Eviction takes a while, and most people will move to increasingly substandard housing instead of becoming homeless, so it'll take a while to boil over. Since it's slow and will happen to different people on different schedules, it'll end up simmering until there's some sort of inciting incident that lets everyone start at the same time. Then a new wave of mass protests, which will be larger than usual for that type of incident, because it's partly acting as a proxy for the eviction unrest.
Since the inciting incident doesn't exactly have to be tied to eviction, and it'll sway the character of the protests, it's really hard to predict exactly what form they'll take. It's like asking "What's the first newsworthy awful thing that'll happen in October?" (Which is about the timeline I'd guess, so they kind of have the same answer.) I'd say the most likely is some awful health crisis at an illegal flophouse, but by "most likely" I mean like 5% in a vast see of possibilities.
Yes. Specifically, an incident that'd normally result in a small protest or general hand-wringing will turn into a much larger deal. It'll wait until there's an incident that's vaguely connected to the eviction crisis, but it doesn't have to be a very good match. And the nature of the struggle will be influenced by the nature of the incident.
About a year ago someone murdered 3 homeless people in my city, and pretty much no one cared. If something like that happens in a few months after millions of people have just become newly homeless, I could see huge riots against whoever the perceived enemy is, maybe cops or landlords
I think we'll see things ramp up through August and September as the evictions start, kids and teachers get sick and die in schools, etc.. but yeah, we're headed for a full-blown crisis of confidence in the state by October and it's going to be funny to listen to the libs yell about the election while a revolutionary movement battles the police in virtually every city.
what we're seeing now in Portland is what a lot of major cities will look like by the end of next month as the feds crack down in anticipation of this surge - kidnappings by what look to be feds just got recorded today in NYC. or said another way, the dip in energy and surge in energy that you expect to follow sustained protests like this is happening now, not over the next several months.
so by October, we're not looking at anything like what we're seeing now, or even what we briefly saw for a week in our May Days. Portland has learned that it's fight back against the state or go down meek in the face of repression - they've chosen to fight and won very real battles.
the election is page 3 news but its proximity to what's happening matters in one serious way: trump will be desperate to look like a strong commander by the time October rolls around. that event that provokes an outsized response you're talking about - there's a decent chance it's a massacre or other serious act of police repression, ordered by the man himself in a bid to save a campaign he can feel slipping away from him.
regardless of what actually sets it off, though, there will be a fresh escalation in the conflict in October and whether the state immediately offers concessions, delaying its collapse for a few years, or whether it quadruples down on its mistakes and forces a fight right there and then - those are the real stakes over the next couple of months. events are converging and while possibilities are endless for the specific sequence of events between here and there, those are the only two real possibilities for what happens over the next several months.
Yeah, roughly agree. I do think it's possible for the state to lurch along for a while without real concessions. Things accelerate very fast, but the distances are very large. Like space I guess. It's entirely possible that we stumble our way through election season, Biden somehow wins, and everything stalls out for months as people sit around desperately hoping he'll fix things.
It's hard to predict things concretely with all of these overlapping events that'll also cause new events. But this thread did get me thinking about what the predictable factors are, so here's what I have:
Escalating vertical tension between protesters, cities, states, and the country. Expect new crazy shit in August.
Coronavirus continues unchecked. Some sort of awful tipping point in September.
Eviction crisis. Probably around October.
Stock market crash. Shortly after the election, regardless of result. Even faster if there's a non-electoral leadership change.
And note that my predictions are this concrete because that makes it easier for me to evaluate my accuracy later, not because I'm actually that certain. Also note that the more details I throw onto a timeline like this, the more it sounds like I must be right because I have a lot of details, but in reality every detail is a new opportunity to be wrong. This is called the conjunctive fallacy and it's one of the biggest cognitive biases.
