I stand with Palestine, and the rare spaces our public can spend time and educate themselves. Genocide is depressing. Hurting books makes me sad.
Source: Portland State in midst of expensive, ‘marathon’ race to repair damaged library before fall classes begin
PS: we appreciate the smartass answers as well for much-needed comic relief
A combination of not having the courage to vandalize a place that would make more sense but where you may encounter resistance, combined with a joy of punching down on people/institutions I guess?
I like this answer the best.
Too much time in an echo chamber with a hint of anti-semitism
What’s the best possible justification for vandalizing a library?
Dead children who will never grow up to learn to read. When what you’re doing isn’t working, you have to expand the discontent. The protestors of BLM and Antifa burned buildings down, yet who asks for the justification? Is vandalism not the answer to bring awareness to the slaughter of marginalized and silenced groups, or is it only acceptable when it’s closer to home?
I don’t give a shit if a hundred libraries burn to save the lives of even ten children. The dead cannot learn from their pages.
And whose attention are you trying to get? That of people reading library books? People working at libraries? Because they’re not the ones in charge. They are unable to change anything about the Gaza situation.
Ask Just Stop Oil whose attention they get for throwing shit on the Mona Lisa. Are you more aware? Stonehenge. Are you more aware? Private planes. Are you more aware? The audience is everyone who doesn’t give a shit about the protests but instead pearl clutches over the covers of books getting some paint on them. You. You’re the audience because now you’re talking about it and whoever you tell. They’re not targeting book readers, they’re spreading a message.
Stop fucking killing children.
throwing shit on the Mona Lisa. Are you more aware?
No. I already knew about climate change.
Stonehenge. Are you more aware?
No. I already knew about climate change.
The audience is everyone who doesn’t give a shit about the protests but instead pearl clutches over the covers of books getting some paint on them
I am opposed to spray painting library books. But that does not mean that spray painting library books is a way to recruit my help.
In fact, there is no reason to think it would recruit my help.
Destroying books because it’s easy just makes people say “fuck gaza” People don’t care if children die when they are powerless to prevent it. All you’re doing is make people hate you and actively work against your goals.
But if that’s what you want, have fun with that.
Because it’s easy? Who did it because it’s easy? Fucking writing on the street is easy but there’s no point, how does that make news? When the goal is awareness, how do you get it except by pissing off sensitive shits like yourself? Being aware of the problem is the first step. Having a wrong opinion about it is on them, they should look more into it but the first step is awareness.
But hey, you wouldn’t say that about BLM would you? That burning the cities and breaking into shops would “make people hate you and actively work against your goals.” would you? Of course not.
Yes I would say that about BLM. Justifying this stupid shit with that stupid shit doesn’t sway me. And no, now that I’m pissed off about this library vandalism, that does not in any way make me likely to support Gaza.
How do you not get that there is no mechanism of incentive here?
I don’t give a shit if a hundred libraries burn to save the lives of even ten children.
There is no mechanism by which burning a library saves children’s lives
This thread has enlightened me on how biased and irrational lemmy is (more than usual). So far you guys have claimed it’s:
- false flag operators
- valid because the college “supports” Israel
- just dumb teenagers that don’t really care about the cause and just wanna destroy property
- okay to deface “private” stuff like bank walls but not books for a “private” library?
- really dumb people that can’t possibly be on your side
- people that just want to destroy
- somewhat justified because it brought attention to the most talked about issue? 🤣
- “a joy of punching down on people/institutions I guess?” that’s a direct quote, holy shit 😂
- “I appreciate the spirit, but people who read books are probably the wrong demographic to aim this kind of messaging at.” holy moly the cope is unreal
There’s some that are actually being honest and saying there’s no good reason because there isn’t. I appreciate those commenters.
I look forward to being banned for trolling AKA disagreeing with you guys!
The forces out there wishing to divide Americans continue to post here. They will not work.
The dickheads accomplished peace by spray painting a library
As a Portland resident, I will just say our heart is always into it, but our brains not so much. I don’t know what the message was meant to convey by vandalizing a library. Usually the protests start of well intentioned, but always break down as bad actors and grifters work their way in to cause trouble because they find entertainment in doing so.
As another Portland resident, FUCK THE PEOPLE WHO DID THIS. This is NOT who we are, what the fuck.
Yes to the hearts
Hmm reminds me, I didn’t check how many of those arrested were students
I appreciate the spirit, but people who read books are probably the wrong demographic to aim this kind of messaging at.
Damn, that’s a very elegant way to put it
How do we know this isn’t a false flag from the far right to make it seem us against the genocide look bad?
Could be, but I don’t think it really matters honestly. The message is still righteous, the books are still readable, no one was hurt. So it’s whatever.
The right is underfunding libraries across the country (in the US), attacks like this would or do already further stress libraries when they’re already financially vulnerable. This does have a huge impact on this particular library.
They might not have been the smartest protesters out there
Can rocks or doornails protest
If so that’s still a maybe
They have their heart in the right place, even if their brains are not
Surely. Almost nobody likes dead kids.
