Now all they have to do this until main stream media cannot widely ignore this in the US.
It’ll be right before the false flag attack used to justify repression of dissent
That being America, it would not surprise me.
Why not gather the masses outside their mansions? Why do people keep gathering at the most calculatedly ineffectual areas where they’re ignored time and time again?
They are gathering on a Saturday when trunps playing golf in Florida.
Ikr? Those protestors really went out of their way (on their day off) to really stick it to trump (who was happily playing golf). Goes to show how ineffective and purely symbolic these protests are.
You do realize these are regular ass people who have jobs and rent and mortgages and bills to pay and kids to support? Like, we can’t be out on the street every single day.
How often are you out in the streets?
Don’t let the rise of fascism get in the way of a days work I guess?
Don’t limit the size of your movement or it’s popular support because you’re unwilling to include people who aren’t able nuke their lives. If I don’t keep my job my children go hungry and lose their home. I’m unwilling to do that to them.
I’ve been out protesting for 14 years before last august when a fascist pig threw a brick at my knee during the pogroms in the UK. Now I can’t walk and have been diagnosed with numerous autoimmune disorders, so I physically can’t even leave my house. Perhaps it’s too much to ask you to pick up the torch.
And for the record, you’re already seeing MAGA rat out anti-MAGA to deport them, pretty soon you’ll be seeing anti-MAGA reporting other anti-MAGA to protect themselves from MAGA, and the “I have kids to take care of” crowd will be the first to turn on their own for the sake of self preservation. Your job, rent, mortgage, bills, and kids are all at stake here, and more of a reason to start knocking on the oligarchs door. Are you saying you prefer your own protection vs the future for your children?
“Mommy/daddy, did you fight for our future?” “No, I continued going to work because the mortgage was more important.”
Is your argument is that anyone who is unwilling to nuke their entire life for the movement is insufficiently motivated and shouldn’t even bother getting involved?
If that’s your stance, then you’re just plain wrong and you should probably keep quiet about it because your working against the movement.
Vanguard revolutions don’t work. They just replace one set of shitty authoritarians with another. The ONLY way this can ever work is if we make the movement accessible to as broad a swath of people as humanly possible.
I’ve been a political activist for 22 years now. I cut my teeth on the front lines of the anti-Iraq War movement in 2003. I was at Occupy. I spent my early-to-mid 20s with little regard for my personal safety and financial stability. But nobody keeps that up forever. I’m pretty sure I did it longer than most. But that’s not all I want from life.
Yes, fighting fascism is important to protecting my kids’ future (I have 2 kids). You know what else is equally important to that, though? Making sure they have a stable home and food on their plates now. And I can’t do that if I nuke my life by spending every single day in the streets, losing my job, and getting arrested.
My kids won’t have to ask me what I did because they’re there with me. Both my 3 yo and 5 yo were at the DC protest on Saturday. And this wasn’t either of their first action. My 5 yo was with us at the 2020 uprising when she was less than a year old.
A successful movement takes all kinds. Yes, there are some who can take greater risks and more radical actions, but I’m not at that place in my life anymore and that’s fine. If we can’t find a way to include people who have other responsibilities in life, too, without insulting them or implying they’re not really interested in change, then the entire movement is cooked.
So, thank you for your past service to the cause, but if you don’t have anything constructive to say, kindly fuck off.
Have you ever been to the U.S.? We can’t all drive 3,000 km. We live in a country with drastically lower population density than European countries.
People drove across the country to go to Washington yesterday, organizers supplied coaches from every major city. Same with BLM, Occupy, and many movements before it. But god forbid we do that towards a location that could actually make a difference.
People downvote, but i am not very convinced that the protest will do anything. I also wonder why we protest where we do and when we do. I suppose the intention is that we are still in the politicians fuck around part, but not quite up to politicians find out part.
Hopefully i am proven wrong and something will happen, but even then i fear that people will settle for things being only nominally worse then normal after the scalding.
