When former President Donald Trump took office in 2017, white, suburban Democrats got nervous. They joined Facebook groups, became the token, outspoken liberal at their family’s Thanksgiving dinner, and flooded the streets in a nationwide “Women’s March.” But when President Joe Biden defeated Trump in 2020, many of the newly activated liberals shelved their pink pussyhats. As the left derisively describes it, the liberals went back to “brunch.” Basically, the average, center-left Democratic voter felt comfortable once again under Biden, even as he oversaw massive losses to reproductive access, an increase in child poverty, proposed cruel border crackdowns and funded Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Now, days before what Democrats tout as the most consequential election of our lifetimes, organizers across the broader left strategize their response to either presidency. If Trump loses, will the liberals order another round of mimosas? If he wins, will it once again draw hundreds of thousands more people to join those already in the streets today?
Regardless of the outcome in November, liberal and lefty organizers in Washington say they won’t make a big hoopla — their activism before the election, whether protesting for a free Palestine or campaigning for centrist Democrat Kim Schrier, will not dramatically change after it.
Shockwaves Through The Suburbs
The anti-Trump libs don’t appear to have the same juice as in 2016.
“A lot of people felt that the original mandate was defeating the Trump agenda,” says Kat Pipkin, an organizer Indivisible, which sprung up around Trump’s presidency. “And organizations grew to continue to advance democratic and progressive policies nationally, at the state level and locally, but there were people for sure who felt like, once Trump was out of office, their job was done.”
Pipkin doubts that a second Trump term will bring the same level of public engagement from the groups spawned from the backlash of his first term such as Indivisible, #Resistance liberals, the Women’s March organization, and others hellbent on defeating his extremist agenda.
“We’ve been inured over the past eight years by inflammatory rhetoric and political violence, and I mean, people are tired,” Pipkin says.
Trump’s first election marked an activation for many Democrats, particularly white women.
“Up until 2016, I was on the periphery like many folks who should have known better,” says Robin Gitelman, an Indivisible WA 8th organizer. “When Trump won, I was just absolutely devastated. And after that, I realized that it wasn’t enough to just be a voter.”
And while large-scale demonstrations such as Seattle’s Women’s March may have provided collective catharsis for its attendees, organizers in Washington have since found more effective ways of pushing their agenda, Pipkin says. Riding the anti-Trump high, Indivisible WA organizers on the eastside successfully flipped 8th congressional district, a purple swath of voters straddling the Cascades, from several decades of Republican rule to its first Democrat representative in Shrier in 2018. That same year, Indivisible WA 8th also helped replace Republicans with Democrats in both State House seats in the 5th LD.
It seems a Trump presidency won’t change Indivisible groups in Washington’s strategy much. They will continue to vehemently defend moderate Schrier, the two seats in the 5th LD, and advocate for state legislation —including Rep. My-Linh Thai and Sen. Noel Frame’s wealth tax. Pipkin believes this is positive growth for the Indivisible movement, showing that their work is “not purely reactionary,” but part of a long-term, continuous strategy for making change regardless of who is president.
Liberal Limitations
But Indivisible didn’t bring out millions across the country following Trump’s Inauguration — that was the Women’s March. The Seattle “Womxn’s March” set a city record for a public demonstration, attracting more than 100,000 people and far surpassing the previous mark of roughly 40,000 people who descended on Seattle for the World Trade Organization protests in 1999. By all appearances, the Seattle chapter has not organized a march or rally since Oct. 2021 when they brought out an estimated 2,500 people for a rally in Westlake. Reproductive rights activists gathered just a few thousand for a march downtown after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
While the national Women’s March organization still exists and organizes, the organizers never pulled as many “Nasty Women” out of the suburbs as the day after Trump’s inauguration when 4 million people across the country took to the streets to protest his extreme, misogynistic agenda. Some women, particularly women of color, disabled women, queer women, or women who otherwise experience compounding oppressions have argued that actions like the Women’s March advance “white feminism,” which fails to use an intersectional approach to activism, making long-term, sustained organizing more difficult. Without an intersectional and inclusive understanding of liberation, white feminists will fill the streets when Trump threatens their rights, but will stay home and watch Gilmore Girls under Biden.
