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Comment by codingdave | Hacker News Reader

I agree, but protesting in the streets is not the right response. If we do that, businesses can just smile at us as they go about their business anyway. A better answer is to get involved in public government - instead of protesting, the residents of those cities should be packing their city council meetings and planning meetings, making their voices heard directly with the people who are putting these packages together for Amazon.

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It seems to work pretty well in places like for example France.

Have you seen what happens when a politician tries to take away a single sick day or reduce their already-world-leading maternity leave? .. millions march in the streets for days and you can bet your bottom dollar come election time the responsible politician is swiftly voted out.

Those people care about what is happening in their country and how it impacts them. They know it's more important than football and cheap beer.

Americans have forgotten how to participate in Democracy.

France is a lot more compact than US, which makes for much more effective protesting - that is also true of other European countries. You can get to Paris from pretty much any point in France in few hours by hopping on a relatively cheap train, and blocking the capital with marches and protesting is a huge deal that people have to listen to. I know the same approach works to some great results in Poland - even if you're a miner from a rural town, you can get to Warsaw on a train in 3-4 hours for about $10 and protest all day long right in front of the parliment and get back home the same night. In US the impact is lessened, because it's very costly and time consuming for a lot of people to get to washington to protest, and protesting in state capitals is not quite as effective(and can still be expensive to get to, depending where you live). Also people don't get such strong employee protections, in EU no one could ever fire you for protesting, but in US if you miss work to go to a demonstration you can be fired without recourse.

It's not like those politicians are going to listen to the people in their city council meetings either. Local politicians careers are going to get made off of whether they get the deal not to count the money at stake. I've been slowly coming to the conclusion that all our methods of peaceful protest are basically no longer working, the people in power have effectively cut us off from influencing them without (1) a big chunk of money or (2) committing a crime (ie you must register protests in advance, you can't march anywhere unexpected, say, a politicians house, etc.)

Maybe it depends on your town. Last time I saw my council taking a step I didn't like, I started knocking on doors around town, letting everyone to know to come to the meeting. Hundreds of people showed up, and the council changed the plans to match the will of the people.

I think protesting could work only if you just don't leave til your demands are met, the problem with protests in general is that people tend to organize it for just a day.

If business can continue as usual, you're not protesting right.

Agreed

The best way to protest is tell people you know you disagree and don’t care if the relationship sours because of it

People have to push back against the nonsense their friends and family spew

When someone spews

“It makes sense,” says and outside, “to burden another muni with generational debt for jobs today so we can keep selling trifles.”

You tell them they’re absurd

Grandpa spouting jingoist nonsense? You slap him in the mouth like he did you for swearing

Stop being afraid of each other and push back on plain stupid

> Grandpa spouting jingoist nonsense? You slap him in the mouth like he did you for swearing

Do you want to be slapped by young people in the future, when your politics are no longer fashionable?

This is a nihilistic false equivalence that fails to consider what the actual positions are.

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