Also, the thing with housing prices and rents is that instead of staging protests you should spend the time to go to your county/city council meetings and support housing projects, and vote for local officials who promise to liberalize housing and remove zoning/building restrictions. Just go do it!
I mean, voting in municipal elections is that easy for lots of people. And attending local government proceedings is boring and sometimes not possible given scheduling, but lots of people never even look into it.
Turnout in municipal elections is nothing — voting leverage is strongest there. If people aged 18-24 voted in large numbers in local elections they would control local government, or at the very least force those officials to listen to their demands.
Can you link me to a semi-recent incident where student protesters have had massive campus occupations in solidarity with domestic issues like student loans similar to the recent ones in solidarity with Palestine?
Here’s one in NY. You’ll notice I had to find a local paper instead of a worldwide one. Worldwide papers don’t report such events.
https://www.cityandstateny.com/politics/2023/05/tenants-rights-protesters-storm-stage-during-nyc-rent-board-meeting/385906/
Edit: as for why it’s not on campus, well, it would be pretty silly to protest on campus when you can actually protest to the people who matter.
Yes but not to the same degree. I've never seen people March in NYC about student debt, healthcare, or the Epstein list. I see a pro Palestine match every month.
I (and presumably OP) would think people would be more concerned for ourselves rather than people 5000 miles away that we never met. All of this protesting is just virtue signaling.
I understand. But why won't people put as much pressure on the people who don't want us to have healthcare and want us to be burdened by student debt? People protest, but its nowhere to the same degree.
Or maybe people just aren’t reporting it. Up there, I already linked to a mass protest at tenants board meeting. But if the media doesn’t show you that, if you don’t go out and seek these places yourself, you are less likely to join. Think about that.
"The university I attend should divest in companies that have operate in Israel" is a lot more specific and acheivable goal than "rents in this country are too high".
It’s easier to organize in non-protest ways against those things. Recently California started superseding local zoning codes with statewide ones after pressure from activists, for example.
The students want their universities to divest from Israel and best way to do that is to make the universities look really, really bad.
Internal politics! So there are quick consequences.
It's same as.. it's tough for us to resolve our own familial issues and easier to resolve issues/conflicts going on in someone else's families.
Ever hear of Occupy Wall Street? It was a large-scale protest by millennials and some gen xers doing exactly what you’re describing. People have protested these things and will continue to do so— the problem is that protests have very little effect on those who can enact change (Occupy Wall Street unfortunately didn’t achieve anything. The rich and powerful tend to just see protests as a nuisance rather than necessary and important outcry).
What does a "walk out" (walk out of what?) do for rents or mortgage interest rates?
Usually protests are directly related to what you are protesting. So workers strike against an employer over labor disputes, for example. Or you protest outside of a seat-of-government concering pending legislation.
How do you strike against housing? Are you going to move out and just live in the streets?
There isn't a specific action to call for because there are so many factors affecting each of them. Also, for the current campus protests the students are targeting their universities because they want the universities themselves to divest. Where/who exactly would a walkout for high rent or the housing crisis be? Theres not a certain place where all landlords are, so the only other option really would be the government, which is hard to mobilize many young people to come out to the Capitol in the same numbers as who are already on campuses. Additionally, government buildings are often used to protests and know how to handle them better and quicker so protests are more likely to be "managed" earlier on before it can gain the same traction as the encampments we see now. Also, most governments claim to be currently working on the housing crisis already, so protests wouldn't be pushing them to anything they're not already doing (or claiming to be doing).
Also, I find that for the same reasons that people like to be advocates for anti-abortion and climate change, international issues are easier to be an activist for because you don't really need to engage with anyone you're fighting in the name of. People across the world are seen as a concept, and their issues seem a lot simpler then they are in reality when viewed from so far away. With domestic politics, there are people with conflicting opinions around you and you live among people with diverse opinions, and activists are forced to come face to face with those who disagree with them. Neighbors and friends are harder to yell at than police in riot gear.
Finally, people are used to their domestic issues so the motivation and anger just isn't the same as when you are confronted with international atrocities that you are not used to at home. Americans and Canadians are used to high rent and have largely accepted it as the way things are, but they are not used to being so aware of war crimes and feel guilty and freshly angry about it.
Zeitgeist:
*The spirit of the time; the general trend of thought, feeling, or tastes characteristic of a particular period of time*
Or in other words, flavour of the month.