Palmira Figueroa, who organized with Seattle Womxn’s March for two years after Trump got elected says that Seattle’s now relatively inactive chapter put more effort into promoting intersectional feminism, largely because so many women of color coordinated the chapter. But nationally, the Women’s March movement seems too narrowly focused for Figueroa’s liking. Women’s March PAC endorsed Harris, due to her stronger pro-abortion agenda, very quickly and without criticism. Figueroa found that troubling, particularly as Harris promotes cruelty at the border and permits genocide in Palestine.
“Abortion rights are important. I know that. But I’m not a single issue organizer,” says Figueroa, who now organizes for immigration justice with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.
Figueroa expects white feminists may iron their “This Pussy Grabs Back” T-shirts if Trump gets elected again, but if Harris wins, then they will feel fine to hang off on the sidelines, particularly in Washington, which maintains abortion access. “But the reality is, if Harris gets elected, kids in Palestine still get murdered and the families still get separated at the border,” she says.
Gina Petry, from Radical Women, a socialist feminist advocacy group, says that all these struggles are connected. She anticipates that more liberal feminists will argue for siloing advocacy, which Petry says is a mistake.
Indivisible WA’s Gitelman recalls a workshop with the League of Women Voters shortly after Trump’s first election where the speaker encouraged attendees to imagine just one issue in their mind and focus on that for the sake of their bandwidth. Gitelman remembers the speakers saying that people will have different priorities and then all issues will get covered.
Figueroa encourages people to take a broader approach. If Democrats give Harris a pass on Palestine or immigration because she promises to restore federal abortion protections, then the party will continue ratcheting to the right. It is that complacency, Figueroa argues, that gives rise to a Trump.
Pro Palestine Advocates March On
While it’s unclear to what degree the pussyhats will pink out Seattle’s streets after the election, the keffiyehs are here to stay.
Taara Khalilnaji, co-chair of the Seattle Democratic Socialist of America’s Palestine Solidarity international working group, says the presidential election does not change their work. The working group will continue to support marches and actions as well as what Khalilnaji called the group’s “baby,” their campaign supporting the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. So far, the working group has collected more than 1,500 consumer pledges from locals promising to shop BDS compliant products and services. Next, the group will start to pressure businesses to de-stock and replace boycotted items.
Similarly, Jack Hogan, an organizer with Seattle Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), said the group will stay the course under either presidency. But for now, Hogan notes that Biden is still president for a couple months. In that time, JVP intends to continue pressuring the administration for an arms embargo. JVP plans specifically to badger Sen. Patty Murray to support Sen. Bernie Sander’s newly introduced Joint Resolutions of Disapproval, which would block the sale of more than $20 billion in offensive U.S. weapons to Israel.
Khalilnaji says their advocacy will not stop until Palestine is free. And that’s not on either presidential candidate’s agenda. Khalilnaji described Biden as “unmoveable” on his support for Israel’s genocide. He may have called for a ceasefire, but Biden failed to exert the pressure to enact it by embargoing arms, and has failed to investigate reports that U.S arms were used to kill Gazans.
While it seems Harris’s platform mirrors Biden’s, some people see Harris’ rhetoric as more “empathetic” toward the plight of Palestinians. But Khanlilnaji says she’s far from an ally to the cause.
“Whatever words Harris may use to show empathy for Palestinians do not really hold any value when in the same breath she’ll call Oct. 7 a greater tragedy than Israel’s ongoing genocide,” says Khalilnaji.
At the same time, Hogan acknowledges that Harris would be a preferable enemy to their protests. Pro-Palestine protesters understand Harris is no ally to their cause, but will at least allow them to protest.
