After watching the United in Anger documentary and reading You Are Not Entitled to Our Deaths by Mia Mingus, it really made me sit down and think about how performative protest can be at times. I struggle to understand why that is, because the main foundation of every protest is the collective understanding of the mutual struggle that they have and the common cause of said struggle. For instance, the exclusion of disabled people in the talks surrounding COVID, as noted by Mingus, the documentary talks about how many people did not join in on the ACT UP protests until they received a diagnosis of their own. Likewise with the documentary mentioning how some of the AIDS reform was regressive because it was male-centered in how the disease can manifest itself, so women were still left out because some of the criteria that one would need to be able to get some benefits, like common illnesses that come along with a diagnosis, were not common among women, and they were still suffering. Even beyond those examples, looking at the women’s suffrage movement and how white women were hesitant to include black women, for fear that their demands would not be met. The beauty of protests is that people from different walks of life come together and no one is left out; their voices are not trampled over by other parties. Must we wait until we have a personal stake in something before it matters to us? What good is protest if we don’t bring everyone to the table?
Unruly Bodies 
I totally agree. The whole thing about people not being interested in supporting a cause unless they’re personally affected reminds me of people’s response to AI.
One of my class professors brings up AI in practically every class. She suggests that we use AI for simple things that we could very easily do without AI. She asked us if we knew how to use the school library website’s search function, then suggested we use AI to find what articles we should use then go back to look it up on the library website. That’s the whole point of the search function on the website!!!!!!
When people, especially UMBC staff, encourage people to use AI willy-nilly, I ask them if they think it’s worth it to use AI for those things given the environmental impact. This professor answered that she is aware of the environmental impact, and that it can affect some communities, but that we can decide what we want to do on a personal basis.
I have seen videos of protestors from these communities standing against the development of more data centers in their neighborhood. I see statistics on how much clean drinkable water these data centers use, and how each individual use of chatgpt contributes to that water usage. The people that will have to pay for these environmental costs are those with less financial resources and predominantly people of color. The only reason people don’t care about impacting these communities is because it’s not them at risk.
Not even just as a social work professor, as a social work student, or as a liberal, how can you as a person justify the use of AI in these unnecessary and unjustifiable ways. That’s just on the environmental impact, that’s not even starting on AI generated images and sounds that steal from artists and musicians.
I never knew what divide and conquer meant until I had heard it being applied in a historical context for a GWST/HIST class I took, referring to Hindus and Muslims in India, and ‘conquer’ meaning colonialism by the British. Divide and conquer means to create division within a group so that they do not have solidarity with one another and are then easier to conquer.
This was ALSO one of my gripes with the new Wicked movie because the munchkins and animals had no solidarity with one another when they were being discriminated against by the state (Oz).
Your thoughts on how many individuals did not join ACT UP until they had been diagnosed with AIDS really resonated with me. Particularly in the present sociopolitical climate, it seems as though individualism and the idea that any specific problem only becomes relevant to someone if it impacts them or their loved ones has become such an incredibly common way of thinking. Perhaps one could argue that it is just an unintended offshoot of our culture, but it feels like such an intentionally cultivated aspect that is meant to divide us. Reflecting on Mia Mingus’ words, we are taught to believe that us, as individuals, will not get sick or hurt, and that such things only happen to other people (or ‘othered’ people in many contexts). Great post!