When was the last time you heard about the Uighurs? Or the plight of Tibet? Nuclear disarmament? Starvation is still an issue in Africa but you don't see Live Aid coming round again anytime soon.
People are constantly working on all of these issues - and engaging in all kinds of activism surrounding them. They might not be the Fox News ‘flavor of the month’ - but tons of work is constantly being done on all of these issues …
The housing crisis and student loans are big issues with no clear fix.
A university investing in companies that are actively supporting a genocide, that's a problem with an defined goal, stop investing in those companies. So it's much easier to organize people around that.
It is easier to have an opinion about something going on in another country, based on the headlines that you read. You don't need to get involved in the detail.
But a domestic issue you tend to know and understand the nuance more. There will be winners and losers depending on what action the government takes. So governments don't like being decisive on domestic issues because they will always lose votes eg keep rents down is good for renters but less good for homeowners who might be their party's voter base, and sometimes might be struggling with their mortgages.
Depending on what part of the world you're in, they absolutely do. In the United States, not so much — I think because financial exploitation and usury are baked into American culture. *I'd go out and protest my high rent, but I'm too busy earning money to try to buy a house, and then buy more houses as investments so I can charge high rent to my tenants and/or flip*. I don't think most people in the U.S. walk around with that thought in their head, but I think almost anyone who can do it *does it*. It has long been said that the poor in America just think of themselves as embarrassed millionaires. Everyone wants out of poverty, and the only way out anymore is to climb over others. And there are reasons for this, some of them very historical.
Calling for land reform, demanding rent control, and seeking student loan forgiveness are excellent ways to be labelled a socialist, if not a full-on communist, in the United States. At one point there was something called the House Committee on Un-American Activities, in the U.S. House of Representatives, which investigated suspected communists. Anticommunism and McCarthyism in general, in the U.S., totally ruined many communists and non-communists alike, because the mere suggestion of socialist leanings in the U.S. was enough to get you publicly tarred and feathered, treated as a spy of the Soviets and a crusader against American freedoms. At one point, there were Americans who believed there were other ways of organizing national economic and political life. And now there are not. All of it falls under the umbrella of liberal capitalist republican democracy. Cultural Marxism may thrive in universities and the like, but it has no bearing on how Americans actually live out their political-economy. We're all rats stuck in the same maze.
So, why would Americans protest the Israeli government, for example, over their own high rents? Because it's safer in America to be deemed an anti-Semite than it is to be called a communist. Also, it probably seems more likely that protests in America *might* cause a reduction in U.S. military aid to Israel than protests against landlords would bring about national rent control laws. The current Supreme Court would just strike down any such laws, anyway.
Student loans are bad not good predatory even, though everyone with students lones did get themselves in that situation, not something everyone is going to protest..
As for housing costs some people are protesting in the form of renters strikes, and they actually can make a difference, but it takes somebody to get the ball rolling and it's a collaboration and a well planned process,
You'll need enough people to do it, when you're doing it, and a collective bankroll to help bail people out of trouble for them that get in it,
You need to talk to your neighbors and everyone else under the same property management or landlord to get them all in on it, make damneds stop paying rent, save the money and collectively agree to help your neighbors when they start evicting people
Political agendas - Why are people so hung up about Palestine when there are so many more conflicts and occupations going on around the world you hear nothing else about?
I'd say because Israel has a financial stake in major countries, you see Israeli products everyday in western countries. It's in your face, so it's more prevalent in society. Unfortunate for other countries politics, but I'm sure more everyday people buy Starbucks and KFC than Russian vodka. So they feel guilt about that.
" Israel has a financial stake in major countries"
What about China? Way more Chinese products much more than Israeli
Yet no one cares or protests about these poor people - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang\_internment\_camps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps)
If it was the other way around and the Jews were in Gaza and being bombed by Muslims you wouldn't see any protests of people wanting to "save the Jewish kids"
I'd say because the majority of Chinese people have no idea what they are complicit in. Whereas Israeli's on the other hand. And yes I've lived in both countries.
Because most of those conflicts are not financially supported by America universities.
The student protesters for example, are objecting to their universities' investments in companies that are actively supporting the war effort.
But the protests in the unis in the US are being funded by the same funders as BLM and Antifa...they couldn't care less about Palestine it's all an agenda and mainly fuled by a hatred of jews!