According to the ACLU Integrated advocacy director Vanessa Torres Hernandez, Trump’s record does not paint a pretty picture for protests under a possible second term. For example, during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, Trump instructed governors to deploy the National Guard to “dominate the streets,” and threatened to unleash the military on protesters. He also called out the National Guard to disrupt peaceful protests in Washington DC, Hernandez notes. Under his watch, federal marshals and a militarized unit of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection descended on Portland, OR to stifle protests and unlawfully arrest both journalists and legal observers. Hernandez worries Trump might also “exploit the executive branch’s vast and unprecedented powers to spy on Americans’ lives with dragnet surveillance of our data, potentially abusing that information to suppress protest and political dissent.” Not to mention Trump has explicitly called for the deportation of pro-Palestinian protesters.
Hogan says JVP will strategize how to best protest under Trump when the time comes. Despite the threat of repression, lefty organizers anticipate a Trump victory would bring reengaged liberals out to the streets too.
“I think liberals will be galvanized if Trump wins. I just don’t know that they’re going to be galvanized for Palestine,” says Khalilnaji.
Khalilnaji adds that some American women will advocate for their own reproductive rights under a Trump presidency, but did not fight the Biden administration to extend those rights to women in red states. Those same women do not always express outrage over Israel’s slaughter of women and children or the abhorrently inadequate access to reproductive care in Gaza as the genocide rages on, Khalilnaji added.
“I don’t know how much of the reading that folks did in 2020 about institutional racism is sticking,” says Khalilnaji. “I don’t know why some people did not retain the concept that ‘none of us are free until all of us are free.’”
Should the pussyhats return to the streets, Khalilnaji says anti-imperial, anti-capitalist, and intersectional feminists won’t lose focus. She just hopes liberal feminists will “connect the dots” between the struggles at home and abroad this time. Even if Harris wins, even if white feminists feel safe to keep their bullhorn in storage, the fight for liberation goes on.
Fun fact: the popularity of keffiyehs with the hipster leftist crowd was enough to create a Chinese industry of mass keffiyeh production, driving small family operations that produced them in the West Bank out of business. Great work, all!
Can we say that protesting achieved our goals in the last eight years beyond a rage-fueled catharsis? Maybe some at local levels (Seattle School Board, looking at you), but can’t say it moved the needle nationally.
It’s a new era. If we’re to survive in this environment, we must pivot to building community and finding commonality over protests and demonstration tactics.
Lefty Palestine supporter here, but I know if Trump wins, this is likely to be our last presidential election. Anyone who has studied dictatorships and fascism or who understands the intersectionality of xenophobia, racism, climate change disasters (especially famine), fascism, and nationalism, can see this coming. I remember the (terrifying but still somehow lower stakes than this) times when Bush won (thanks, Supreme Court) and Trump won in 2016, many left folx who went third party were like, “this will finally wake people up and we’ll have a revolution!”
Nope. We just dragged the whole country further right, millions of people died, and we got messes so entrenched the subsequent Democratic presidents couldn’t clean them up.
Also, why the fuck do you think we lost reproductive care access during Biden’s term?! Trump’s fucking Supreme Court.
And Gaza? Trump will be worse for Gaza, full stop. And yeah, horrifying as it is, it can get even worse.
My job involves seeing the kinds of deaths caused by a first Trump administration and trying to prevent them. If an emboldened Trump wins again, the horrors are going to surpass our worst nightmares.
I cede my comment to @3 – much better said
Hannah, serious question: what is your theory of change? is it that Trump gets reelected, white suburban liberal women start protesting again, and somehow 50% plus one person in the United States understands intersectionality, and votes for Bernie Sanders?
The Modern Progressive Credo: Demand everything, get nothing, brag about it.
