alt Hacker News> “They physically grabbed us, forced us out of the conference center, and now are telling us we can no longer attend this meeting,” Kelly told MedPage Today, which first reported the incident. “They’re taking our lanyards. It really has come to this in America. Censorship is real. America needs to stand up. Scientists, stand up. Physicians, stand up.”
It's become very evident from the outside that the best time to stand up was yesterday, and you might already be too far down the slope to be able to quickly recover for this. I really do feel for all Americans who just want to have a normal life with an average quality of life or above, but at one point the environment around you change so quickly that that stops being even a possibility in the future. If your life hasn't been affected yet, it will be shortly.
The best day to stand up against the ongoing censorship and repression might have been yesterday, but the second-best day to do so is today. You really need to start caring about this before it's way to late. One "no kings protest" every 6 months is not gonna do anything, what you need is wide solidarity across industries, and a real general strike across the country. The second you do this, you'll see that the many and poor can control the few and rich.
Replies
I completely agree with what you are saying, but I have grown too cynical to believe it will ever happen. American capitalism has been very effective at ensuring 2 outcomes:
- The population is kept just comfortable enough to become complacent, with easy access to intoxicants, brainrot media and fast food. Now there are even robots that can do our thinking for us. A large percentage of people are brainwashed into thinking that all change is bad because it will cause them to lose the paltry, ersatz freedom they have rather than gaining real liberty.
- The labor pool is kept large enough that any of us could be replaced immediately with no significant loss to our employers. As the ISP mantra goes, “we have nothing to lose but our jobs”.
Yes, we know that they couldn’t replace _all_ of us at once, but combine points 1 and 2 and you will start to understand why there is no appreciable labor movement in the United States.
> It's become very evident from the outside that the best time to stand up was yesterday
"Yesterday" they were largely in favor of censorship: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48434589
>> If your life hasn't been affected yet, it will be shortly.
If your life hasnt been affected yet, you arent paying attention. Or, it has been affected for the better because you are one of the many who generally support the movement.
>“They were respectfully given the opportunity to cease this behavior and chose not to which is why they were escorted out.”
I understand the want to protest, but you do know that misrepresentation doesn't help, right?
Refusing to cease by an even organisers order will, yes, result in being escorted out forcefully by security.
[dead]
This might be reading too much in to minor drama at a diabetes conference. The gentleman in question could have gone to protest outside (and probably did).
The article linked doesn't even say what exactly they were protesting (beyond a rather vague "attacks on scientific research" which could mean a lot of things).