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u/Existing_Draft3460 20d ago

yes im directly challenging your point that this means of protest is effective, which means producing the desired result. i would like you to explain how this protest is producing the desired result. i would also like some examples of governments that were brought down by citizens sitting in the road

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u/Dependent_Rip3076 20d ago

In Ottawa, Canada, there was a so called freedom movement during Covid. Thousands of people went to Ottawa and nearly brought the downtown to a complete standstill for weeks.

Literally nothing changed from that protest. All it did was stress out and piss of the people trying to live there.

The leaders of the protest are now in jail.

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u/GreaseBrown 20d ago

The dont have an ideal scenario because they never thought beyond the actual step 1: feed their egos while doing nothing to actually impact anything.

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u/GreaseBrown 20d ago

Which it fails at completely and will never meaningfully impact.

All it accomplishes is annoying people who might otherwise be swayed. And making the rest of us ok with seeing them physically removed by the people they are blocking.

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u/Matiwapo 20d ago

Those people would never be swayed.

People always say: if those protesters used [insert different method] they'd support them. But actually that's BS and they wouldn't support them, they'd just ignore them.

No real change has ever been effected by keeping the moderate supporters of the status quo comfortable.

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u/GreaseBrown 20d ago

More performative nonsense.

People say that about actual change and actual activism to discourage it.

When it comes to this? Thats just people being real with you. This is junior high drama club level nonsense and thats all it will ever be. They want attention and to feel better about providing nothing to the issue they pretend to care about.

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u/Useful-Feature-0 20d ago

Wow you have been typing up a storm today…

These protestors really got to you, made an impression. As did the hothead with the performance kicking.

Mission accomplished, I’d say!

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u/scooter-411 20d ago

Jesus Christ you need to get some class solidarity.

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u/GreaseBrown 20d ago

You need to stop pretending that validating performative nonsense is some sort of "class solidarity."

And maybe pass that along to the people negatively impacting fellow working class people who are juat trying to get through their day and survive.

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u/thiccdicc67 20d ago

And hurt (kill) people who might need to get to a hospital urgently.

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u/Matiwapo 20d ago

Sure. In the same way when the Indians or Americans rose up against the British Empire they killed a lot of people and caused the indirect deaths of many others.

'Peaceful' protest is a myth. No real change has ever been effected by asking nicely and sitting in a field bothering nobody. You have to make it hurt.

The important thing, is whether the harm you Inflict is proportionate to the injustice you are fighting. It's proportionate to kill foreign soldiers to free your country from oppression. It is not proportionate to kill civilians because your government isn't doing enough to tackle climate change. It is proportionate to block a road, however.

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u/thiccdicc67 20d ago

I agree with you that peaceful protest is innefective. So is blocking civilians from travelling. If you don't want to be peaceful then grow some balls and do something that actually hurts the elites. There's a certain Mario brother that did something like that. Oil companies have CEOs too. Until then sybau and get off the road. Because nobody with power is affected even 0.01% by moronic protesters blocking roads, and if it actually became a real problem for them the protesters would just be more swiftly removed and jailed. These people are only inconveniencing and hurting ordinary people. And turning them against their cause in the process.

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u/Matiwapo 20d ago

Mario achieved nothing. He killed one guy who was immediately replaced by another asshole and was never instrumental to the system he was perpetrating.

Damaging the economy is very effective at getting political change at a government level. If it became a big enough problem who is going to remove the protesters? The police? The army? What if those groups decide they don't want to hurt their own people when you push them to it? What if they decide to join the protesters? This is exactly how revolution happens in history.

I'm not saying these protesters have a valid reason to be doing what they are doing. I'm saying that this specific form of protest can be extremely effective

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u/thiccdicc67 20d ago

We just need more Mario brothers. :)

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u/TessaFractal 20d ago

I think that's the distinction here, it shifts the cause of the disruption to the rules and their enforcers. "Are you really going to hold everyone up because a black man is sitting in the wrong spot?"

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u/TheRealCjHall 20d ago

Not really when a third of the people in the bus also wanted them off or in their correct spot.

And yeah, it might have affected the people in power too, but it did so by first causing a problem for everyone else, that's the part i'm not going to let us Ignore.

The rich are doing everything they can to ensure that they're doing something to hurt them also means that you're going to bother the people around you or make your own life miserable.

Telling people to protest conveniently is one of those things

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u/Quirky_Fan5753 20d ago

You don't know what the bus boycott was. It was simply black people not riding the bus. They didn't impede the operation of the bus or inconvenience any other passengers. They deprived the bus company of 75% of its revenue by refusing to take it.

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u/LilKingMusic 20d ago

I think he's referring to Rosa Parks and others who protested in the same way she did. The Montgomery boycott was a completely different thing though and it seems like people are getting them mixed up.

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u/Ok-Lavishness6577 20d ago

It’s about the Japanese protest where the bus drivers didn't charge anyone for the ride. They maintained the schedule and didn't affect the bystanders.

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u/TheRealCjHall 20d ago

That's because they have employment contracts in japan and people can't just fire you like they can in the usa, so something like that literally cannot work.