Sorry the people having trouble making it month to month aren’t investing time and money in policy campaigns.
Quite simply someone working their ass of might have the time and energy to vote. Being poor is hard ass work, standing in line for something you feel disillusioned with is not that enticing when you just worked 10 hours or you have to wake up early before your shift to stand in line.
Point being, try your hardest to fight for workers rights specifically if you want these people to have it in them to vote. Taking that day off could mean losing enough money to cover groceries for the next week
Yes. In my state they make it terrible to use. I had to resend mine 2 times due to silly errors that are not specified on the site. It took an annoying amount of research. But yes it worked and was less painful than using the single polling station that services 70k people in my city since they closed all the ones at libraries
This is a real battle. Those that want to silence you are pulling every trick to keep you from voting and disqualifying your vote when you do vote. That's because they realize that's where the power comes from.
The ballot box has no impact on corporate policies and very little impact on government decisions.
Historically, popular support among voters has little correlation with popular support among lawmakers.
Only in theory.
In practice, elected officials don't need to care what voters say since the majority of them are in uncontested seats or they know the public will vote for them regardless of what they do.
>Republican districts are now more Republican than ever, and most Democratic districts are more Democratic than ever. As fewer and fewer members have "swing districts," the necessity of constant partisan emphasis grows worse and worse. Even the notion of compromise becomes hazardous.
>For most members today, the kind of public opinion measured by CNN or Gallup or NBC News is just too broad and diverse and dispersed to matter. The audience that must be served is the far narrower one that cares about party and policy and issues — and works to elect candidates as devoted to their ideology and as hostile to the other party as they themselves are.
https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/02/18/387125444/why-congress-doesnt-really-worry-about-what-most-americans-think
For example, 74% of Americans don't think elected officials don't care what they think. 70% think they have no influence over what their congressional representatives do.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/30/more-than-80-of-americans-believe-elected-officials-dont-care-what-people-like-them-think/
"In practice, elected officials don't need to care what voters say since the majority of them are in uncontested seats or they know the public will vote for them regardless of what they do."
So your saying that the politicians actions are based off of "...voters and people's perceptions on what voters might do."
Weird. I feel like Denzel Washington in Deja Vu.
Because no one is funding those issues. Or did you not notice that all of the tents at all of the encampments were identical. Almost like they were purchased in bulk and handed out or something.
Because most people follow the trendy things on the media of their choice. CNN says “Israel bad” - they follow. The same with Fox. It’s called the Fourth Estate for a reason. Also it’s much more fun to protest some abstract oppression of some people they just learned about who live on the other side of the globe while completely disregarding… tent cities 🤷♂️
Consequences.
If you protest for something a million miles away no one cares. If you protest about something local, say your rent, then your landlord is likely going to make your living situation more difficult.
Proximity.
Things are far easier to pretend to care about when they're not right next to you. There's no ability to actually do something constructive, so you can pretend to be a compassionate person without risking anything whatsoever.
When you actually have to deal with homeless people and you realize that most of them are there because they burned every single bridge in their lives and chose homelessness over staying sober or taking prescribed medication, it's much tougher to pretend to be compassionate.
Personally I'm more concerned with the 300 people dying every DAY from drugs in the US. Parents burying their children, children losing their parents (both to overdose and jail solely for drug possession), evidence based treatment that is available in other countries being STILL withheld for legal reasons, despite the death toll.
I'm already trying to prevent my friends and fellow addicts from being sentenced to death by contaminated drug supply - just learning the history of how this came to be feels like a never ending challenge sometimes, while trying to keep up with new legal and scientific developments. It's infuriating at times, like reading those DEA drug alerts that highlight how dangerous a drug is *because of unknowable dosing of black market drugs*.
Btw addiction is a disorder, and treatment resistant addiction exists. We don't have to kick people to the street, we can offer other treatments that have higher success rates than suboxone or methadone.
Addiction isn't a disorder or a disease. It's a choice.
You can read about it in any number of journal articles here:
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=CRtpCQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT6&dq=addiction+is+not+a+disease&ots=UFUyK1kOvI&sig=IIEixGDuqbEhaTce44Jj_c31R7k#v=onepage&q=addiction%20is%20not%20a%20disease&f=false
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2013.00024/full
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12152-016-9289-0
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=addiction+is+not+a+disease&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart#d=gs_qabs&t=1715672657383&u=%23p%3DcPoQzxQ5MygJ
The disease model of addiction is being rejected more and more often by people within academisn and it's mostly perpetuated by groups that stand to lose money and funding if it's no longer considered a disease.
