6 ms·

The message here is clear: Don't protest or you might lose your job. I will say it again, despite being down-voted last time, these are chilling effects on acti

• analogmemory 10y ago
  If I lose my job for protesting or activism then fuck that employer. There should be a database of companies that fire people for their off hours activism.
  • devoply 10y ago
    The point of chilling effects is to dissuade people sitting on the fence. If you can do enough of that only very committed people go out to protest and it's easy to single they out and isolate them from society.
  • dec0dedab0de 10y ago
    it should start with a list of companies that publicly state that their employees are allowed to protest, even if the company disagrees with them.
    • gcr 10y ago
      Absolutely. When I go on the job market, I will absolutely bias my search toward employers that have a history of activism among the leaders of the country. (Example: Fog Creek Software with Anil Dash as CEO would be my absolute dream place to work.)
    • duncan-donuts 10y ago
      It's pretty sad we're talking about companies publicly stating they allow employees to protest. What business is it of the company?
      • r00fus 10y ago
        They'd be saying they're not interfering with their employees rights. I.e. Doing the right thing.
        • ihsw 10y ago
          You don't have the right to be a criminal without consequence.
    • mjolk 10y ago
      You're suggesting a left-wing form of McCarthyism. I don't care if my employees/reports protest as long as they do their job and don't attempt political intimidation, but I am not willing to put my company on a list to satisfy a virtue-signaling busybody.
      • tomjakubowski 10y ago
        Are you kidding? Promoting the recognition of an employee's first amendment rights now falls under "virtue signaling" and "McCarthyism"?
        • mjolk 10y ago
          Please re-read the parent comment: > it should start with a list of companies that publicly state that their employees are allowed to protest, even if the company disagrees with them. The part that is objectionable is the expectation that my company would need to register on a list stating that I respect the rights of my employees. Doing things within your legal rights is the _default_; I reject the act of playing into someone's political "are you with us?" game.
        • dsfyu404ed 10y ago
          It's sure a heck not a virtue any company in the defense sector wants to be signaling.
      • legodt 10y ago
        Fellow commentors, please be aware that "virtue signalling" is a buzzword used by the alt-right to discredit activists or socially progressive people. This tactic is meant to dissuade the socially progressive from actively taking a role in enacting change.
        • mjolk 10y ago
          If you're trying to accuse me of something, I'd prefer you have the decency to do it directly and unequivocally.
        • 10y ago
  • mjolk 10y ago
    Your solution for a problematic database is to create a problematic database?
    • whateveracct 10y ago
      What's problematic about the database your parent comment proposed?
      • mjolk 10y ago
        How would you verify that an employee was fired for peaceful protest or that self-reporter even worked for the company? Would you demand that a company admit this was the reason or would you trust the person that created the entry for the employer? How would an employer get itself off this list? How would you avoid libel? How would you verify the identity of the person making the entry and that person is even in the "RAP BACK" database? How would you prevent verified self-reporters from being discriminated against for future employment?
        • norea-armozel 10y ago
          Or maybe corporations shouldn't be snooping on employees when they clock out? Wild idea I know.
          • mjolk 10y ago
            I'm not sure why you replied to my reply, but the moral "should" isn't really relevant when the database-to-protest-a-database suggestion is a non-starter due to more egregious flaws.
  • branchless 10y ago
    The punishment is the record not the warning. After that you are excluded from middle class jobs. Gotta hand it to these scumbags, they built a nice tight system.
  • nickthemagicman 10y ago
    Ha implying that two or three corporations don't already have majority control over market share in almost all industries.
  • gumby 10y ago
    > If I lose my job for protesting or activism then fuck that employer. Don't forget you're lucky you can say such a thing. Many people are desperate for a job. All the more reason to protest of course!
  • dsfyu404ed 10y ago
    I don't think you have a family you're providing for.
  • paulddraper 10y ago
    All activism, or just the activism you agree with? Mozilla forced Brendan Eich to resign for his off-hours activism. I assume they would be in the database.
    • dragonwriter 10y ago
      Mozilla forced Brendan Eich out for his failure to deal with a PR crisis facing the organization, which is absolutely one of a CEOs key jobs. The PR crisis was caused by his off-hours activism, but that's only material insofar as its focus on him made it clear that removing him would likely be an effective way to deal with it, and he hadn't found any other.
      • paulddraper 10y ago
        By firing arrested teachers, schools likewise avoid PR crises. And so on.
