When multiple biggest protests are against your presidency, then you seriously fucked up.
News flash, neither Trump nor his Republican allies care. Literally at all.
Ok but it’s crazy that the George Floyd protests were 5x bigger than this, even with COVID in full swing.
Nobody had anything better to do back then
Cool
Do the next one next Saturday, PLEASE
Do not lift the pressure, keep going at it
Oh, nuh-uh! FOX News said it was a lightly attended failure. Who am I gonna believe, FOX:News or every local news sorce, that actually was there, in the country?
Eats another paint chip: Foxsch Newsgh
We clearly have the numbers against traitorous conservatives.
Would be really cool if we could use those numbers before allowing them to destroy our society.
Good… now repeat it but as a General Strike
A general strike would be devastating. But we ain’t there yet.
Not that I don’t love the idea. It requires a robust support network. Start building a small local community that can be self sufficient. Grow food. Make tools. Sell things to neighboring communities.
The owners will still expect rent during a general strike. We have the numbers, they have the funds to we wait us out. They’ll do everything they can to make it hurt us more than them.
A 1-week strike ahead of the mid-terms would be enough to make the GOP turn on Trump.
But that’s over a year out.
All I’m saying is build a support network before calling for a general strike.
Most people can’t afford to strike even if they wanted to.
A year is a nice long runway for that.
It sucks, but we aren’t getting rid of the fascists over the weekend. They’re in this for the long haul, and we need to be strategic about when and how we proceed. A general strike is a HUGE offensive in the fight, and it needs to be planned well. If we just mass buy shit before and after it doesn’t do anything.
Targeted boycotts are similar. They need to be strategic in their timing. Refusing to shop on Amazon for a week doesn’t do anything if we just go back to purchasing from them a week later. But what we can do is time it so it hits right before a fiscal quarter. That way it impacts the stock price and doesn’t fully bounce back until the following quarterly report.
wouldnt the Rs have to strike too, that would be effective. but we know Rs will never strike or protest on thier own.
The R’s are stupid and lazy. They don’t want to do all the work themselves. They’ll fold. Except the rich ones.
But we ain’t there yet.
Sorry but this line is how the USA fell off the wagon in the first place
nd not only that, you got there on Jan 6
Defeatism has NO PLACE HERE. Pack your shit and leave, fucker! SERIOUSLY fuck off.
Fuck you too buddy.
You guys wanna walk off the job don’t let anyone stop you. But maybe spend some fucking time preparing?
Are we mad about being prepared to walk off the job now?
Yeah!
Now knock off all that fascism - or we WILL go back out there and do another lap!
Match the energy during election day ballot yeah?? Thanks
That’s great news. The other 9 of the 10 biggest protests were were extremely successful at affecting change.
Since we made such massive progress on all the others, this is clearly a harbinger of social and political progress.
- George Floyd (Police Brutality)
- Earth Day 1970 (Environmental Protection)
- No Kings (Trump)
- Hands Across America (Poverty)
- Women’s March 2017 (Feminism)
- Hands Off (Trump)
- March for Our Lives (Gun Violence)
- Women’s March 2018 (Feminism)
- #RickyRenuncia (Puerto Rico, Resignation of Ricardo Rosselló)
- Great American Boycott (Immigrant Rights)
Only #9 actually accomplished what they wanted.
Earth day did a lot of good
Until we start seeing general strikes, or other action, they will continue to ignore the people.
A week of general strikes, and the stock exchange tanking acordingly, would actually have an effect.
I keep seeing this, and I don’t disagree, but what exactly is gonna change? Some rich people get slightly less rich, they’ll still own most of our government. Our current admin clearly doesn’t care about public opinion.
They care about money.
Day long general strikes have changed policy. A week would bring the government to the table on anything short of dissolving the government.
The US government is terrified of general strikes, and has gone to extraordinary measures to ensure they don’t happen.
great job everyone!
Literally all of these except number 23 and 31 are left wing protests.
Let that sink in 32/34 that’s over 94% of the biggest protests in the US were left wing.
We are the majority. Stop believing in the Reagenesque “silent majority” BS.
The majority of people, dont want oligarchs and conservative bigotry.
We are the majority.
🌍🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀 Always have been. That’s why conservatives constantly try to make it harder to vote - the more people vote, the more left wing politicians win. Because the majority of people agree with left wing ideals.