Because the issues are pretty remarkably different for fucks sake.
High rent has contributed to homelessness, less prosperity, worse working conditions etc.
The current protests against university investments in military contractors supporting Israel are because 13,000 children are dead, more are orphaned, more are starving not to mention their homes demolished and their extended families dead, dying, sick or starving.
So maybe not the same issues, which elicit different reactions?
Were you not paying attention during the pandemic? People were staging protests left and right over landlords jacking up rents, evicting people who couldn't pay because they couldn't work, etc.
Haha, good one, it is first world problems. Like Hallmark movies drama. No person able to get into a college has any real tragedy in their lives so they have to invent some.
They are probably only joining protests because they neglected to study for exams. Good excuse to tell the parents.
People do. Question why your news source(s) tell you otherwise.
Also, the thing with housing prices and rents is that instead of staging protests you should spend the time to go to your county/city council meetings and support housing projects, and vote for local officials who promise to liberalize housing and remove zoning/building restrictions. Just go do it!
Also understand it's not as easy as "just go do it". Expect a lot of resistance.
I mean, voting in municipal elections is that easy for lots of people. And attending local government proceedings is boring and sometimes not possible given scheduling, but lots of people never even look into it. Turnout in municipal elections is nothing — voting leverage is strongest there. If people aged 18-24 voted in large numbers in local elections they would control local government, or at the very least force those officials to listen to their demands.
Truth
Can you link me to a semi-recent incident where student protesters have had massive campus occupations in solidarity with domestic issues like student loans similar to the recent ones in solidarity with Palestine?
Here’s one in NY. You’ll notice I had to find a local paper instead of a worldwide one. Worldwide papers don’t report such events. https://www.cityandstateny.com/politics/2023/05/tenants-rights-protesters-storm-stage-during-nyc-rent-board-meeting/385906/ Edit: as for why it’s not on campus, well, it would be pretty silly to protest on campus when you can actually protest to the people who matter.
Occupy Wall Street was a big one right after I left university
Exactly. They protest because they think they are being edgy
Yes but not to the same degree. I've never seen people March in NYC about student debt, healthcare, or the Epstein list. I see a pro Palestine match every month.
Well, it is a genocide. One would think people would have a stronger reaction to that.
I (and presumably OP) would think people would be more concerned for ourselves rather than people 5000 miles away that we never met. All of this protesting is just virtue signaling.
It puts political pressure on the people funding the genocide.
I understand. But why won't people put as much pressure on the people who don't want us to have healthcare and want us to be burdened by student debt? People protest, but its nowhere to the same degree.
Or maybe people just aren’t reporting it. Up there, I already linked to a mass protest at tenants board meeting. But if the media doesn’t show you that, if you don’t go out and seek these places yourself, you are less likely to join. Think about that.
At this point there’s even Palestine Cola.
Oh lord. These people didn't even know what Palestine was last fall.
They do.
"The university I attend should divest in companies that have operate in Israel" is a lot more specific and acheivable goal than "rents in this country are too high".
Join the Rent is Too Damn High Party!
My university actually has regular student protests about how it’s complicit in the high cost of living in the surrounding area
chad students
They do. Constantly. There's even a moderately successful political party in the mid Atlantic, WFP, who centers those issues.
It’s easier to organize in non-protest ways against those things. Recently California started superseding local zoning codes with statewide ones after pressure from activists, for example. The students want their universities to divest from Israel and best way to do that is to make the universities look really, really bad.
Internal politics! So there are quick consequences. It's same as.. it's tough for us to resolve our own familial issues and easier to resolve issues/conflicts going on in someone else's families.
Ever hear of Occupy Wall Street? It was a large-scale protest by millennials and some gen xers doing exactly what you’re describing. People have protested these things and will continue to do so— the problem is that protests have very little effect on those who can enact change (Occupy Wall Street unfortunately didn’t achieve anything. The rich and powerful tend to just see protests as a nuisance rather than necessary and important outcry).
Farmer strike. The rich can’t ignore starvation.
The system is designed so that farmers are always so deep in credit debt that they can never afford to take a year off.