It’s been a couple of decades since I’ve lived in the states, but I used to watch some US TV, via satellite and later cable (TV through fiber, actually) I stopped watching US TV 2-3 years prior to COVID. I just can’t stand it. Regular TV is pretty bad worldwide, but US TV is on another level of bad.
Stop watching that trash. The US has awesome media outlets that have been widely covering US protests.
For heavens sake, I’m not a regular watcher of US mainstream “media”. There is only so much junk a human can stand. I was just observing the coverage of this particular event out of curiosity what they would do about it.
Meidastouch
Their mansions are in gated communities with security keeping out the “undesirables”. Remember “I really don’t care, do you” is the truth about them.
I know it’s easy to criticize the media, but, like, they have been reporting on it.
These are the precursors to a general strike. There’s are a lot of great people out here building support networks for when it finally happens.
Please come get involved!
If they can ignore genocide, they can ignore protests. Just like they always do.
First there was the Arab Spring.
Then the Balkan Spring.
So this is… the American Spring? Sounds like a brand of bottled water.
I don’t think we’ll see the upheaval of a fascist regime by picketers carrying signs any time soon.
This is to show the people who are feeling alone with their despair, that they are in fact not alone.
And it is to recruit people for the upcoming general strike.
For a general strike to take effect, it needs about 10mil people, and it is estimated that there are about 5mil people demonstrating in America today.
No but it’s the first step. As momentum builds more people are emboldened to protest, and the scope of the protests widen and get more effective.
This sort of statement is typically made by people who want to stall and prevent action. You see it all the time in various forums: “if this activity doesn’t 100% fix everything immediately then there is no point in doing anything”.
Unfortunately we don’t live in a black and white world where a switch can be flipped from awful to wonderful (as if it was even possible for everyone to agree on that). You get there in small incremental steps with messy interactions and disagreements along the way.
Protests like this can lead to ongoing effective resistance like strikes, work to rules and etc. But you don’t get someone to go from never having protested in their lives to manning a blockade of a govt building in one step.
Exactly. For the past month I’ve read many people here saying protest are useless because of various bullshit reasons. Protest are just a starting point. At protest, people talk, organize, that can lead to more massive protest, a new ideology, a revolution, or nothing. You never know.
I’m French. I have been to many protests. Some ended in massive movement for no reasons. Some died while the cause was very important. You never know.
you speak truth and they downvote it because they don’t want to face that fact that one day of standing around accomplishes nothing. they want to think this will be easy and won’t require real sacrifice. they’re lazy and naive.
please bookmark this post. show me what changes one month from now. one year from now. please prove me wrong.
they want to think this will be easy and won’t require real sacrifice. they’re lazy and naive.
That’s not at all what the responses (that have been up for hours before you posted this) have been saying.
because they don’t want to face that fact that one day of standing around accomplishes nothing.
Well it’s a good thing it hasn’t been just one day, and there are many more planned for the future. Come get involved!
If you can’t even bother to stand around to protest, how tf are you supposed to get people to do more extreme actions when the time such drastic actions are required comes around? Your apathetic response to protesting will only lead to a more fractured society that cannot attempt any meaningful resistance to the fascist in the white house.
yeah, i’m not into wasting my time. i’m here when the people decide to get serious though.
People who are serious doesn’t balk at the idea of protesting. If you can’t even bother sacrificing time to sit around to show people that its safe for them to come fight against fascism, there is no way you’d have the guts to sacrifice your life to actually fight against the fascist when the time comes. It’s probably better if you just sit at home and don’t bother talking about fighting or protesting. At this point, you’re more of an asset to the fascists than anything, even if you didnt know it yet.
how about i do WTF i want? you’re not the judge of what works and what doesn’t. please. bookmark this comment. come back to me in a year and prove how i was wrong. the proof is in the pudding, pacifist.
how about i do WTF i want? you’re not the judge of what works and what doesn’t.