“Almost”
And vandalizing the libraries is just vandalizing the happy place for the people who already agree with you.
Or, in shorter terms: “Just being an asshole”
This is probably mostly laziness. Organizing a march is hard and requires people organizing skills. Spray painting some books takes only one or two people.
If anything, this just emphasizes how small this group is and how bad they are at organization. It’s simple: get a lot of people who agree with you and march to the capitol. That’s all you need to do but it’s hard.
I mean its not like they bombed an aid convoy.
Also, you are now here, talking about it, so it worked.
I see next to zero discussion about Gaza here.
People seem to be arguing about whether vandalizing libraries is good or bad. It’s bad, for the record.
Of course that’s only failure if your goal is for people to talk about the thing you’re supposed to care about. If your goal happens to be to get people to talk about you, screw Gaza or anybody else… well, then yeah, mission accomplished. We can all go home now.
If I went and shot someone in the name of Gaza awareness, and painted these messages on the sidewalk using their blood, that would be getting talked about, too. Point being, there’s effective forms of protest that we still shouldn’t be using.
Did they shoot someone or are you trying to set up a false premise.
I’m responding to your implication that actions in protest that get people talking about the issue are inherently valuable and worth taking. To make the point that that is not the case, I am using an extreme example to demonstrate a scenario where your statement is (I hope) objectively false.
I think I clearly stated my counter-point, which is that just because we’re talking about it doesn’t mean it is an effective or worthwhile form of protest to be engaged in.
I’m not really sure where you’re confused here.
Theirs no confusion here other than that which you were trying to make with your statement.
I’m just pointing it out so that its clear to others what you are doing: a rhetorical bait and switch.
How about I spray “Free Palestine” into your fucking mouth? You wouldn’t mind right? I’m sure you’d be talking about that.
I love how much it tells us that your this mad about even the idea that you could be inconvenienced or annoyed by a protestor.
It tells us so much about you than you’ll ever be able to say.
These clowns are more outraged over books than lives lost.
They’re just idiots complicit in the system. They’d rather have genocide if it comes wearing the right party colors.
They don’t truly believe in protest or freedom of speech, but they themselves are also functionally worthless in this regard.
Their hand wringing can and should be ignored.
Biden is overseeing the slaughter of children in Gaza right now and these people are mad about books. If you are focused on some minor damage to books and not the point the protestor was making, you are the problem.
Weird how Biden is committing a genocide while trying to get both sides to agree to a ceasefire.
Yeah sure he is.
He doesn’t need a ceasefire. He can just stop withhold financial support to Israel and all of this madness ends.
He doesn’t care. He only cares that you believe he gives a shit about a ceasefire.
Whoa, if Joe Biden stops giving Israel money then Hamas will surrender and give up all the hostages???
Send me your address and I’ll come spraypaint your house. If you don’t, you’re complicit in the system and you like genocide.
You seem mad bro.
U mad?
I can’t believe you would rather let people die than let your house get spray painted. Monster.
Ah yes, the classic “you can only be upset about one thing at a time”!
If you’re upset I pissed on the floor instead of in the toilet while Biden is complicit with genocide you’re part of the problem!
Sorry boss, I can’t care about my job because of Palestine!
How dare you pull me over for going 80mph in a school zone, pig! Don’t you know what Israel is doing?
How could you possibly expect me to care about something so insignifIcant as wiping? Don’t you know that children are dying?
Alternately, maybe it’s the case that doing something bad to bring attention to another bad thing isn’t okay just because the thing you’re trying to bring attention to is worse.
I actually support the protests where they’re throwing soup on paintings or whatever. Those paintings don’t really matter, but some people sure think they do, and it’s effective to get a dialog going. Libraries are a public good, one of the few we really have left. It’s like ransacking a food bank to draw attention to starving people in Gaza; it’s not helping the cause they ostensibly care about, but it is hurting others.
You’re right. Everyone knows that you can only be mad about one thing at a time. Right? Because the world is fully black and white?
Jesus fucking christ you’re an idiot.
I just went through 7 months of your post history, you’ve commented more in this thread acting outraged about a library than the one time you posted in a Gaza thread and called them worse than North Korea.
Please tell me how mad you are about two things, because I can’t see your anger towards what Israel is doing.
Oh wow, you realy are an idiot.
Madness obviously is measured in commands per month. It’s not like you have no clue who that person is, what they are doing and saying.
Your only judging them by not commenting on a topic enough.
We’re talking about those mindless people who riined the library. Happy it worked as intended.
I just had this conversation about throwing soup on paintings to protest ahh . . (checks notes) oh - “Big Oil”.
Apparently I’m a grade a moron for not knowing that’s an excellent way to spread an important message and not at all a shitheaded everything-i-do-must-be-filmed idiot act which only serves to weaken legitimate efforts.
Who knew.
Totally different situations imo
Well, you wouldn’t know it from the article, but the protestors had a specific goal: get the university to divest its investments in Intel due to their close ties to Israel. The threat of it being fucking expensive and disruptive if they don’t do that is one of many possible tactics they had available.