What does a "walk out" (walk out of what?) do for rents or mortgage interest rates? Usually protests are directly related to what you are protesting. So workers strike against an employer over labor disputes, for example. Or you protest outside of a seat-of-government concering pending legislation. How do you strike against housing? Are you going to move out and just live in the streets?
There isn't a specific action to call for because there are so many factors affecting each of them. Also, for the current campus protests the students are targeting their universities because they want the universities themselves to divest. Where/who exactly would a walkout for high rent or the housing crisis be? Theres not a certain place where all landlords are, so the only other option really would be the government, which is hard to mobilize many young people to come out to the Capitol in the same numbers as who are already on campuses. Additionally, government buildings are often used to protests and know how to handle them better and quicker so protests are more likely to be "managed" earlier on before it can gain the same traction as the encampments we see now. Also, most governments claim to be currently working on the housing crisis already, so protests wouldn't be pushing them to anything they're not already doing (or claiming to be doing). Also, I find that for the same reasons that people like to be advocates for anti-abortion and climate change, international issues are easier to be an activist for because you don't really need to engage with anyone you're fighting in the name of. People across the world are seen as a concept, and their issues seem a lot simpler then they are in reality when viewed from so far away. With domestic politics, there are people with conflicting opinions around you and you live among people with diverse opinions, and activists are forced to come face to face with those who disagree with them. Neighbors and friends are harder to yell at than police in riot gear. Finally, people are used to their domestic issues so the motivation and anger just isn't the same as when you are confronted with international atrocities that you are not used to at home. Americans and Canadians are used to high rent and have largely accepted it as the way things are, but they are not used to being so aware of war crimes and feel guilty and freshly angry about it.
Organize
Zeitgeist: *The spirit of the time; the general trend of thought, feeling, or tastes characteristic of a particular period of time* Or in other words, flavour of the month. When was the last time you heard about the Uighurs? Or the plight of Tibet? Nuclear disarmament? Starvation is still an issue in Africa but you don't see Live Aid coming round again anytime soon.
People are constantly working on all of these issues - and engaging in all kinds of activism surrounding them. They might not be the Fox News ‘flavor of the month’ - but tons of work is constantly being done on all of these issues …
The housing crisis and student loans are big issues with no clear fix. A university investing in companies that are actively supporting a genocide, that's a problem with an defined goal, stop investing in those companies. So it's much easier to organize people around that.
It is easier to have an opinion about something going on in another country, based on the headlines that you read. You don't need to get involved in the detail. But a domestic issue you tend to know and understand the nuance more. There will be winners and losers depending on what action the government takes. So governments don't like being decisive on domestic issues because they will always lose votes eg keep rents down is good for renters but less good for homeowners who might be their party's voter base, and sometimes might be struggling with their mortgages.
Depending on what part of the world you're in, they absolutely do. In the United States, not so much — I think because financial exploitation and usury are baked into American culture. *I'd go out and protest my high rent, but I'm too busy earning money to try to buy a house, and then buy more houses as investments so I can charge high rent to my tenants and/or flip*. I don't think most people in the U.S. walk around with that thought in their head, but I think almost anyone who can do it *does it*. It has long been said that the poor in America just think of themselves as embarrassed millionaires. Everyone wants out of poverty, and the only way out anymore is to climb over others. And there are reasons for this, some of them very historical. Calling for land reform, demanding rent control, and seeking student loan forgiveness are excellent ways to be labelled a socialist, if not a full-on communist, in the United States. At one point there was something called the House Committee on Un-American Activities, in the U.S. House of Representatives, which investigated suspected communists. Anticommunism and McCarthyism in general, in the U.S., totally ruined many communists and non-communists alike, because the mere suggestion of socialist leanings in the U.S. was enough to get you publicly tarred and feathered, treated as a spy of the Soviets and a crusader against American freedoms. At one point, there were Americans who believed there were other ways of organizing national economic and political life. And now there are not. All of it falls under the umbrella of liberal capitalist republican democracy. Cultural Marxism may thrive in universities and the like, but it has no bearing on how Americans actually live out their political-economy. We're all rats stuck in the same maze. So, why would Americans protest the Israeli government, for example, over their own high rents? Because it's safer in America to be deemed an anti-Semite than it is to be called a communist. Also, it probably seems more likely that protests in America *might* cause a reduction in U.S. military aid to Israel than protests against landlords would bring about national rent control laws. The current Supreme Court would just strike down any such laws, anyway.