Says the person judging what other people do, and what works and what doesn’t.
Can you even read? I said your type of action is what will result in protests being ineffective at uniting the people that will fight against fascism.
People failing to remove fascism a year from now will only prove me right if you still decide to continue what you’re doing. To prove your point, you would need to join up with the protest and stop trying to kill it in its infancy and still fail to remove fascism.
So go ahead and continue what you’re doing and you might prove me right.
if the people don’t have the spine for what it takes, then it’s hopeless.
have you ever considered that a lot of these people are going to feel defeated after they waste their time protesting and nothing gets accomplished? there’s no guarantee that getting a bunch of people together for feelgood BS leads to more effective resistance. this is the same as saying “just go to college and follow your dreams and everything will magically work out”. it’s a lie. people need to understand where western civilization is at.
Obeying in advance, yikes fucking pathetic.
There’s no actual disobedience in going to a protest. It’s completely permitted and allowed as long as the protesters don’t actually do anything. It’s a means of directing discontent into a dead end.
It’s a means of starting something meaningful and impactful.
Wonderful, dear US friends!
A powerful sign against all the hatred and corruption that Trump and his henchmen stand for.
I think large demonstrations like this are incredibly important, especially nowadays, because the manipulation in social media and the traditional media can so easily give the false impression that a majority would share the inhumane ideology of this regime.
For the tens of thousands on the streets, it is obvious how many decent people there actually are.
Trump and his opinion makers can do little about this - apart from their usual ridiculous conspiracy theories around Soros and other such Bogus. Because not even these unscrupulous fascists can (yet) dare to stop thousands and thousands of people from demonstrating, or even have them all arrested.
Good luck and all the best from Europe!
Thank you; finally someone from Europe that sees Americans are struggling to fight. Over there you’re unlikely to see the whole picture about what’s going on. I understand that Europeans are mad and I don’t blame them, but I wish more Europeans understood that division is exactly what the powers want and your media is likely being manipulated as well, albeit to perhaps a much lesser degree, in order to sow that division.
In our city there’s been a march since Friday. Can’t find any non local news reporting on it.
Yes, it’s scandalous, but that’s why the people on the street are so important, because sooner or later you can no longer overlook them as they are a fact of life in the real world - and then it becomes clear how one-sided the media coverage is.
It is not tens of thousands.
D.C alone has an estimated 100.000 people marching.
Nationwide the number is believed to be 5 million, i read somewhere.
Yes, all the better
Everywhere except the past… where we fucking needed it.
Most people do not care about (and do not want to care about) anything under the broad topic of “politics”.
If you try to force them to care, they will punish you. That’s what we’re seeing, but it’s also why it’s so damn hard to stir people to action before things go wrong.
I could not agree more
It’d be nice if all of these protesters had bothered to vote and not with protest votes.
What makes you think they didn’t?
75 million people voted for Harris. We likely won’t know the count of today’s protests, but I feel safe saying it was far fewer than 75 million.
The estimate was 5 million people across 1300 cities.
A lot of people complaining about these protests seem to think that level of coordinated protesting isn’t impressive.
Those numbers alone should make anyone stop and think about what’s going on.
It’s going to get bigger as people’s 401Ks evaporate.
In the US system it doesn’t matter how you vote except in like 7 states.
Well, that wouldn’t be true if everyone voted, but it does bring up the point that winner take all is just a bad representative system.
There is no such thing as a good “representative” system.
But there are far far better systems.
I think these people are the ones to have voted.
“proper action wasn’t taken in the past therfore I won’t accept any action being taken in the future.”
More astroturfing
Oh look, another liberal blaming eveybody and anybody except the traish-tier Democrat platform/candidate.
Hey if they had 4 more years they sure would have at least thought about punishing the insurrections.
It would be nice if there had been non-fascist duopoly candidates to vote for. But here we are.