      • BrendanEich 10y ago
        Mozilla says I was not forced out. Also, they had a PR crisis after I left, and a backlash boycott (neither front- nor backlash had measurable effect on Firefox market share). Asserting your speculations based on outgroup antipathy as facts is a working definition of bigotry. Also a kind of lying in my book. Ta!
• TenOhms 10y ago
  What kind of activism are you referring to? The peaceful gatherings with signs and petitions, or the kind with assaults, battery, looting and vandalism on others for speaking their side?
  • devoply 10y ago
    Activism is activism, sometimes it's peaceful and sometimes it gets out of hand depending on the people involved which any one activist can't control, sometime those people work for the government. When you have reporters being arrested at events, I almost certainly know it's not the reporters being violent. And to place these sorts of limits on protesting is again chilling effects.
    • TenOhms 10y ago
      I've never heard of anyone being arrested for peaceful protests, not since Martin Luther King at least. I'm not saying it doesn't happen ever (your case might be a good example), but peaceful protests virtually never led to arrests.
      • devoply 10y ago
        That's most likely because you have not been looking. https://www.google.com/search?&q=non+violent+protestors+arrested https://www.google.com/search?&q=non+violent+protestors+arre... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/12/amy-goodman-arrest-warrant-north-dakota-oil-pipeline-protest https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/12/amy-goodman-...
      • yardie 10y ago
        ^^ alternative facts, folks!
        • grzm 10y ago
          Please stop with the canned dismissal memes. The poster may honestly be unaware of any such examples. Regardless, a comment such as yours doesn't add substantively to the conversation. Much better to provide evidence, as sibling comments have done.
• kiba 10y ago
  Despite the troubling implication of such program, I doubt democracy isn't happening. Indeed, people are already barred from work opportunities by the virtue of having any criminal background, including arrest records. This is acknowledged as a growing problem in our society.
  • JumpCrisscross 10y ago
    > any criminal background, including arrest records Aren't arrest records for dismissed charges sealed? Innocent until proven guilty makes punishing an employee for charges unseemly. Punishing for convictions, however, strikes me as fine.
    • delinka 10y ago
      What's that search result for a sealed arrest record? "No records" or "sealed"? Because if it's "sealed", guess who's losing their job...
    • tyingq 10y ago
      >Punishing for convictions, however, strikes me as fine I do get the reason people think this way. However, making it impossible to find a job after doing your time isn't a good thing for society. It just encourages more crime.
      • JumpCrisscross 10y ago
        To be clear, when I hire I don't care about past non-violent, non-fraud and non-work related convictions. I am just saying that I think there is a reasonable discussion to be had around businesses discriminating based on conviction (or outstanding warrants). I find it highly offensive to my democratic principles for the government to encourage businesses to pursue those tending to their charges or warrants prior to (potential) conviction.
    • sidlls 10y ago
      The purpose of imprisonment is to punish and, ideally, rehabilitate. Why continue the punishment for life after that?
• jMyles 10y ago
  > racism in the United States got fixed Did I miss a memo? There are more black men under state custody or supervision in the United States today for acts that no sensible person regards as criminal (drugs) than were enslaved in 1850.
  • nickff 10y ago
    Many otherwise sensible people support 'drug crimes', and most of those who want to 'decriminalize' recreational drugs still support widespread criminally and civilly enforced restrictions. I support no special drug regulations or crimes at all (i.e. nothing outside fraud liability), but I am in the tiny minority. edit: to be clear, I would prefer to eliminate the whole prescription system and FDA regulatory apparatus. I am not just talking about marijuana.
    • 464192002d7fe1c 10y ago
      Keep in mind also, even those people who support legalization (myself) do not necessarily believe that that means that existing laws should be ignored and unenforced. This creates a situation where police and politicians can choose, based on whatever subjective factors they want, who to prosecute. This leads to anarchy.
  • 464192002d7fe1c 10y ago
    "no sensible person regards as criminal" If no sensible person regards them as criminal, they would not be crimes. Your assertion is that the sentencing/laws are racist. I would assert that crime, itself, is racist. For whatever reason some minorities commit more crimes. Keep in mind, I'm not saying that they do it BECAUSE they are a minority. I am not saying black people are inherently more criminal because they are black, merely that based on demographics a black person is more likely to be a criminal. I do not know why that is (nor do you) and do not make any attempt at explaining it.
