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zoom_zip wrote (edited )

i don’t want to make you feel bad about what happened. i’m not posting this to be confrontational or say you handled it wrong, because i understand why you didn’t speak up, and i think if i go back a ways i would have been in the same place. but it just reminded me of this article i read recently about how silence is complicity.

so i’m posting this in the interest of discussion because i think that it’s obvious the reasons people don’t speak up are things like:

  1. don’t care and agree with the stance (capitalist scum)
  2. fear of “making a scene”
  3. fear that the hate will be diverted onto yourself and you will also become a target of… [abuse/violence/whatever].
  4. other things

you can say that you aren’t going to shame them into not being shitty, but i’m curious what the stance is where you wouldn’t have stayed silent. if they were being racist? if they were being physically violent? would you (or others) have spoken up then?

if we can say that silence is complicity to bystanders in the realms of violence and racial abuse, do people agree that it applies here?

anyway. i feel like this post is framed as if i am blaming you, and i want to be clear that the bar are the really shitty people in this situation. i’m just interested in raising this for the conversation.

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kin wrote

It's a interesting discussion, we are for so many times prisoners of the spectacle, and speaking for me, we forget the action. I try to be alert bc sometimes the events can unfold so quick that you don't have time to process logically the situation. And there is the fine line separating us from Woke. How can we act real? The situation OP describes, involves a scenario when you are relaxed and not waiting for trouble, I would be frozen from incredulity and it's hard to say what would I do.

Guilt is not an ally here. And there is difference from this daily dosis of cruelty and more outspoken Racist, Misogynistic, Queerphobia, where the violence will escalate quickly and the events may turn into a shitstorm of violence. That's one of the reasons I left friendships, I am not a NaziHunter Warrior but I don't want to be with people comfortable with this daily cruelties.

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groovygardener42069 OP wrote

"Frozen with incredulity" is a great way to describe it.

I was really just like... what the fuck... is this for real?

And I do feel guilty - I want to do something, I wanted to do something in the moment too. But now what? Leave a yelp review so all the nazi kava/kratom people know which kava bar to go to now that the one with the trump flag shut down?

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Exlurker wrote (edited )

Once upon a time I literally staged a one-man 5 minute protest on the sidewalk near my house just to meet my mental 'activism quota'.

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groovygardener42069 OP wrote

But you need at least a two-man protest because who else is gonna get those sweet shots for the gram?

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Exlurker wrote

One thing I know is that Everyone's complicit anyway and everyone in that bar who wasn't a capitalist or fascist in that bar is probably put off by their actions, you can't blame yourself, just give that homeless person some money next time you see them.

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groovygardener42069 OP wrote

We did our best to help some people out while we were downtown, I just didn't think that part was relevant to the story tbh

We were back in the area today and I chose not to go in there even though I really needed to use a bathroom

I spend... more money than I probably should at kava bars (I don't really go to alcohol bars) and I'm never going to that one again. I know that's probably not going to put them out of business but hey.

As I get older and actually start to meet and pay attention to the people who run local small businesses, I realize that most small business owners can also get fucked.

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