Let’s not forget that there are more than two choices. I understand there is certainly a duopoly, but that only continues as long as we continue voting for only one or the other.
These protests need to start happening outside of these reps’ offices.
And federal buildings in democratic areas… unfortunately status quo democrats aren’t going to be the champions of this - they will just use it to fund raise more
Reps need to be taking part in the protests. Preferably Korean-style.
There were multiple US House Representatives as the protest in DC on Saturday. Several spoke on the stage and others were out in the crowd.
You mean the US representatives that won’t set term limits? The US representatives that won’t vote to outlaw insider trading? The US representatives who own businesses that benefit from their legislation? Those people? Just gotta be clear here. Because I’m feeling a little uncertain about their loyalties at the moment. At least towards their voters… To their donors, I’m rock solid on where they owe their fealty.
AOC ain’t that sorry
AOC is another corporate puppet. It’s shocking how tossing her on TikTok was all it took for Dems to sell her to Zoomers.
Literally grassroots funded but okay schmuck
Okay less than a day old account with an adjective_noun username. Cause you’re argument is surely being made in good faith lol
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Because they have better things to do? You are the one making a claim without evidence, how is AOC a corporate puppet? You have to explain, not them.
Literally grassroots funded.
You’re the one making claims lol. I’m not going to waste my time arguing with someone paid to spread disinformation. Or maybe you volunteer. I’ve got not idea. Either way, since you made the claim, the burden of proof falls on you. We’ll wait.
Get outta here with that bullshit
But you have nothing to refute any of it. Lol.
Term limits(for congress) aren’t an issue. It’s outright good to have a portion of reps with institutional knowledge on how to run a government, and extremely helpful in diplomacy with other countries as well.
Age limits are the real issue to push, because geriatric fucks being in charge is the real danger.
Everything else, I wholly and completely agree with you on
I would prefer a slightly incompetent but well meaning person to lead, than someone malicious and skilled. With the former, they will be willing to acknowledge their mistakes or what people want, while the latter would play shell games while pocketing the riches of the people.
Term and age limits are needed, so that evil people cannot build a nest made out of the government. What we lose in raw efficiency, we regain from a lack of corruption.
Glad we have ol Gymboree Jordan and Louie Gomert there as bulwarks of diplomacy.
God that photo goes hard on so many levels
*houses
They just don’t go to their offices or close them or ban protests.
I saw someone call for protesting on golf courses, might be even better.
I’m so happy to see this, finally some good news from the us.
So is Trump and his entire admin stepping down then?
But hopefully soon
You do understand mass movements don’t affect change in 48 hours, generally. Not from start to finish.
I hope the US is building towards a general strike against Trump et al
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5+ million in attendance. A whopping 1.5% of the population.
In Seattle it was closer to 3.3%, which is kind of insane.
I just watched a video from one f the big networks. They had originally done a story about the protest in Boston talking about 10,000-30,000 strong, despite organizers estimating much higher. This video revised attendance in Boston to 100,000
It’s really sad how domesticated the American people have become.
Any of these 1000+ protests could have used their manpower in one day to remove everyone close to Trump.
Instead we will keep marching and holding signs while everything gets worse and our corporate leaders tell us to wave the signs higher…
How the hell are you suggesting that a single group of 10,000 to 100,000 people can “use their manpower in one day to remove everyone close to Trump”?? Are you saying that the January insurrections were a good idea? The tough part you’re not considering is that to preserve (what’s left) of democracy we need to continue abiding by its principles as frustrating as it might sound. We need democracy intact after this is all over. One could almost infer that your comment seeks to invite violence.
“A body remains at rest, or in motion at a constant speed in a straight line, unless it is acted upon by a force.”
I’m not sure you understand how protests work.
So once you garner massive support do nothing meaningful to change things, that’s the right way to protest the government according to the government.
This is what I mean by domesticated
If you want a group of people to storm the halls of office and seize power by force you’re talking about a coup.
