
Here’s who spent their Fourth of July protesting the NSA - sethbannon
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/05/heres-who-spent-their-fourth-of-july-protesting-the-nsa/
======
jdp23
As somebody who's done a lot of civil liberties activism, I'm pleasantly
surprised by how much press the protests got -- including CNN, CBS, NBC,
Reuters, the Guardian and more at the national level, as well as dozens of
local TV and newspapers.

There's a roundup on the Restore the Fourth reddit at
[http://www.reddit.com/r/restorethefourth/comments/1hor8p/rou...](http://www.reddit.com/r/restorethefourth/comments/1hor8p/round_up_news_outlets_across_america_and_the/)
and I've also got a bunch of links on the Get FISA Right blog at
[https://getfisaright.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/restorethe4th-...](https://getfisaright.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/restorethe4th-
grassroots-civil-liberties-activism-is-back-and-better-than-ever/)

~~~
Helpful_Bunny
It's called _Manufactured Dissent_.

You got the air-play because the NSA etc needs to show it's all fluffy bunny
and won't stifle white people's aggro. _That 's it._ That's why the NSA read
this forum, and posted on their homepage that they were "cool with legal
protest". Jesus wept, if you're not getting paid to be this naive, you ain't
gonna make it. If you're "surprised" you're either a fool or a tool.

We know who you are, and we can see the ties. Seriously: if this is your best
game, you're doomed. You have little or no idea what you're playing with, and
it's cringe worthy.

This is _worse_ than the Koch brothers "Tea Party" take over, because at least
they spent ~$50,000,000 on it and employed professionals. That's what made
them players. Oh, and a small tip: $50 million is pocket change.

This is really pitiful stuff chaps. Ghandi, MLK and so on are spinning in
their graves at this. Hint: the fact you have totally ignored the entire
decimation of the African-American community is a telling one[1]. There's a
reason that "Illuminati" symbolism is so prevalent in modern African-American
music[2]: it's not about a secret society, it's about them <REDACTED:
COINTELPRO>[3] and being engineered for the last 50 years, deliberately.

 _Wise the fuck up._

Ever wonder why MLK became Ghetto? $ and politics, and CIA running crack-
cocaine.

Welcome to the Black Experience, it's Coming Soon[TM]

[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PaoLy7PHwk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PaoLy7PHwk)

[2][http://thefeministwire.com/2013/05/the-rise-of-beyonce-
the-f...](http://thefeministwire.com/2013/05/the-rise-of-beyonce-the-fall-of-
lauryn-hill-a-tale-of-two-icons/)

[3][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO)

------
tokenadult
I was part of the lightly attended Restore the Fourth protest in Minneapolis
yesterday. I was also part of a much larger protest in DC that marched from
the Lincoln Memorial to the Chinese embassy (which had a total participation
of about 3,000 marchers) on 1 October 1989. Most of those marchers, of course,
had no reasonable recourse in the political system of China, and at that time
were not United States citizens. It is a long, hard slog to solve some
problems. China still has neither a free press nor free and fair elections.
China has pervasive surveillance of the domestic population of a kind that
would appall any American. It's good that people in the United States are
standing up for freedom here. It will be good for all of us to stand up for
freedom everywhere.

A successful movement for greater freedom requires great courage, and a degree
of social trust among the movement participants that is not easy to find.
Allow me to repeat advice I have shared here on Hacker News before. If you
really want to be an idealistic but hard-headed freedom-fighter, mobilizing an
effective popular movement for more freedom wherever you live, I suggest you
read deeply in the free, downloadable publications of the Albert Einstein
Institution,

[http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationsde07.html](http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationsde07.html)

remembering that the transition from dictatorship to democracy described in
those publications is an actual historical process with recent examples around
the world that we can all learn from. You can find publications in Arabic,
Azeri, Belarusian, Burmese, Burma (Chin), Burma (Jing-paw), Burma (Karen),
Burma (Mon), Chinese (Mandarin), Dutch, English, Estonian, Farsi, French,
German, Hebrew, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Kyrgyz, Latvian,
Lithuanian, Macedonian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Spanish,
Thai, Tibetan, and Ukrainian there to share with your friends around the
world.

P.S. Hat tip to the Reddit subreddit that linked to TV news coverage

[http://kstp.com/article/12303/?vid=4128742&v=1](http://kstp.com/article/12303/?vid=4128742&v=1)

of the Minneapolis protest. (I'm visible way off in the distance in a few of
the TV shots.)

~~~
zhemao
Oh, it's a bunch of Gene Sharp books. I've heard about "Dictatorship to
Democracy" before. I suppose now is a good time to actually start reading it.
I wonder how applicable his advice would be for "Democracy to Better
Democracy", though.

~~~
contingencies
It's not a long book. Take a look. Download the PDF (~600KB) at
[http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations/org/FDTD.pdf](http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations/org/FDTD.pdf)

------
itistoday2
Interesting coincidence, I just posted a related blog post about why our
company isn't joining Fight for the Future's "Internet Defense League".

Fight for the Future attempted to organize online protests similar to the SOPA
blackouts, but ended up doing this in a rather deceptive way (which is what
the post discusses).

It's floating in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newest](https://news.ycombinator.com/newest)
right now: Why we are not joining Fight for the Future’s "Internet Defense
League"

The blog post itself is here:
[http://www.taoeffect.com/blog/2013/07/integrity-internet-
def...](http://www.taoeffect.com/blog/2013/07/integrity-internet-defense-
league/)

