not to rain on the parade or nothing, but a protest that hasn’t the implicit threat of “…or else” is just a hang
You guys think that merely walking around in your own time holding up a board and shouting a bit, all focused on the mango puppet instead of the puppet masters, is going to change anything given that there is no single Historical event in the US ever of the lower classes rebelling against and deposit the upper classes (even the Revolution was literally the American plebs led by the American upper class fighting against the English plebs controlled by the English upper class)?!
The murder of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare had more impact, if only temporary because it wasn’t followed by more similar murders.
Even millions of people marching and shouting a bit (and so polite that they do it in their own time) will cause no fear for the elites because that’s in no way a warning that the heads of the elites will soon start getting separated from their shoulders if nothing changes.
You need at the very least a General Strike and/or targetting the economic and propaganda interests of the elites (trashing the TV studios of certain channels or certain newspapers would send a powerful message).
I mean, just notice the impact on police violence of the greatest demonstrations in the US - the George Floyd protests: nothing or even worse than nothing as the pigs have never been this violent.
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.
3rd largest so far.
Seriously, there will be more, I don’t think we’ve seen the biggest ones yet either.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
Then why is the government so completely dominated by the right if most politically active people are on what Americans call the left?
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.
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
because Dems allowed gerrymandering to go without protest
Gerrymandering and other structural means of disproportionate representation in federal government are big parts of it
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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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Mainly because your average person is apathetic to their own governenance
Because the left keeps falling in with the ineffectual center-right, leading to widespread voter disillusionment.
This makes me really hopeful.
Less to me. There are families being kidnapped, seperated, and sent to death camps, and the respinding protests outside of LA were a two hour march on a weekend.
Read this if you’re having difficulty understanding the purpose of the recent protests within the greater resistance.
What is good enough for you?
Quiet everyone, Mustakrakish is about to tell us the acceptable number for a protest.
Go ahead, the floor is yours.
Not that poster, but judging by what the largest protests in the US ever - the George Floyd protests - achieved when it comes to police violence in the US (it’s the same or worse now), in the present age in the US merelly coming out and walking for a bit in your own time while holding a board up doesn’t seem to achieve anything.
Think of it from the point of view of the Political and Money “elites” in the US: they get zero direct negative impact from the riff-raff in their own time doing a big march against the elite’s puppet mango emperor, and there is no single Historical instance in the US were the lower classes rebelled against the upper classes and properly fucked them up, so the masses marching isn’t even a warning of increasing risk for them - they control the entire political system in the US and make sure whomever is in a position to get elected for a position of political power is always in their pocket, and do not fear the desinfranchised population because they never ever moved against them.
The murder of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare by a single person seems to have achieved more in terms of scaring the powerful than even the millions that came out demonstrating against the police killing of George Floyd.
(I bet that in a place like France, still today the masses coming out even if doing nothing but marching and holding some boards, are cause for concern amongst the “elites”)
I actually saw something quite similar in the UK when I lived there: the powerful just didn’t care because even large numbers of people doing some polite marching did not damage the interest of the elites and because they had no reason to be concerned with their personal safety because the plebes had never actually rebelled against the upper classes.
That said this situation in the US is even less concerning for the elites because the crowds are so firmly focused in the puppet and disregarding the puppet masters, that even very indirectly there is zero risk for the true powers.
Maybe as some other poster suggested, a general strike would be more effective.
A general strike?
Funded by?
Looting and mutual aid
looting will not be supported by the majority
Maybe a protest that goes longer than 2 hours, on a weekend, where everyone dispereses and goes back home to watch the game? Maybe one that causes actual resistence and pushback? Not one that amounts to a community day in the park?
Look at the LA protests. More akin to this:
So your mad that protesters in other cities aren’t being attacked by local police and federal agents, got it.
Pass the word everyone, if you’re not getting hit with tear gas and rubber bullets your protest doesn’t matter. Might as well not even try.
I was about to say the list was incomplete as several million attended the Iraq war protests, but it turns out that was global and only a few hundred k Americans bothered to protest the invasion of Iraq based on manufactured propaganda.
The post 9/11 bloodthirsty hysteria, “you’re either with us or against us” dissonance, religious nationalism, and ignorant patriotism is what made me believe the US would become an authoritarian dictatorship in my lifetime. Great job teenage me. I hate it.
That was the first overt demonstration that American news outlets were captured by jingoist propaganda. But back then pointing out that media coverage differed from literal experienced reality got you labeled as a terrorist kook.
I think you may have misread the Wikipedia page. There were 300-400,000 in NYC alone.
I was in Boston and there were 10s of thousands, even though it was February and sleeting, SF had another 150-200k.
I think there was a sizable group in DC too.