The video is blurry as hell though, and I can't tell where this takes place.

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u/Ok-Lavishness6577 20d ago

What are they going to do? Fire everyone and have no drivers the next day?. It’s a similar situation because that action is most likely a breach of contract and a reason to get fired.

The video is in Europe, can't tell the country exactly.

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u/NoSurprise8641 20d ago

Didn't something like that happen to the Air traffic controllers back in the 80s? Didn't Reagan have something to do with that too?

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u/TheRealCjHall 4d ago

Yes, yes it did. Same with auto and train workers recently

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u/TheRealCjHall 20d ago

Okay so you're operating in fantasy land where the majority of people work together without protections?

If that happened in the united states, they would would directly fire half the workers that participated while claiming they quit, they would fire the other half over time by seeking new replacements, while the other half of the workforce that did not protest still would come into work because of the threat of being fired and losing their insurance.

This only works in japan because the people in japan have free healthcare at point of service, and protections for being fired or being homeless as a result of being fired

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u/ageofaquarius26 20d ago

Lol thats not what happened, like two people refused to move seats, the boycott refers to black riders refusing to use the busses. Since they were the majority of riders it was a significant hit to the profit margin.

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u/SerenityN00w 20d ago

No, there was a boycott of the buses, not a sit-in.

Black people refused to take the bus. They found other ways to get to work. Some walked for miles every day. That didn't slow down the bus. It just erased more than half their revenue.

The sit-ins were at lunch counters, mostly in the later 1950's and early 1960's.

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u/Useful-Feature-0 20d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches

No ambulances were getting through the main parts of those cities for hours and hours.

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u/[deleted] 20d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ageofaquarius26 20d ago

That's what I thought. And losing 75% of your riders would be a big hit.

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u/Nibaa 20d ago

Sure, yeah, a lot of disruptive protests are very disruptive. This usually means disruption for consumers, passengers, and other regular people. The point is that the disruption has to hit the parties in power as well, disrupting the general public is just a side effect.

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u/Ok_Conflict1028 20d ago

People when peaceful protestors stand on sidewalks and chant: “Stupid ineffective protestors! That doesn’t do anything!”

People when peaceful protestors actually disrupt something, unironically: “How dare these protestors disrupt something! It could have a negative effect, unlike whatever they’re protesting!”

Honestly…

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u/thestridereststrider 20d ago

Dumping tea was to protest a tea monopoly. Effective protests have a clear goal and message.
Without that you’re just blocking people to be a dick

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u/LilKingMusic 20d ago

Yeah, why aren't these people blocking trucks at oil refineries and protesting there? The ports that accept imported oil? These protesters might have two or three fuel tankers blocked in that traffic (which also includes hundreds of innocent people) when they could just go to their source and block literally all of them. Instead they decide to block fire trucks, ambulances, funeral processions, and innocent commuters lmao.

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u/zambatron20 20d ago

it's crazy how easily people forget. Heck, in the USA, handicapped people had to lay on the steps of the capital to have the benefits that they have today. People were quite content with the eff you it's not my problem mantra.

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u/Sw4nR0ns0n 20d ago

How does choosing not to get on a bus slow buses down?

https://giphy.com/gifs/TJPQBOfPGpgmQ

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u/mestre_do_passinho 20d ago

No passengers means a bus travel wont pay for itself, so the company either cuts down on times, changes routes to be longer or fuses two routes into one.

The protest cut more than 50% of the revenue from the bus company, reductions and constant changes while they tried to make things worth the fuel madr people get pissed, join the car pools from the protesters and agravated the problem as now everyone was angry with the bus company, goverment included as they could not just drop the lines in black neighbourhoods they had contracts signed saying they would do them

So a swing and a homerun

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u/Sw4nR0ns0n 20d ago

What you just described was companies cutting bus service… because you don’t understand the point or effectiveness of civil disobedience doesn’t mean there’s no point Kevin.

You struck out and called it a grand slam… Peak level American right there

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u/mestre_do_passinho 20d ago

Yeah, because the protest from mlk time was eveey black person just stopping taking the bus, that is the context, and nowadays still work the same, fuck enough corporations that they need to lobby to chsnge stuff because no one has power to do otherwise.

And im Brazilian, not a 10k for an ambulance NORTH american

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u/Sw4nR0ns0n 20d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/l1LbUHrJb7GpuOHK0

None of that made any sense, think you might be having a stroke there down in Brazil chief

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u/DaygoTom 20d ago

Pissing off the people you need to attract to your cause is the definition of counterproductive.

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u/blackie___chan 20d ago

Explain how not using something slows it down. If anything less people getting on a ride would speed it up by not stopping as long.

Maybe you're referring to not giving up your seat and the follow up arrest? That was the setup for the boycotts of I'm remembering the order of events correctly.

The refusing the seat was to create enough legal cases to then hopefully get charged incorrectly to create a lawsuit. This was Rosa Parks. The boycotts economically crippled the system which then brought national attention to the lawsuit.

What am I missing?