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This is a nationwide phenomenon. The centrists and normies are more viciously angry than the socialists and anarchists, who gave up long ago on the illusion of a working system. Would encourage leftists of all stripes to take it seriously, welcome them in while they’re receptive.

I think a lot about this moment during the Jerry Rescue in Syracuse in 1851. This local rich guy had been persistently antagonistic to abolitionists. He was like, “Yeah slavery is wrong, but asking for immediate emancipation is too radical, and you guys are a bunch of hysterical lunatics.” …

Then he saw Jerry, a self-emancipated neighbor, getting beaten by cops and taken to jail. Jerry was gonna be sent back South the next day. The rich guy saw all the abolitionists rioting, trying to get Jerry out, and he became a radical abolitionist on the spot.

What did the people who’d been right all along do? They didn’t lecture him (or if they did, they didn’t record it for history). They said, “Great. We’re hiding Jerry at your house, because the cops’ll never suspect you!” And they did. They hid Jerry there for four days and then got him to Canada.

The statue of the Jerry Rescue shows Jerry, Rev. Jermain Wesley Loguen and Samuel May — two of those radical abolitionists who’d been right all along. I know the rich guy’s name but I’m not putting it here bc his change of heart is not the point of the story. The open, collective action is.

I get this - and appreciate anyone throwing light on Sam May and Jermaine Loguen - but I think there’s also a real distinction between what the committee organized in Wheaton’s hardware store and what a modern “protest” looks like. What Abolitionists in Syracuse undertook was solid direct action.