Unfortunately the “resistance” in Seattle only proved to be utterly bankrupt of any reason or purpose beyond “opposite of Orange Man”. Led to complete idiocy like supporting the wannabe revolution at CHAZ/CHOP, just because Trump might have suggested it wasn’t so good. It wasn’t. It was stupid. Even the broken clock of Trump was 100% correct about that. Made even more comical as one of the demands was SPD oversight by US DOJ….run by Donald Trump at the time.
Progressives in Seattle made themselves a laughing stock I’m confident they will do so again whether they are “resisting” Trump or Harris.
“…The Keffiyehs Are Here To Stay [Ineffective],” because “Gaza Isn’t Driving Votes.”
“Taara Khalilnaji, co-chair of the Seattle Democratic Socialist of America’s Palestine Solidarity international working group, says the presidential election does not change their work.”
What, of getting their now-lone Member of the Seattle City Council re-elected? Because if they fail at that, too, then none of the rest of their agenda will get any traction, even in lefty Seattle.
The Stranger really needs to start wondering why it must always go to members of local fringe groups to find anyone who agrees with the Stranger.
The latest installment in “We Hate the Jews Here at the Stranger” by Hannah Krieg (as usual).
Yes, Bibi Netanyahu is a monster. News Flash: he has been since 1996 when he first got elected. He has been this whole time. Its nice to see the Stranger acknowledge that…almost 30 years later.
Yes. This is a punishment “war”. 100% true.
And as Tensorna has pointed out multiple times before: there is this organization in Gaza called “HAMAS”. On October 7th, they did some monstrous really bad shit.
The Stranger just sails right past that like Hamas never existed and October 7 never happened. The former Soviet news agency Tass would be impressed with your ability, Hannah Winter and Brady Walkinshaw, to just ignore real world events…or, more likely, to, genuinely confoundingly, permit your “journalists” to do so.
You did, however, publish a piece attacking the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin and their address about him at the Democratic convention. An address, by the way, where they pleaded for peace and reconciliation. And then, after already having had his left forearm blown off by a Hamas-thrown grenade, he was found in a tunnel dead, shot multiple times, including in the head.
Guess what? The Stranger and Hannah Krieg had nothing to say about that.
If you are going to call yourself a “news weekly”, you cannot continue to just ignore news that does not fit within the confines of your own ideological universe.
@3 out of curiousity how do you think that goes down? Surely the majority of Americans would not be ok with that so does he convince the military to institute martial law? Given military leaders are already on record disagreeing with him do you think that is plausible? You sound like the far right wingers who think Harris will import millions of democratic voting refugees, strategically place them in red states and make sure democrats are essentially elected for life. Trump is not going to be great and his policies are bad too but I have actually have faith that our system will hold, this too shall pass and we will carry on once his term is up (if he wins which is a total toss up)
I will say that I think this is the first pro-Palestine article I’ve seen that acknowledges Trump would be worse for their cause than Harris.
As for being “galvanized for Palestine,” I think that if Trump wins we’re more likely to be “galvanized to try and make sure the United States survives in some recognizable form.” I think expecting anyone to put Palestine (or any other foreign country) ahead of that is insane.
I stopped reading at “even as [Biden] oversaw massive losses to reproductive access.” What a stupid take. Maybe look up the definition of “oversaw,” Hannah.
The keffiyehs most definitely will not be staying. Due to execrable argumentation and conduct, the movement will retreat back into niche campus activism as soon as the bullets stop flying.
What is here to stay, apparently, is a kind of shameless condescension by TS toward D voting Caucasian women, one only matched by a total lack of self awareness. Last time I checked, the staff seems pretty white and female. You want to talk intersectionality, take a look in the mirror and map yourself on the “stack.”
I’m waiting for the day when TS goes full Stokely Carmichael, and boots the white gals club from the staff in the name of the glorious revolution.
These are just kids with little to no life experience writing these articles. Basic journalism requires fact finding using the who, what, where, when and how method in answering the big picture questions. Journalism is not just giving out strong opinions from within your personal bubble. I come here on occasion to see if journalism is getting a lift since the new ownership but it appears we are not having that yet. Maybe spend some time in the West Bank like Clarissa Ward or Hadas Gold, take it in and then come back with your perspective.