That’s what I thought but those are the “official” estimates, which do strangely focus on NYC.
I guess we’re talking about a fascist-oligarch-owned MSM who profit from war and chaos so they had a vested interest to suppress the real opposition.
I was in college at that time and was a typical “centrist” and counter protested. I’ve changed at lot since then.
Congratulations on your evolution. I was pretty cringe around that era, too.
A lot of people forget the shear bloodlust in the USA after 9/11 that lasted for years.
When people compare the Vietnam and Iraq Wars, a lot of people forget there was a large chunk of the country who were rabidly pro Iraq War while there wasn’t an equivalent base for the Vietnam War.
It felt like everyone was like you were either 1000% on board or you were casually on board cause you weren’t “into politics” but trying to find likeminded people who opposed it felt impossible to me. I was 16 when 9/11 happened and shortly after was when I stoped standing for the anthem or saluting the flag in the morning and I was the only kid in my highschool of 1,800 kids to do that and wow I got SO MUCH hate for it
The spike in nationalism was intense, and hasn’t really dropped back down to a reasonable baseline since.
This is online discourse in general with Americans. Nuance is impossible, it’s all “you’re either with us or against us”, for example when discussing China. Doesn’t even have to be something political, just any charged argument at a point in time.
Must be a coincidence that Lemmy was much more relaxed and welcoming when there were fewer Americans here in the beginning, you could even read news about European countries, now all we get is American politics spam.
Doesn’t even have to be something political
Yeah, it does. Everything is political. I guarantee, you’ve never had an apolotical argument taken over by Americans, because there’s no such thing as an apolotical argument
I was 16 when 9/11 happened and I was a pretty tuned in kid who spoke up about the issues I had with it, how horrible the patriot act was, all sorts of things and I can absolutely attest the response was always extremely hostile and cutting, filled with personal attacks about how moronic I was, now naive and of course because I’m female I’m inherently too stupid to hold a conversation about this so just shout me down so I will shut my stupid girl mouth and sit down. I’ve never changed my mind, why would I? And you know what, I still get attacked in exactly the same ways but at least the “you’re a terrorist for not supporting the Iraq war” has died down
7 out of top 10 during Trump’s presidential terms. My take is that civil duty to protest is stronger than voting for non-Republicans, maybe if elections were on saturdays instead of tuesdays…
You only have to vote once every 4 years. Do both.
Two years in most states. Every year in some states.
If you’re only voting in the presidential election, then you are effectively giving Republicans your vote during midterms.
Absolutely vote in every election.
If there is a civic duty in a democracy, this is it.
Classic bad take
You can vote and protest, they’re not mutually exclusive
Stop trying to divide the left
Who said they were mutually exclusive?
Exactly. Theyre not mutually exclusive. There is a lnown issue with working class people not being able to take time off on tuesdays to go vote. If elections were saturdays, maybe there would be a better turn out.
I feel like this argument doesnt hold as much water as it used to with how easy it is to vote by mail or use early voting. At least in the 3 locations ive been for the last presidential election
not sure which 2 halves i am trying to divide, just concerned Trump won despite having record protests
Cool. I just hope your leaders take the hint. Maybe now that they’re getting directly threatened they’ll show their true colours. Either they stand up for themselves as they see their colleagues start to get attacked (at events or in their own homes), or they cower and come to heel. (Sadly, I have little faith most politicians in most countries these days will do much if it’s not their own hides at risk.)
Incidentally, something weird is going on with that list. I’m not sure how the ordering works but much more important, it says only “500,000” for the protests over George Floyd even though one of the references says 15-26 million over the entire course of that movement.
I’m afraid this may not be enough. One who is so deep in their delusions isn’t so easily brought back to reality, if they ever can be.
This isn’t the first large nationwide protest of his second term and it won’t be the last. For instance, the Hands Off ones in April were number 6 on that list. They’re getting larger and there is already planning for the next nationwide ones. Or more broadly, here’s the cumulative number of protests including smaller ones too
Yeah I’m afraid the US and all its allies are marching straight into another set of wars and the consequences they’ll bring. Apparently we’re all the baddies now
The protests didn’t raise eight figures of donations so they don’t care.
Earth Day needs to keep happening too.
I’d like an Earth Day of the week. Day of the week for a bunch of progressive agendas would be cool. You’ve got Fight Fash Friday, obviously Saturday is Gay, Sunday Earth Day like don’t buy anything and maybe sabotage something? Monday is probably international worker solidarity. Etc.
You can fit a lot of good into 7 days.
I don’t get the rankings. Seems like only earth day had more people.
Boy. They sure coulda made that more apparent. Seems like something to put more in parenthesis than a footnote.
Hopefully the people can push out maga eventually.
Finally found something Trump was good at.
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