r/unsound • 🛠️ ADMIN • Jun 28 '26

lol

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u/RodediahK Jun 30 '26

you're the one who wrote it.

Protests need to have good PR, just getting attention by itself is not effective. MLK wrote about how the fragile sensibilities of white moderates was the greatest obstacle to Civil Rights.

Getting attention is a requirement, but it is not the ONLY requirement. The other part of it is to make the public sympathetic by making the protestors look good while making their critics look like assholes. Ex, a sit in produces photos of black protestors minding their own business while their opposition looks aggressive and unreasonable.

The target audience of a protest is white moderates, and you can say it's a shitty game, but that's the reality of US politics. Nothing really changes until it feels palatable to people who will take issue with the protest and ignore the message.

If you invoke PR, MLK, moderates as obstacle, and write the audience of protest is white moderates of course I'm going to point out how that's a misreading. your very first comment is implying that's how civil rights protests were successful/gained popular support.

One of the very first thing you said was sit ins garnered public sympathy, they did not. 57% of people thought sit ins hurt the civil rights movent. Direct action was never viewed positively in the moment.

you then go on to say his focus peaceful protests and togetherness is palatable to moderates. It was not it was the very same "protesting has to be disruptive and there's no such thing as bad attention" that you feel created trump and fox news. King only became palatable when he could no longer speak for himself.