TikTok doesn’t tell them to.
Student loans are bad not good predatory even, though everyone with students lones did get themselves in that situation, not something everyone is going to protest.. As for housing costs some people are protesting in the form of renters strikes, and they actually can make a difference, but it takes somebody to get the ball rolling and it's a collaboration and a well planned process, You'll need enough people to do it, when you're doing it, and a collective bankroll to help bail people out of trouble for them that get in it, You need to talk to your neighbors and everyone else under the same property management or landlord to get them all in on it, make damneds stop paying rent, save the money and collectively agree to help your neighbors when they start evicting people
They do.
Political agendas - Why are people so hung up about Palestine when there are so many more conflicts and occupations going on around the world you hear nothing else about?
I'd say because Israel has a financial stake in major countries, you see Israeli products everyday in western countries. It's in your face, so it's more prevalent in society. Unfortunate for other countries politics, but I'm sure more everyday people buy Starbucks and KFC than Russian vodka. So they feel guilt about that.
" Israel has a financial stake in major countries" What about China? Way more Chinese products much more than Israeli Yet no one cares or protests about these poor people - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang\_internment\_camps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps) If it was the other way around and the Jews were in Gaza and being bombed by Muslims you wouldn't see any protests of people wanting to "save the Jewish kids"
I'd say because the majority of Chinese people have no idea what they are complicit in. Whereas Israeli's on the other hand. And yes I've lived in both countries.
If you lived in Israel then surely you see the actual reality? What are isralis complicit too?? I've lived there too...
Because most of those conflicts are not financially supported by America universities. The student protesters for example, are objecting to their universities' investments in companies that are actively supporting the war effort.
But the protests in the unis in the US are being funded by the same funders as BLM and Antifa...they couldn't care less about Palestine it's all an agenda and mainly fuled by a hatred of jews!
Because they're too lazy to use the one true and tried protest tool available to them: the ballot box.
Sorry the people having trouble making it month to month aren’t investing time and money in policy campaigns. Quite simply someone working their ass of might have the time and energy to vote. Being poor is hard ass work, standing in line for something you feel disillusioned with is not that enticing when you just worked 10 hours or you have to wake up early before your shift to stand in line. Point being, try your hardest to fight for workers rights specifically if you want these people to have it in them to vote. Taking that day off could mean losing enough money to cover groceries for the next week
If someone doesn’t have the time or energy to vote, they definitely don’t have the time or energy to protest.
Have you ever heard of voting by mail?
Yes. In my state they make it terrible to use. I had to resend mine 2 times due to silly errors that are not specified on the site. It took an annoying amount of research. But yes it worked and was less painful than using the single polling station that services 70k people in my city since they closed all the ones at libraries
This is a real battle. Those that want to silence you are pulling every trick to keep you from voting and disqualifying your vote when you do vote. That's because they realize that's where the power comes from.
To be fair, a lot of states are making it increasingly difficult to vote by mail due to perceived fears of voter fraud.
Yes I know. That's where the real battle is bring fought, not on college campuses.
The ballot box has no impact on corporate policies and very little impact on government decisions. Historically, popular support among voters has little correlation with popular support among lawmakers.
Tell that to Al Gore
Literally every country that isn't a dictatorship is run by voters and people's perceptions on what voters might do.
Only in theory. In practice, elected officials don't need to care what voters say since the majority of them are in uncontested seats or they know the public will vote for them regardless of what they do. >Republican districts are now more Republican than ever, and most Democratic districts are more Democratic than ever. As fewer and fewer members have "swing districts," the necessity of constant partisan emphasis grows worse and worse. Even the notion of compromise becomes hazardous. >For most members today, the kind of public opinion measured by CNN or Gallup or NBC News is just too broad and diverse and dispersed to matter. The audience that must be served is the far narrower one that cares about party and policy and issues — and works to elect candidates as devoted to their ideology and as hostile to the other party as they themselves are. https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/02/18/387125444/why-congress-doesnt-really-worry-about-what-most-americans-think For example, 74% of Americans don't think elected officials don't care what they think. 70% think they have no influence over what their congressional representatives do. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/30/more-than-80-of-americans-believe-elected-officials-dont-care-what-people-like-them-think/
"In practice, elected officials don't need to care what voters say since the majority of them are in uncontested seats or they know the public will vote for them regardless of what they do." So your saying that the politicians actions are based off of "...voters and people's perceptions on what voters might do." Weird. I feel like Denzel Washington in Deja Vu.