“‘Whatever words Harris may use to show empathy for Palestinians do not really hold any value when in the same breath she’ll call Oct. 7 a greater tragedy than Israel’s ongoing genocide,’ says Khalilnaji.”
j.f.c.
@14
“Maybe spend some time in the West Bank like Clarissa Ward or Hadas Gold, take it in and then come back with your perspective.”
not a bad idea
until one considers
ISRAEL TARGETS ALL
JOURNALISTS except
maybe those Imbedded
with their IOF. how many
Journalists have they Murdered?
over 150.
so Far.
Ranked.
Choice.Voting,
America. or Bust.
“their campaign supporting the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement” will lose all left to centrist support if their protest leads to another Trump presidency (it barely has support now due to the many antisemitic tropes we see thrown about by these groups).
We’re all about to see if the lessons of 1968 have been forgotten / corrupted (at least the white women of TS will still be able to die brunch on the weekends).
As long as the Palestinians keep shooting, the Israelis get to keep bombing.
Egypt and Jordan figured this out decades ago, and all it took them was half a dozen lost wars and a few tens of thousands of their own people killed. Today, Palestine is on a similar journey of learning. Hopefully Palestine will achieve a similar understanding when it is over.
The problem is religion. The middle east is a sesspool of mental illness. Each group praying their precious sky daddy will bounce them up and down on his knee. The stupidity is beyond comprehension. I have to channel my inner George Carlin and say the sooner we are extinct the better. Let the octopus take over with its 9 brains. We can’t even work the one we got.
.@thumper
.. and as long as Israeli settlers (and not all Israelis, unlike some, the radical left can differentiate) think their sky monster gave them the sky monster given right to take over Palestinians homes and lands, the Palestinians will use any means possible to stop them. And that is what is happening right now.
I don’t think the Palestinians can give up, what can they do, disappear? Didn’t work in Warsaw, people are unwilling to be erased. Comes with the gene set.
There can be no peace possible until settlements are removed. I would hope a majority of Palestinians would agree to some recognition that could start there. (Naturally all hostages are returned and the IDF withdraws, Hamas becomes unnecessary as peace isn’t going to be achieved by force of arms. ).
Or we can pay for 70 more years of war.
Everything with trump is transactional. He has no moral core.
Miriam Adelson gave him $85 million dollars. She is a strident advocate for West Bank annexation and removal of the Palestinians there.
His son-in-law Jared, with his 200 billion in Saudi backing, has speculated that Gaza would be perfect for seaside luxury resorts (probably trump-branded) and has suggested that the residents should be forcibly relocated to the Negev desert.
When amorality meets religious discrimination and practically unlimited amounts of money, disaster isn’t far behind. If you think what’s going on now is genocide, imagine it under a trump administration.
People like Jill Stein and Kshama Sawant know that. If you want to know what’s driving them, follow the money.
@19
oh, right, angryone:
butwhattabout Boeing?
Raytheon? General Fucking
Dynamics? what’re THEY supposed
to Do? just go Broke? if there’s No War
there’s. no. Profits.
the Left needs to start
thinking about someone
Other Than THEMSELVES for once.
ending bibi’s litttle
Genocide has repercussions Other
Than simply not Genociding Palestinians
and Lebanese. grow up! and Think
of the Shareholders’ Children
for Christ’s sake.
@21
it’s
Our little
Genocide
Too! we’re
co-Sponsors!
but, not
to Worry:
we Got this
under Control.
nyt:
Iran’s Supreme
Leader Threatens Israel
With ‘Crushing Response’ to Strikes
His
comments
came as the Pentagon
said it would send additional
fighter jets and destroyers to the Middle East.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/02/world/middleeast/israel-lebanon-iran-hezbollah.html
yipee?
yee Haw?