If blue fucking showed up at the boxes more often. (Even just 25% of the people registered as blue) nearly all government seats would flip and change would actually happen for the better. Instead left is actually center and right is facist.
Not necessarily true. People with left wing beliefs often vote for right wing candidates because the only information they have is their tiktok feeds and fox news playing at home.
No, it is necessarily true, according to the data lol. The higher the voter turnout, the more left wing candidates win. I don’t doubt that what you say is true at some level, but it doesn’t happen enough to affect the trend of higher voter turnout = more left wing wins.
This has changed. Look at the propensity switch. Low propensity voters back trump by higher margins than high propensity voters since 2020.
Hence why Democrats dominate low turnout special elections these days
A couple counterexamples doesn’t mean the trend across all elections has changed. And that’s what I’m talking about - the trend across all elections.
I know two of these. One is lost to the church, the other is coming around.
It’s been clear for a long time that the “silent majority” is in fact just an obnoxiously loud minority.
Mean rich people, their deluded lapdogs, and maybe like a thousand honest-to-goodness psychopaths.
100%. Republicans have been blatantly against the will of the people, and can only maintain power through gerrymandering and straight up rigging elections. We are the majority by a long shot. The last election was likely rigged, and the heritage foundation, Trump, and Putin are working on the business plot 2. We have to do everything possible to stop it.
Then why is the government so completely dominated by the right if most politically active people are on what Americans call the left?
Gerrymandering and other structural means of disproportionate representation in federal government are big parts of it
Two words, voter disenfranchisement
They remove the right to vote from our poor, our people of color, our citizens who have made mistakes but paid their debts to society, they remove polling places, making people wait hours and hours standing in lines to vote, giving them water is illegal, they purge voter roles right before elections…. And so so many more things. So many Americans don’t vote because they can’t because our right wing government has put so many roadblocks in the way.
Money, Propaganda, Tribalism, an undemocratic voting system…
Further, the uneveness of Power is gigantic: billionaires have way much power than common people, who are only powerful if together in large numbers and that’s incredibly hard to make happen in a structured way with everybody aligned in the same way compared with what a single billionaire can do if they feel like spending $100 million, and the entire system is set up against people organising in such a way - notice how the biggest demonstration ever in the US, the George Floyd protests, achieved pretty much nothing at all, and the police in the US is still a force of Injustice rather than Justice.
The vast majority of people are either played like fiddles or made to feel impotent and hence just turn of from politics and just live day to day.
The US is not a Democracy.
Because most Americans have knee-jerk reactions to labels as opposed to policies. Like how everyone supports all the protections Obamacare provides, but how they all want to get rid of Obamacare.
also voter suppression gerrymanderinng élite control of the media etc
Because while a lot of Americans support a lot of left wing positions, there are no major left wing parties, and a very small number of politicians who run for national or statewide office who actually take action to further left wing policies. There’s Bernie Sanders, who isn’t a member of a large party. AOC, and a few others qualify, but being a small proportion of those running, they’re a small proportion of those elected, and have relatively little actual influence.
Ideas neither major party supports are basically impossible to see happen.
The electorial college and gerrymandering
Others have commented valid points but I also wanted to bring up propaganda;
A lot of people are unwilling or even unable (i.e. there is only one tv in the house and you don’t get to control the remote most of the time) to get their news from sources that aren’t constantly telling them that Democrats are out to get them and 2SLGBTQIA+ are the enemy and that if they just vote for (wealthy conservative) then all their problems will be solved overnight. Couple that with an education system that has failed to give people the critical thinking skills to ask what trans folk have to do with the economy and you get the 2024 election.
The fact that there are so many valid reasons makes me extremely unhopeful.
To make you more hopeful, they have to constantly fight to keep these systems of oppression in place. We win if/when this stops. All we have to do is keep fighting them. Make them work to oppress us, and it’ll crumble.
So the electoral college and the apportionment act will go away, too?
And Americans won’t be a bunch of fucking idiots with the attention span of a goldfish?
And we’ll get proportional representation when they crumble?
Because most of the issues pointed out are structural and have nothing to do with Trump
Well, either they will be fixed or the state collapses eventually. If they keep this up people lose faith in the government.
Too late.