Eviction takes a while, and most people will move to increasingly substandard housing instead of becoming homeless, so it'll take a while to boil over. Since it's slow and will happen to different people on different schedules, it'll end up simmering until there's some sort of inciting incident that lets everyone start at the same time. Then a new wave of mass protests, which will be larger than usual for that type of incident, because it's partly acting as a proxy for the eviction unrest.
Since the inciting incident doesn't exactly have to be tied to eviction, and it'll sway the character of the protests, it's really hard to predict exactly what form they'll take. It's like asking "What's the first newsworthy awful thing that'll happen in October?" (Which is about the timeline I'd guess, so they kind of have the same answer.) I'd say the most likely is some awful health crisis at an illegal flophouse, but by "most likely" I mean like 5% in a vast see of possibilities.
So the inciting incident may vary but struggle is inevitable then?
Yes. Specifically, an incident that'd normally result in a small protest or general hand-wringing will turn into a much larger deal. It'll wait until there's an incident that's vaguely connected to the eviction crisis, but it doesn't have to be a very good match. And the nature of the struggle will be influenced by the nature of the incident.
Reasonable analysis imo
About a year ago someone murdered 3 homeless people in my city, and pretty much no one cared. If something like that happens in a few months after millions of people have just become newly homeless, I could see huge riots against whoever the perceived enemy is, maybe cops or landlords
Then what will happen?
I dunno. I'm not a magical future-seeing owl. I'm just a regular old owl.
A single spark can light a prairie fire.
I think we'll see things ramp up through August and September as the evictions start, kids and teachers get sick and die in schools, etc.. but yeah, we're headed for a full-blown crisis of confidence in the state by October and it's going to be funny to listen to the libs yell about the election while a revolutionary movement battles the police in virtually every city.
what we're seeing now in Portland is what a lot of major cities will look like by the end of next month as the feds crack down in anticipation of this surge - kidnappings by what look to be feds just got recorded today in NYC. or said another way, the dip in energy and surge in energy that you expect to follow sustained protests like this is happening now, not over the next several months.
so by October, we're not looking at anything like what we're seeing now, or even what we briefly saw for a week in our May Days. Portland has learned that it's fight back against the state or go down meek in the face of repression - they've chosen to fight and won very real battles.
the election is page 3 news but its proximity to what's happening matters in one serious way: trump will be desperate to look like a strong commander by the time October rolls around. that event that provokes an outsized response you're talking about - there's a decent chance it's a massacre or other serious act of police repression, ordered by the man himself in a bid to save a campaign he can feel slipping away from him.
regardless of what actually sets it off, though, there will be a fresh escalation in the conflict in October and whether the state immediately offers concessions, delaying its collapse for a few years, or whether it quadruples down on its mistakes and forces a fight right there and then - those are the real stakes over the next couple of months. events are converging and while possibilities are endless for the specific sequence of events between here and there, those are the only two real possibilities for what happens over the next several months.
Yeah, roughly agree. I do think it's possible for the state to lurch along for a while without real concessions. Things accelerate very fast, but the distances are very large. Like space I guess. It's entirely possible that we stumble our way through election season, Biden somehow wins, and everything stalls out for months as people sit around desperately hoping he'll fix things.
It's hard to predict things concretely with all of these overlapping events that'll also cause new events. But this thread did get me thinking about what the predictable factors are, so here's what I have:
Escalating vertical tension between protesters, cities, states, and the country. Expect new crazy shit in August.
Coronavirus continues unchecked. Some sort of awful tipping point in September.
Eviction crisis. Probably around October.
Stock market crash. Shortly after the election, regardless of result. Even faster if there's a non-electoral leadership change.
And note that my predictions are this concrete because that makes it easier for me to evaluate my accuracy later, not because I'm actually that certain. Also note that the more details I throw onto a timeline like this, the more it sounds like I must be right because I have a lot of details, but in reality every detail is a new opportunity to be wrong. This is called the conjunctive fallacy and it's one of the biggest cognitive biases.