Slim Pickens
ridin’ a Nuke?
@19angryone
Strange how you direct the “sky monster” quip toward Jewish Israelis when this war was launched by an organization whose entire raison d’etre to use your language is about a “sky monster.”
Next, you cite taking land takings, but you must realize that in 2005 Israel actually dismantled/evacuated its settlements in Gaza, and pulled back direct military control of the strip.
As far as “what is to be done, what is to be expected” I simply do not buy into this concept where any actions taken by an aggrieved party escape moral accountability. Start at the individual level – a kid who is bullied at school or say the beaten down employee, showing up one day and shooting up the place. The oppression might help explain why they did it, but we still hold them accountable. Palestinians, aggrieved as they might be, still have choice/agency, and accountability.
Consider. How did apartheid end in South Africa? Did Mandela order paragliders on massacre raids? How did Ghandi lead a movement to free India of British rule? Did MLK propel a civil rights movement by folks like Rosa Parks demanding to sit in the front of the bus, or blowing the buses up? Lets consider Ukraine today. Zelensky does not order terror drones into Russia despite Putin doing exactly that. Ask yourself why.
Then ask yourself how repeatedly waging war against Israel has worked out for Palestinians. Look at the general trajectory of the entire region after each convulsion. Imagine hopping into a time machine and going back to the end of the British Mandate in 47. The UN has just passed Res. 181 declaring a two state partition. You are sitting in Cairo as an advisor to Palestinian and Arab front line state leaders. What is your advice? Accept the deal, or support what actually happened, declaration of war and invasion by Egypt Jordan Syria to wipe Israel off the map?
Deal or no deal angryone?
@19: So long as the Palestinians keep fighting “by any means necessary,” they’ll keep getting killed “by any means necessary.”
Israel is too strong to destroy. Palestine can learn it the easy way, or they can learn it the hard way.
So far they’ve consistently chosen the hard way. It’s sad, but give ‘em a few more decades and another half-dozen major ass-kickings and they might finally figure it out, lol!
@24: Yes, if the Palestinian goal is peaceful co-existence with Israel, and step one of the Palestinian plan is “Invade Israel, kill and kidnap a bunch of people, and bombard Israel with rockets every day for a year,” then I might humbly suggest there is a poor connection between Palestinian goals and Palestinian means. 😄
“Imagine hopping into a time
machine and going back to
the end of the British
Mandate in 47.”
–@24
or!
you Order
Germany to give
(surviving) Jews Their
OWN Land from Deutschland
as Reparations for their Exterminations
you don’t give the Jews
SOMEONE ELSE’S
PROPERTY.
@27: lol, Israel isn’t “reparations” for the Holocaust. There’s a few thousand years of Jewish history in Israel you might want to read up on! 😆
@24 “Consider. How did apartheid end in South Africa?”
International pressure. Mandela and the ANC, who were labeled terrorists by the US, fought however they could for decades and suffered extreme state reprisals and violence. Finally, long after the rest of the UN had begun condemning South Africa, the US decided Black South Africans had a right to full personhood and began exerting economic pressure (think boycotts, divestment and sanctions) which forced the SA government to the table in a real way and ultimately led to the end apartheid.
Which is exactly what pro-Palestinian protestors are asking for now.
Forty years ago you and those who agree with you would be railing against the terrorist ANC and insisting South Africa has a right to exist (implicitly, in whatever repressive ethnostate form it wants).
Sure you want people to consider how apartheid ended in SA?
@25 “Israel is too strong to destroy. Palestine can learn it the easy way, or they can learn it the hard way.”
You gonna keep this energy if Trump wins and starts persecuting his political opponents and their supporters? “lol”
@30: Israel will be too strong to destroy with or without Donald Trump, lol! Sorry, “anti-Zionists,” but you’re stuck with a Jewish state no matter who wins the US presidency! 😃
@29: “Which is exactly what pro-Palestinian protestors are asking for now.”