My take is that there are a lot of Left people who won’t vote for anyone except a candidate they support 100%. Hilary Clinton should have destroyed Trump. Those people ignore the simple truth that any time any GOP gets elected the whole country moves to the right.
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There are two sides. The Right and everyone else. The Right wins because they stay on topic and vote. Until the rest of us fall in line like they do, they’ll keep on winning. Show me where I’m wrong.
There is an evil witch that lives underground in the Moon and who is mind-controlling non-Rightwing votes in the US so that they don’t vote. Show me were I’m wrong.
The easiest thing in the World is to come up with a wild-ass theory without backing it with any evidence and then demanding others disprove it - I do believe that’s even a 4chan special.
Donald Trump won the election in 2016 over Hilary Clinton. How much more evidence do you need that people should have done more to defeat Donald and the GOP?
That’s as much “evidence” for your original “two sides” theory as it is for my “witch in the Moon” theory.
Also you’ve moved the goalposts to a self-fullfilling and generic to the point of uselessness statement “people should have done more to defeat Donald and the GOP”.
That’s like saying that “all drivers in car crashes should have done more not to crash their cars”.
Well, true, but also about as worthless as “insights” go as “the sky is blue”.
Also by blaming people you’re implying that “the system works and is fair” hence the fault is entirelly of people who have full agency and control. I’m afraid that things like the partisan support in the US for Genocide or the extreme level of police violence show that “people” don’t really have full agency or even much control - in fact I could spend the whole day listing how most people don’t really have much in the way of control of how the US is managed, though granted those wo do have most of the control are people (unless one subscribes to the theory that the ultra-rich are lizard-men).
You’re wrong by blaming the fictional non voting left for all your woes. Don’t be stupid.
It’s very simple. 36% of people didn’t vote on average. What percent of those people are leftists? If you don’t have that information, then you’re making shit up and demanding other people prove it for you.
There’s your tankie behavior.
You’re saying I’m wrong, and not providing anything like actual information. Why don’t you give me some facts and figures to explain it?
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In one word: money.
As others pointed out, there’s major structural issues. There’s also issues with apathy and people buying into the anti-electoralism/accelerationism con with religious ferver.
It’s not hard to be anti-electoral when elections don’t seem to ever fucking work
You’re not wrong but, that’s really the trap that many of us on the Left hand fallen for. It takes a long time to build things and make positive changes in the face of resistance from moneyed interests. Leftists refusing to participate in every election, including primaries, is a good part of how we got here in the first place. Non-voters are the largest bloc and, with surveys consistently showing Left-of-Center policies to be popular with the populace overall, it’s safe to assume that the Overton window could be dragged to a better place if they bothered to participate and participate consistently in a calculated manner.
It is absolutely infuriating, indeed, to see all efforts being for nought, though. In less than a year, almost a century of progress has been undone and that would not have been possible if people had been voting stategically. At this point, I’m certain that things will not get appreciably better in my lifetime.
And if things won’t get better, why bother?
I’ve been voting as much as possible and doing the other things for a quarter century and we’ve always gotten further from what I’m hoping for.
I wasted all that time and money and stress and have nothing to show for it.
Politics is dumb and people are terrible. I want to leave the planet.
You’ve got extremely valid feelings. Mine are quite similar. I do find myself asking “what’s the fucking point?” far more often than I’d like.
Rather like the classic “what’s the meaning of life?”, I don’t think that anyone can answer that for anyone else. For me, it’s a love of my fellow human beings and belief that, based upon historical evidence, authoritarianism’s grip on society always crumbles. It might take a World War, or it may take centuries of insurgency, but it is inevitable. In order for that to happen, people need to experience kindness and empathy. And people need to be willing to be builders, rather than just violent fighters (every society founded in violence and bloodshed has been vulnerable to authoritarians coopting the movement). So, I keep pushing because it might help others when I’m gone. Hell, maybe it will help lead to the cultural and psychological changes necessary to approach the anarchic society of my ideals (I don’t think I’ll ever directly have that much influence or desire it but every small bit helps).
And there’s also spite. Authoritarians of all flavors are fundamentally cruel douchebags and the current ones are exceptionally stupid to boot (and revel in their anti-intellectualism). Continued resistance and standing up for people and showing them kindness really gets under their skin and I’m a big fan of that.
