The Berkeley hippies were out! Made all the faces Vance with advanceblur.com 😂Not just nationwide either. Absolutely beautiful. Solidarity from Canada <3
Maybe OT, but there’s comfort knowing most online accounts minimizing irl resistance (saying this is nothing, or not enough, or they’re not doing it right, or I can do 6-7pm on Wednesday lmk, omg people have jobs, why aren’t they angry at this other thing, and on and on) are working overtime.
Remember learning about the work that went into de-legitimizing the Women’s Marches?
More than 4,000 miles away, organizations linked to the Russian government had assigned teams to the Women’s March. At desks in bland offices in St. Petersburg, using models derived from advertising and public relations, copywriters were testing out social media messages critical of the Women’s March movement, adopting the personas of fictional Americans.
They posted as Black women critical of white feminism, conservative women who felt excluded, and men who mocked participants as hairy-legged whiners. - NYT, Sept 22
The day after the World Said No to War, news article after article sold the story back to us that we didn’t really DO anything because the USA was still bombing people. But everyone who was there remembers looking around and realizing no matter what the news tells us about our activism, we still care enough to show up for each other, and We Are Everywhere. With oppositional media framing everything as hopeless, depressing, alienating, etc, physically being with other people who give a fuck is not just good for politics, it’s good for our mental health (or soul, if you’re into that).
I get 3-4 emails daily from the DNC asking for money and nothing about this.
Hands off is the wrong message. Like a bad relationship, “It’s time to clean house and get the FUCK OUT!”
“Hands Off” is the right message. It’s short, direct, punchy, combative, and doesn’t give way to bs attacks from conservatives the way e.g. “defund the police” did. It’s also inclusive of every group (except the elites in power of course), while hitting the “no war but class war” vibe pretty well, like it’s a common struggle that we’re all a part of.
There were no reports of any major disturbances or arrests at any of the rallies.
No chuds showed up anywhere? That surprising but worrying, what are they planning…
In new York I saw a single counter protestor. A black woman, oddly. She seemed a little mentally unwell based on the weird stuff she said (other than just the trump support)
I saw a handful of cops, but they were just watching passively.
When a firetruck had to go down the road, everyone surprisingly quickly cleared the way for it.
There was a single MAGA with a trump flag at a protest I attended. But the worst that happened was everyone booed them and then a small group followed her around.
I think all but the most stupid and brainwashed realize Trump has really fucked the entire country. They’ll never admit it or turn on him, but the silence is deafening.
At least where I am in Oregon the worst were just lifted trucks driven by snowflakes coal rolling.
I think everyone else was just being a keyboard warrior.
and of course, oregonians being oregonians. they just let these lifted trucks coal roll them without so much as a molotov cocktail in response.
Just left the one in Denver. I think I heard 11,000 people from one person but I don’t know. It was a lot, I know that for sure.
Edit: My Aunt just sent me pics of the protest she was at in West Virginia of all places. That never happened when I lived there. Keep it up!
Wasn’t it awesome! There were SO MANY PEOPLE, it was awesome to see. The march next to stopped traffic with most of the cars honking and cheering us on WHILE THEY ARE STUCK IN TRAFFIC BECAUSE OF US was amazing. People are PISSED.
Omaha showed up in force today! Thousands of people!
Tens of thousands estimates from organizers are that it’s a hell of a lot larger than that.
I’ll admit this is an unconfirmed claim, but one of the organizers at Boston’s protest said it reached 100,000 people. The entire city hall plaza as well as the whole street going to the commons was packed.
According to Trump it was like 5 or 6 people. Mexicans probably. If you want to see a real crowd you should come to one of my Rallies - left wing media photos and videos of empty seats at them and people leaving after 20minutes are just fake news propoganda of course.
Yep Boston looked like just a few immigrants, some Asian lady leading chants (Boston Mayor Wu) and a bunch of people singing with weird accents (the Dropkick Murphies!!) …… and tens of thousand of others
It has to be a Multi-pronged approach Against the parasitic class.
Saw this one at the Denver protest today!
Nice, never seen it before yesterday. Saw someone on a video with it and googled it after I saw this post. Not the best joke but he sure is a parasite.
That pic from New York! 😍
Here’s a clip of the crowd: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DIFCEYDhUdy/
Thank you!
I wish I could still pretend that any of these protests mattered. At the end of the day everyone’s going to vote Democrat and Republican again and none of it will matter, because both parties are beholden to the ultra-wealthy and rule as conservatives.
You gain absolutely nothing by being correct about this.
Making an effort anyway at least gives you a chance at improving your life.
I am fully aware I’m shouting into the void.
The protests matter.
History shows us how and why. It also shows us that thinking they don’t matter is pretty common. If even 10% of Americans showed up to protest you would see instant, dramatic changes the next day. And it tends to snowball. Americans are not as powerless between elections as they have convinced themselves they are.
I think that deep down they know all this, but it’s easier to claim it won’t matter.
To better protect myself from cognitive biases I try to put my faith in the consensus of the experts. Otherwise we all just waste time cycling through old, ego-fueled debates that have been fully explored before we were even born.
In the case of protesting: the overwhelming consensus is that protests matter. If you don’t have the time/inclanation to defend a disertation as to why they don’t: you should listen to those that have. Unfortunately the experts don’t have the resources to play whack-a-mole with every objection any person can claim on any platform. If you want that you need to go to school. Until then trust and protest. The longer you wait the harder it will be.
Back in the 60’s perhaps.
They certainly accomplish nothing now apart from compelling social media content and making it easier for ICE to nab targets. That’s why I mentioned the Women’s March specifically, because everyone and their mother spent a week talking about the massive turnout, and then abortion was criminalized. You protested for George Floyd, which only resulted in property damage and electing a president who mocked your movement to your faces on national television before his brain melted.
Don’t get me wrong. I want it to work. I really do, but protest doesn’t matter when you don’t care about the quality of the people you’re electing to rule, and 99% of voters don’t. (As evidenced by our presidential race featuring two octogenarians with publicly-known cognitive deficiencies.)
Wow, pretty desperate.
That’ll happen when you live in a country like this. Everyone’s desperate.
Mostly your comment.
I wish I were just being dramatic.
My eighty year-old parents are driving for DoorDash, and if they don’t, no one in this government will lift a finger to help them. Tens of millions of Americans can’t absorb a $400 expense without going further into debt. Most Americans don’t see much wrong with the fact that people are working 2-3 jobs at upwards of 100 hours a week and all their labor buys them is a roach-infested studio.
Respectfully, me and most Americans have every right to be angry, and it shouldn’t have taken the onset of fascism to make you partisans actually see how negative your politics are, because this severe impoverishment is now in its ninth year, and all we heard from Democrats were excuses.