Nope. They’re demanding the violent elimination of Israel. Starting shortly after 10/7, and continuing on to the anniversary of 10/7, they have been very clear — and very consistent — about this:
‘The protesters made their demands clear in their rallying chants: … “There is only one solution, intifada revolution,” and, “We don’t want two states, we want 1948,”’
(https://www.thestranger.com/news/2023/10/16/79212000/as-a-ground-invasion-looms-thousands-in-seattle-protest-for-a-free-palestine)
‘The day before the police shut down the protests [at Columbia University], pro-Palestinian students led marches around the heart of the campus chanting “Brick by brick, wall by wall, Israel will fall” and “We don’t want no two state, we will take all of it”. Others led with a variation on the popular but contentious “river to the sea” slogan: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab.”’
(https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/03/college-gaza-protests-antisemitism)
‘Speaker describes the October 7 attack as the “birth of a miracle.” Says the attack exhibited “courage like no other … to lead us, to lead this broken world of ours, in a march of freedom unlike any other.”‘
https://x.com/EFischberger/status/1843334106249044428
(h/t thumpus for the last)
Maybe, just maybe, the people who demonstrated in the streets for women’s rights aren’t all that comfortable also demonstrating for a government that suppresses women’s rights? That seems like a much simpler explanation as to why those who wore a pink pussy hat when Trump was president aren’t out in the streets wearing Keffiyehs supporting Hamas. It doesn’t make it any less weird that The Stranger has made supporting a government that represses women and executes gay people a left-wing litmus test, though.
@33: “represses women and executes gay people”
Don’t forget the terrorism and the anti-semitism. Even by progressive standards, they have chosen a remarkably unlovely poster child this time. 😃
@33: “…The Stranger has made supporting a government that represses women and executes gay people a left-wing litmus test…”
Demonstrating Horseshoe Theory in action, which also explains why Sawant’s campaigning for Trump has elicited nothing more than a “STFU!!” response from the Stranger.
@33-35 nobody’s demonstrating on behalf of the Palestinian government or Hamas they’re demonstrating on behalf of the Palestinian civilians who are being oppressed. Or is your argument that if a people are at any point governed by a backward enough regime they lose their human rights as a result? And if so are Americans, in your opinion, still entitled to human rights given this country’s legacies of extermination of indigenous peoples, slavery followed by Jim Crow, and military overthrow of disfavored governments in foreign countries around the globe?
@36: “nobody’s demonstrating on behalf of the Palestinian government or Hamas”
snicker
@36, @37: “…nobody’s demonstrating on behalf of the Palestinian government or Hamas…”
As I quoted @32, on the anniversary of 10/7, a speaker at a pro-Palestinian rally in Seattle glorified Hamas’ 10/7 attacks with lavish praise.
@32 and @33’s points remain: Seattle liberals may sympathize with the suffering of persons in Gaza, but that does not mean they will support a terror group who claims to represent those suffering persons.
You know, for all of you people holding up South Africa as some shining example of how international pressure improves things, I got one question: have any of you bothered to see what’s going on in South Africa now? Because, news flash, it’s on the verge of being a failed state, AKA “a state whose political or economic system has become so weak that the government is no longer in control” like the worst times in Somalia, or Afghanistan under the Taliban.
So, maybe we didn’t do a very good job there either. Just saying.
@39 are you suggesting it was a mistake to allow all South Africans to fully participate in their political system? That maybe it would have been better for the country to maintain apartheid? Is that really where you want to take this?
@38 that’s not what the speaker said as anyone who watches the embedded video can see. Bad faith misrepresentations do not strengthen your argument.
@41: Ha ha ha, it most definitely is what he said. Verbatim quote, actually! Careful, bruh, your terrorism sympathy is showing! 🤣🤣🤣
@41: I’ve watched the entire video, and I stand by my characterization of it. I’ll add the crowd responds approvingly to the speaker’s loving description of violence against unarmed civilians.
