Journal of Other Forum Analysis

[kaleidoscopium]

To go on another long aside...
The Pride parade in Boston on Saturday demonstrated this all pretty directly - a parade, festivities that celebrate diversity and the progress made (and the progress that needs protecting) in LGBTQ+ rights. The organizers themselves and many marchers and attendees expressed their support of the Palestinian people and disgust with the Israeli government, and it was clear that this support was a welcome addition to the event.

However, there was also a group (60ish?) along the parade route who opted for more extreme protest - calling marchers for certain companies 'babykillers' (I can vouch for this as I had marched in the parade and heard it yelled at a nearby group), participants in genocide, screaming and flipping off the marchers (and the remarkably patient police, which draw their own controversy). Some used the inverted red triangle symbol which has antisemitic associations (though I have no idea if the intent was *that* triangle). Their signs had things written like 'F**s for Palestine', aiming to be provocative but mostly coming across as offensive/insulting to the very people they should be making allies of.

Pepsico employees were among those to receive the vitriol, I guess due to Sodastream or some things one of the companies Pepsico did in Israel. The marchers though, these were just ERG members - the groups at companies that exist to support LGBTQ+ employees - not the companies themselves. A great number of the marchers are just low level employees trying to make a living, are enjoying a chance to participate in a big celebration of joy, and have little part in company decisions. So they get yelled and cursed at, flipped off, witness an attempt to intimidate them into...something. They don't go home and decide to support the cause, they recoil away, they're put off from it rather than drawn in, and the cycle continues. The association many leave with for Palestine is not from the statement of the organizers, or the marchers or attendees who expressed their support for Palestine. They remember the negative, being called horrible things for daring to work for a giant company that in some far off branch does something that this group hates, and they stay away and lose interest in that cause.

Even cursing at the defense companies ignores context - RTX was in the parade and that company does more commercial work than military, and the Raytheon division is a major employer in MA. Basically every person in the state knows someone who works there, and those that do often take pride in what they do - after all parts of Patriot are built in MA. So those employees being called murderers when the work they specifically do has instead been praised by Ukraine for helping stave off genocide. Those people are now potentially lost to the cause, pushed away rather than drawn in.

Sigh... long story short, disruptive protests are effective when they garner the sympathy and support of someone. Seeing this in the CBS article linked:

https://www.resetera.com/threads/aoc-calls-out-and-condemns-the-antisemitism-last-night-outside-the-nova-festival-exhibit.898584/?post=124340073#post-124340073

Have to wonder if noodlesoup sees all this and rethinks his stint in jail, protesting the support of CAT on his university because they sell bulldozers...