Politics is dumb and people are terrible. I want to leave the planet.
Yup. Me too buddy. Me too.
I might suggest, if you’re able, looking about for local (non-political) nonprofit orgs to see if there are any that really align with what you think is important. Helping others in a tangible manner can really help to stave off apathy.
because Dems allowed gerrymandering to go without protest
Because the left keeps falling in with the ineffectual center-right, leading to widespread voter disillusionment.
Mainly because your average person is apathetic to their own governenance
Also, if memory serves, the right wing group the 3 percenters got their name because it only took 3% of the population to initiate change at some historical event.
Ergo, it doesn’t take that many people to get out and change the nation, but ffs you got to get out
It seems like the ’ in the word “don’t” somehow fell down and landed on the floor right after the word “people” in your last sentence. Might wanna pick it up and place it where it belongs.
& here come the lies about the protests https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4mwJ1sIxt4
It feels good to know that lots of other Americans care about what’s going on. I don’t know if we’re going to make it but I felt like part of a country out there and I hope we figure it out.
not to rain on the parade or nothing, but a protest that hasn’t the implicit threat of “…or else” is just a hang
All the other benefits of a non-violent protest aside, there’s also immense value is reminding people that they’re not as singular in their viewpoint as they feel.
For a lot of people, it’s been very easy to feel like everyone else must be in board with this.
I’m not sure what you’re looking for to codify the implicit threat. A couple million people calling you a king at an event called “no kings day” in a country whose founding narrative is “violently rebel against kings” seems pretty implicit to me.
Also, I just realized that there’s a red coat/red hat parallel I haven’t seen leveraged yet that has a lot of potential.
there’s also immense value is reminding people that they’re not as singular in their viewpoint as they feel.
This destroys the narrative of the protested party. They cannot convincingly talk about ‘a few misguided people disagreeing’ when you see so many others who feel like you. Even if nothing would be achieved by the protest, this is an immensely powerful confirmation of an individuals beliefs. 100% agree.
They don’t have “a” narrative that can be refuted. Any narrative that they present is facile and can be changed in mid sentence. Addressing the things they say is a waste of effort, even as counter-propaganda. It costs them orders of magnitude less to spread bullshit than it costs you to spread the antidote. This is just another way that they get you.
I don’t mean to devalue organizing and peaceful protest, but the benefits are what it does to us, not what it does to them.
Showing up isn’t arguing against them, it’s sending a message to other people (amongst other things).
Arguing with fascists is pointless. Showing that not everyone agrees with them is different though, and has value. They may not have a singular static narrative, but they rely on the perception that dissent is a minority position.
I was trying to say that. Seeing others puts a ‘narrative’ that is different from theirs in your own head, because you see with your own eyes. Everybody still needs to adress all incoming information, it’s not always apparent it is a false story.
Would be MUCH more effective if all the protesters were armed.
The lesson from A Handmaid’s Tale is don’t protest without the arms to back it up.
Getting millions of Americans to go out and essentially shout “F U Donald” is a little bit more than a hang. And is potentially much more effective than a riot or occupy wall street.
America is still a democracy, in that all the roads to power require you to get folk to show up and vote for you.
Alright, so let’s say trump is gone, what replaces him? Business as usual republicans who were all on board with his policies but didn’t like how boisterous he was. Democrats are all too happy to play along, fellating war criminals like dick cheney and george bush. America is a representative democracy where you vote on which representative will represent billionaires for you.
I hope these protests develop into something more, but realistically I can only anticipate them being used as political points for democrats during their donation drives to raise tons of money to promote billionaire ass-kissers. Things will continue to get worse and then the next villain of the week will appear as the conduit to do all the bad things billionaires want. We’ll be told again all we need to do is get rid of this next villain too and then things will be fine, but then the cycle repeats as things continue to just get worse.
America is still a democracy,
Not much longer if americans dont fight harder.
That is exactly why the midterms will be so important, not to mention the next presidential election. We need to keep the momentum going for a blue wave, and this protest may have helped with that.
When that fails, when Democrats lose voting rights, when Trump pardons the Minnesota assassin to effectively legalize political violence against MAGA’s enemies, when all peaceful options for democracy have been exhausted, then let’s talk about the violent revolution. Until then, there’s no reason to be a buzzkill about this protest.