    • itsjohncena 10y ago
      People do know. You just aren't looking to answer the question, for reasons only you know. http://newjimcrow.com/ http://newjimcrow.com/
• 464192002d7fe1c 10y ago
  I think the message is that violence isn't protest. If you're bashing someone's head in with a pole to prove they are a fascist, you need to take a step back and realize that you're the fascist. [You, too, can be a facist, just down-vote this comment that is purely pointing out that violence is bad!]
  • itsjohncena 10y ago
    Your self-analysis isn't as razor sharp as you may assume of yourself. Take criticism or disagreement with humility and reason rather than digging in deeper that everyone else must be wrong. From what I can see in this thread, you're probably being downvoted because you've repeatedly been judgmental and stubborn about a subject it appears you know nothing about. It just looks like you're more interested in antagonising than learning. Have you read The New Jim Crow? The MLK Papers? Malcolm X's biography? A Ta-Nehisi Coates book? Be honest with yourself about what you don't know, and use global resources to fix it.
  • legodt 10y ago
    Thank goodness someone is as brave as you are to defend neo-nazis and their rights. Do you also debate firefighters because, well, they're just as bad as the fires? You see, white nationalists/facists/neo-nazis/alt-righters/whathaveyou have an ideology of genocide and oppression. Enacting violence against them can be seen as a form of self defense. Engaging them in debate only validates their ideology. Arguable, the best plan of action is to ignore them entirely and starve them of airtime, but the media clearly didn't get that memo. Now, when you have somebody like Milo Y coming to campus with plans to publicly name undocumented foreign students (like he publicly named a transgender student at his last talk, forcing her to leave the school after harassment from his followers) in an attempt to incite violence against them or deportation, knocking over a few lights and breaking some windows to keep him at bay is pretty reasonable for defense.
• rdtsc 10y ago
  > The message here is clear: Don't protest or you might lose your job. I think the real message is even more troubling. "Don't protest because it probably won't do anything". Since the late 60's when did protests work as a an effective tactic in US? We've had anti-war protests for Iraq and Afghanistan. We've had Occupy Wall Street, we've had protests against Trump. Have they advanced the cause? I am afraid not. I think as a tactic to effect social or other change protesting in US has lost its efficiency. That's very troubling indeed.
  • RhodaLs 10y ago
    I'd strongly disagree. Occupy didn't result in direct action or changes. However, it popularized the notion of the One Percent vs. Ninety-Nine Percent, and got people to think about class in a nation very averse to even acknowledging the existence of economic classes. Probably had a positive impact in terms of helping Obama get re-elected, since Obama was lucky enough to get a seemingly clueless one-percenter as an opponent. Occupy had laid the groundwork which helped attacks against Romney. The Trump protests have already had an effect. First of all, it's motivated normally non-politically active people into action. The sheer size of the crowds at the first protest, the Women's March, has had a galvanizing effect. People at the marches were encouraged to sign up to various groups. Those groups, like Indivisible or Planned Parenthood, keep things going by organizing at the local level and by giving them easy things to do each day or each week. There's a direct line between the protests and the fact almost every congressperson has an overwhelming volume of calls. And the seeds are planted not only for future protests but also for future direct action. The administration has already backed down on some issues due to the protests. I think it's arguable the anti-LGBT executive order was scrapped at the last minute because of the sheer size of the instant protests over the immigration ban. If that many people would show up over an immigration order which didn't affect anyone they knew, then it would be reasonable to predict the streets would be absolutely flooded at any attempt to renew persecution of LGBT people. As an added bonus, the protests are clearly unnerving Trump. I have no idea what the long term effect will be, but at the moment it's causing his team to make some errors.
    • rdtsc 10y ago
• ihsw 10y ago
  Random violence is the staple of the terrorist. There's a very large difference between activism and actively destroying businesses and causing grievous bodily harm, both of which the likes of terrorist groups (read: BLM and Antifa) have employed with reckless abandon.
  • legodt 10y ago
    BLM is a peaceful organization. There are rogue actors, but that is a result of its poor central planning and lack of clear agenda. Please do not discredit the entire movement of people fighting to stop systemic racism because a few of them torch some trash cans and break a few windows. What is really interesting to see is political cartoons from the days of the MLK led Civil Rights protests. The arguments against the civil rights movement are exactly the same as the ones against BLM now. People thought the protesters were "too violent" and were a bunch of thugs destroying their own neighborhoods and holding back the more respectable black people and their agenda. The same arguments are used today to discredit the work of Black Lives Matter. After all, didn't MLK say that a riot is the language of the unheard?