Nonviolent Protesting

[auroraglacialis]

Originally Posted by Dognik

You misunderstood me. You still expect everyone to do as you wish. So I can`t change the world, the people, but i can do things which i think people can be happy about without becoming a victim or slave. I mean for example give a hug to the closest family, ask my colleauges how they are, say someone "you look great today", and surely have a look around to preserve nature, but just for myself. [...]And so it goes on, if we say i start seperate the garbage, buying only glass bottles and so on..
I think these are the small things which count and not the Politics BLABLA abou Kyoto or other **** programmes.

I agree that politics as it is done now wont really help. But I think to start hugging people more often will not bring the rescue that is needed. If we had some decades time left, I'd say go for it - start hugging and do little things, separate your trash and maybe it will go somewhere. But as it is, the world is dying and while I am all in for more hugs and separating trash and all those little things, I think it will not be enough unless really a lot of people do this. Some people have been doing such things for many years now but it always had only limited effect. So certainly we separated trash and bought reusable bottles decades ago, we went to organic food stores when those were just a few and picked up trash in the forest 30 years ago - we told people to love nature, to love each other and all the other hippie stuff. But right now I have to say I am a pretty much pissed off hippie in that I see that the ignorance of so many people stands in the way of a continued existence of this world as it is. We (tree huggers, hippies, ecologists,...) have tried for decades to be nice, to explain how good it could all be and how greed and selfishness is not helping and that people should be positive to each other - and I still think so, but I am more and more afraid of failure. See, every day 200 species of living things on this planet go extinct forever. There are man made dead zones in the oceans larger than whole countries. The permafrost begins to thaw, deserts spread, water is becoming scarce and the fish are vacuumed out of the oceans while animals in farms are mistreated. More and more of these things come in. Yes I do hug my friends and I continue to divide my trash in 8 differnt trashcans for recycling and turn on the hot water heater only twice a week and buy reusable bottles and organic food and energy saving light bulbs and all the load of it. But this is not enough, to just took at oneself is not enough I think - of course in the end everyone will have to change to save the planet, but I dont think this will happen by people mysteriously awakening. For some it will, but I think others have to be awoken and those who prefer to stay deeply asleep may have to be shaken or at least stopped in their sleepwalking madness....

RE nonviolent protesting: Here are some images from what happened last weekend in Germany. People chained themselves to railways, put their vehicles on the road, placed trees on the rails and tried to remove cobbles from underneath them in another act of civil disopbedience and putting their bodies in line of another transport of deadly nuclear waste to an unsafe storage compound. Of course the police was as always not exactly peaceful and started beating away, confiscated press equipment and peppersprayed journalists. This is what people should start to get - the violence against people in these actions is in most cases happening on the side of the police while the protesters rather resort to property destruction (like throwing paintbombs at police cars).

http://www.ndr.de/regional/niedersac...ntentgross.jpg
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