Whether or not that’s a good idea or an effective one is a completely different discussion, but they’re not doing it because they hate books. They’re doing it because the books cost a lot to replace and it’s very disruptive to business as usual.
If it makes you feel any better, in sections where current information changes rapidly (law, technology, medicine, etc) these books were destined to be discarded and destroyed within a few years anyway. Universities throw away or recycle a ton of books every year, often because literally nobody wants them.
It’s not what I would have chosen to do, but I also can’t really fault teenagers and young adults being a little over the top about an ongoing genocide that in their view their university is indirectly financially benefiting from.
Excellent and much needed context, compared to just seeing images of contextually devoid book vandalism, and being trusted to assume a kind of naive, perhaps bad faith idiocy.
I legitimately wonder if there’s really any level of protest that people will tolerate. If you throw soup on the protective glass that covers a painting, prepare to get slammed with a 20 minute protracted conversation about whether or not soup can leak between the gaps in the fixtures that secure a painting to the wall, and whether or not that amount of soup can do damage, and how much money we’re all paying for it to be cleaned up, and how seeing a painting is a once in a lifetime thing which is now ruined for the people who went and so on and so on. If you block traffic, well, now I’ve had to spend 2 or 3 hours in delays, and there’s no cause that’s really worth a minor inconvenience. The protesting crowd should all get gunned down for that. At the very least, they all deserve to know that nothing they’re doing can every really matter or change anything ever.
Then of course, none of that’s actually related to the issue we really want to discuss, there, that’s all just tangential, complicated political issues, that we’re primed to bellyache and whine about. We can only show how much we care by donating to some nonprofit, while we go about our lives ideally uninterrupted an uninconvinienced by the protesters. I feel like I must’ve stumbled on this thread dozens of times already, and it never really gets any better.
I think what drives the root cause of this is some kind of nihilism, some sense that nothing can ever get any better, and if you think otherwise, you’re naive. That we really just exist to keep everything in a permanent deadlock. If you were to take more extreme action than this, well, no, that’s morally abhorrent, whomever will just get replaced by the institutional successor, and oh, you’re causing X amount of property destruction, which is X amount of economic value, thus, X amount of time, and thus, X amount of lifespan for someone. Then you’ve basically committed murder, if not mass murder, by wasting so many lifetimes. The many, sometimes literal, murders of the status quo otherwise need not apply, or else are assumed to be inevitable. Even if your actions here were somehow directly materially related to the conflict, right, it would be all too easy to just dismiss it out of hand as being not really effective, or as being adventurism or a waste of everyone’s time. Can’t I just get back to the perennial Big Game? I just wanna grill for God’s sake!
This has the same iq level as spraying paint on stonehenge
Nah, Stonehenge and pieces of art have no real value to the general population but a shit to of value to rich people who don’t care about living beings, books can educate people.
With a lot of fine art I can see your point but Stonehenge as far as I understand is something we don’t understand the propose of and is so old I would hardly call it art anymore and moreso a historical site of study it might’ve been a art piece when new maybe it was a place of worship or maybe it was a home we don’t know so yea Id say vandalizing Stonehenge is absolutely on par with vandalizing a book but at least books in this time have plenty of carbon copies and easily replaced and duplicated but there’s only one Stonehenge and we don’t have the knowledge to replace or even repair it we don’t even know the full history of what it even was there’s unknown knowledge yet to be understood
Stonehenge disappears tomorrow, what actual difference does it makes in the life of 99.9999% of Earth’s population?
I will admit not much as most the value of Stonehenge is knowledge we don’t know yet but here we are getting up in arms over a vandalized public library which 99percent of the time carys 100 percent manufactured books you can go to your local library and destroy their copy of the giving tree and while your community will have to wait to be able to read the giving tree again your public library can always order a new copy of the giving tree and even if somehow every physical copy of the giving tree got destroyed you can go online and find a PDF scan of the giving tree and print it out to make a new copy of the giving tree meanwhile you can think of Stonehenge as a book in a forgotten language that no one can understand yet and before we can figure out what Stonehenge is trying to say someone burns it and while yeah nothing changes in our lives because we didn’t understand it yet but now that ass hole just prevented us all from ever getting the chance to understand and read the tail of Stonehenge I’m not even a millionaire but even I want to know the story but if Stonehenge got destroyed then I’d be depraved of the chance to read my version of the giving tree
Are you are referring to the recent vandalism? Because that was about as much vandalism as defacing a street with kiddy chalk. It wasn’t paint.
I hate people who do this, you are scum.
Yeah good message, but permanently ruining something that benefits society is not the way. Spray painting a wall is fine, but a book is not. You’re just doing the job of fascists for then when you destroy knowledge.
good message
It’s a good message only when it is used in a proper context and place. In this case, it’s not “good” at all.
Spray painting a wall is fine,
Yeah. Particularly when private bank walls are right there prominently on many corners just asking to be painted.
Aw man that sucks. Don’t vandalize books.