As documented @36, pro-Palestinian demonstrators have repeatedly called for war, and for elimination of Israel, since immediately after to 10/7 attacks. We should find nothing surprising in yet another speaker, at yet another pro-Palestinian rally, doing yet more of it.
@40 – I’m suggesting that however well-intentioned the intervention was, we effectively destroyed the country and now No One gets to participate in the political process because there effectively isn’t any. So maybe we should learn from that, and make an effort to know a bit more about what we’re doing before we interfere in other countries’ messy internal conflicts again, instead of blindly going “well, things are bad, so any intervention is good, even if we don’t actually know what we’re doing.”
But it seems you’re in the camp of blindly yelling “bad thing is bad so how dare you point out that I have absolutely no understanding of how to make it better!” The truth is that you have no intelligent or informed ideas on the subject, and if your ideas actually were implemented, it’d just make everything massively worse.
@44 who’s “we?” South Africa, in light of international condemnation of their overtly racist legal scheme, freed political prisoners including most famously Nelson Mandela and held free and fair elections. Nobody overthrew their government. So again, do you think ending apartheid was a mistake? Is that what you consider an “intelligent and informed idea?”
@45: I suspect the Israelis will prove a little more resistant to “international condemnation” than the South Africans were. The Israelis are fighting for their lives, whereas the South Africans were fighting for segregated swimming pools. 😃
@41: The Stranger has itself implicitly recognized how vile local pro-Palestinian demonstrators have been. Whereas in the week after 10/7, the Stranger quoted the demonstrators directly, at the anniversary rally, the Stranger carefully paraphrased their statements, never providing even a single direct quote:
“Nearby, a pro-Palestine rally of more than 400 people marched from the waterfront to the Space Needle to call for a ceasefire, a call-to-action more than a commemoration, one that acknowledged all the death and devastation that came on and after last October 7.”
(https://www.thestranger.com/slog-am/2024/10/07/79729008/slog-am-flooding-at-easy-street-records-mount-rainier-loses-some-height-another-hurricane-heads-for-florida)
As I noted @32, they didn’t merely “acknowledge” it, they loudly celebrated that “death and devastation,” and their “call to action” demanded lots more of it, too.
Whatever the merits of the Palestinian position, demonstrators in the U.S. seem intent upon presenting it as simply demanding more war.
@47
“When liberty is the prize who would shun the warfare?”
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants”
“Give me liberty, or give me death!”
Whatever the merits of the colonial position, demonstrators seemed intent upon presenting it as simply demanding more war.
@45 [sigh] No, I’m saying that HOW we chose to try and stop it helped to destroy the entire country, so we (meaning America, but also yes, any other country that chooses interventionism) need to be careful to actually try and know what we’re doing when we intervene.
But thanks for proving my point that you have no functional knowledge of anything and can only blindly repeat “if obvious bad things are bad, then you can’t say that my completely uninformed views of how to stop the bad things are nonsense, because that means you like the bad things.”
If I say that it’s a bad idea to throw someone with a broken leg into a pool, that doesn’t mean I’m pro broken legs, it just means I know enough to understand that tossing them into the pool is stupid.
@49 whatever weird way you want to analogize it you are arguing that ending apartheid, freeing political prisoners, and holding free and fair elections were bad. Which is absurd. Also you might want to check in on the country again their economy is doing much better so your whole premise that it’s a borderline failed state is faulty. Basically everything you’ve said on the topic is profoundly stupid and likely racist so forgive me for not caring at all what you think of my functional knowledge.
@48: Please keep us informed on Patriotic Palestinian resistance to the Kosher Stamp Tax.
Also as to exactly where which Palestinians, under independent government, would fall under the “liberty or death,” equation. (Feel free to do the latter by group: LGBTQ Palestinians, outspoken female Palestinians, non-Islamic Palestinians, etc.)
@51 oh now you want to talk about the merits not just tone police