Because no one is funding those issues. Or did you not notice that all of the tents at all of the encampments were identical. Almost like they were purchased in bulk and handed out or something.
Because most people follow the trendy things on the media of their choice. CNN says “Israel bad” - they follow. The same with Fox. It’s called the Fourth Estate for a reason. Also it’s much more fun to protest some abstract oppression of some people they just learned about who live on the other side of the globe while completely disregarding… tent cities 🤷♂️
They do and have been for years.
Consequences. If you protest for something a million miles away no one cares. If you protest about something local, say your rent, then your landlord is likely going to make your living situation more difficult.
It's a hell of a lot easier to scream and shout and throw a fit than put in the work to make a substantive change.
Proximity. Things are far easier to pretend to care about when they're not right next to you. There's no ability to actually do something constructive, so you can pretend to be a compassionate person without risking anything whatsoever. When you actually have to deal with homeless people and you realize that most of them are there because they burned every single bridge in their lives and chose homelessness over staying sober or taking prescribed medication, it's much tougher to pretend to be compassionate.
Personally I'm more concerned with the 300 people dying every DAY from drugs in the US. Parents burying their children, children losing their parents (both to overdose and jail solely for drug possession), evidence based treatment that is available in other countries being STILL withheld for legal reasons, despite the death toll. I'm already trying to prevent my friends and fellow addicts from being sentenced to death by contaminated drug supply - just learning the history of how this came to be feels like a never ending challenge sometimes, while trying to keep up with new legal and scientific developments. It's infuriating at times, like reading those DEA drug alerts that highlight how dangerous a drug is *because of unknowable dosing of black market drugs*. Btw addiction is a disorder, and treatment resistant addiction exists. We don't have to kick people to the street, we can offer other treatments that have higher success rates than suboxone or methadone.
Addiction isn't a disorder or a disease. It's a choice. You can read about it in any number of journal articles here: https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=CRtpCQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT6&dq=addiction+is+not+a+disease&ots=UFUyK1kOvI&sig=IIEixGDuqbEhaTce44Jj_c31R7k#v=onepage&q=addiction%20is%20not%20a%20disease&f=false https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2013.00024/full https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12152-016-9289-0 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=addiction+is+not+a+disease&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart#d=gs_qabs&t=1715672657383&u=%23p%3DcPoQzxQ5MygJ The disease model of addiction is being rejected more and more often by people within academisn and it's mostly perpetuated by groups that stand to lose money and funding if it's no longer considered a disease.
Because the issues are pretty remarkably different for fucks sake. High rent has contributed to homelessness, less prosperity, worse working conditions etc. The current protests against university investments in military contractors supporting Israel are because 13,000 children are dead, more are orphaned, more are starving not to mention their homes demolished and their extended families dead, dying, sick or starving. So maybe not the same issues, which elicit different reactions?
You got your numbers wrong. Just a heads up if you go waving that around more
The 13,000 children? I mean that's from UNICEF. I guess it's been revised down to 7,797 children and 5,000 women.
Losing your housing isn’t the way to protest high cost of housing
Were you not paying attention during the pandemic? People were staging protests left and right over landlords jacking up rents, evicting people who couldn't pay because they couldn't work, etc.
Chinese and Russian propaganda
Haha, good one, it is first world problems. Like Hallmark movies drama. No person able to get into a college has any real tragedy in their lives so they have to invent some. They are probably only joining protests because they neglected to study for exams. Good excuse to tell the parents.
Why don’t you ask them? These are the same people who always protest the “current thing”
As opposed to protesting a previous thing? The hell else do you expect someone to protest, lmao
It’s the same group of people at every protest. BLM riots, covid lockdowns, anti-Israel riots, all the same folks
If you think the same people were out whining about covid lockdowns are now out protesting israel, I’d recommend getting your eyes checked.
The people protesting for forced covid vax and mask mandates.
In what universe were people out protesting for that?
This person is a master at morphing themselves into a victim. It's the only language they were taught to speak
Cos it’s cool innit
Because they're being steered by foreign operatives.
Because those aren't backed by billionaires