The fact that No Kings was nonviolent was perfect, for now, because trying to riot or a coup would have just enabled MAGA to justify state-sanctioned violence of their own.
Well, good thing that the Minnesota assassin is currently being held on state-level murder charges because Trump can’t pardon non-federal charges.
Oh, thank goodness.
I see so many videos with people saying “I support you” and none saying “I’m going to take action.” Everyone is dawdling, nobody is doing anything
5 million people are doing something, your comment is shitting on their effort.
It’s incredible that millions of people showed up and pretty much none of them feel for Donald Trump’s trap that would have, to the MAGA Republicans, justified martial law and the suspension of liberties.
I’m pretty solidly convinced the protest was a good thing and that we won this battle.
And 2-3 million were doing something a few months ago with the earlier protests. With any luck this trajectory continues
They are saying the effort was toothless, no need to take it so personal.
I would argue that it already isn’t. we kinda waited a bit too long, that’s why the protests happened.
Truth will be in the form of how they respond to the protests. If we end up with military occupation or martial law, we’re already not a democracy.
that said, tomato, tomaaato, same fix.
1 George Floyd protests 500,000[5] 15,000,000–26,000,000 2020
2 Earth Day 20,000,000[6] 1970
3 No Kings protests 5,000,000 2025
4 Hands Across America (poverty) 5,000,000 1986
5 2017 Women’s March 3,300,000–4,600,000
Did any of these have any lasting impact?
take a guess
Ok I will. Yes
Can you provide examples? From what I gather, 1 cops are still killing people, 2 we’re still speeding towards climate catastrophe, 3 Trump is still in power, 4 Poverty and wealth disparity is getting worse, 5 Women in many walks of life are still second class citizens.
Unless the lasting impact you mean is one step forwards three steps backwards.
They asked a question, were asked to guess, and now are being demanded proof for the answer they are still seeking.
Do you think that the needle has moved in a positive direction since these protests? Even if it feels like only a few millimetres?
Starting from the bottom of this list: 5. There’s more women in the workforce than ever before https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2022001/article/00009-eng.htm 4. We’ve seen a drop in poverty since 2017 (but it’s climbing back up!) https://www160.statcan.gc.ca/prosperity-prosperite/poverty-pauvrete-eng.htm 3. As a direct response to Trump, Canada elected a Centre-Left Prime Minister in Marl Carney’s Liberals when the election was decidedly going to be a Rightwing landslide with the Poilievre’s Conservatives. 2. Green, renewable energy has never been more popular.
- There have been significant reforms since the George Floyd protests. Some cops have seen prison time, or lost their jobs entirely.
That’s not to say our job is done and everything is a utopia now - we still have a lot of work to do. However, we do need to acknowledge when things have moved in a good direction or we’ll be overwhelmed by the bad and lose hope.
You’ve gotta see some of the good through all the shitty headlines that want to make you click and feel bad.
Your first source is about women working in Canada and your second is about poverty in Canada.
Unless I missed something, Canada still is a sovereign nation despite what Trump wants.
Great observation.
You asked for examples and sources - I gave examples and 2 sources. Maybe it’s drastically different where you live?
My challenge to you is - what are you doing to change the narrative where you live?
Anyone can sit from the sideline and comment that nothing has changed since these protests took place - it’s a lot harder to get out there and make the change happen. Maybe you’re already making those changes already, in which case - keep going!
Reminds me of this:
And then i’m told I should be happy the “needle is moving in a positive direction.”
The comment told me to take a guess so I did although my answer was intentionally wrong because I thought my questions answer was obvious. None of the things listed have remained relevant
I’m sorry, but every significant change in the world started with violence.
Intense violent changes are more suited for writing stories about than gradual non-violent changes. I’m not saying gradual non-violent changes is what US needs right now, but your statement is false and I think you should stop instigating violence in this thread.
The United States was created by the Revolutionary War.
We live in a country that only exists because of violence. We celebrate and honor this violence every year on July 4 (and on Memorial Day and Veterans Day)
Clearly we as a nation deeply believe in the transformative power of violence. It’s literally what it means to be an American.
I mean, yeah- they all did an excellent job of reinforcing the fascists’ understanding of how little a threat the US “left” is.
So do something about it, or you’re just as much a part of the sheep.