In this case, the demonstration of dissatisfaction by so many people is meaningful.
That “feeling” needs to build to a cacophony that republicans just can not ignore. The whole country (aside from perhaps a few loyalists) needs to be in agreement that the republicans are not fit to govern.
I thought a coup was when you placed loyalists in all positions of power, you control the news, and declare yourself president for life.
Huh well guess that wasn’t a coup and there’s no problem.
War is peace Freedom is slavery
Taking your most recent comments into account. You’re the antithesis of your username.
If we removed him by force with only something like 1.5% of the population on board, we’d have kicked off a civil war we could not win. Right now, it’s more important to use protest as an outreach tool to get more of the population to support change.
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The Irish did pretty well against such odds.
Ireland is still divided
More than a few Brits had to depart this world to do that though, yeah?
A lot of Irish did too. The country is still divided, the violence that was enacted also enabled all sorts of tertiary problems as well. Running drugs to buy guns, bomb makers being poisoned by the components of the bombs. Innocent Irish families dying from bombs being set to the wrong time. Torture, maming and killing of Irish who refused to get involved.
And again, Ireland is still divided.
Don’t get me wrong, British policy has killed more Irish than the IRA ever did, but it wasn’t some happy fucking holidays to the coast to gun down some black and tans. It was decades of terror and oppression. Not something to be bandied about online from a keyboard because you’re frustrated that Amerikkka is now showing the true nature of it’s system in place.
The IRA’s only mistake was that they stopped planting bombs to take out the Imperialists. They were good guys fighting an evil foreign oppressor; of course things wouldn’t be sunshine and rainbows all the time. It’s just as justified as the Revolutionary War.
Think about it: Would you rather take some evil people with you to the Great Beyond, or would you like some evil people to suck away all your savings as you die a slow death?
I’m pretty sure you’re not Irish, you don’t know anyone Irish, and you have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.
The IRA has no current analogue in the US. The IRA devolved into a criminal organization that terrorized the Irish just as much as the occupying brits.
Your accelerationist language and complete lack of nuance in your take tells me that you’re just looking for outrage. There are no good or bad guys. This isn’t a movie.
I wish you good luck and better mental health in the future. They say vitamin D supplements can help if you’re not getting enough sunshine wherever you are.
Well the civil war wouldn’t be 98.5% vs 1.5%. I reckon it would be fairly even, maybe even a bit more on the anti-Trump side, despite the fact that some people might not agree with violence. If forced to pick sides, I reckon most will stay on the same side of the political spectrum they’re already on.
However
I agree that civil war should be avoided. But at the same time I recognize some amount of violence may be required in the end, to have a true “liberation day” for Americans. Trump’s not stepping down as long as he’s alive and free.
No, you need to consider the National Guard and all armed forces in the US and Abroad.
IF there is a civil war it’s not going to be a bunch of citizens armed with AR pattern rifles shooting at the soldiers. It would be Palintir finding the communication hubs of any resistance fighters and a drone strike at the center of it, with a platoon of Marines coming in to clean up and post security. The Army close behind to go through and secure any surrounding structures and setup a FOB to prevent further insurrection.
It will be factions of the military fighting itself, and it would be devastating. Think Gaza but across two million square miles.
Selective destruction of establishments is next guys, keep it up!
LMFAO 5 million white old ass, non ethnically/racially diverse boomers protesting against their 401ks losing value doing a cosplay competition 🤣
That’s the opposition? Rich white old men?
That’s a tiny part of it but mostly it’s the disrespect for the world, a move towards economic isolationism and the dismantling of a once great superpower. All of these things break a society.
You seem happy about the boomer generation suffering and find it funny do you? That is the wacky internet for you. Maybe you are just being engineered by the algorithms and you have no choice? who knows anymore?
One for all and all for one, regardless of what generational group you fall under.
The function of accounts like the one you are replying to is to encourage cynicism and inaction among otherwise anti-fascist people.
Failing that, they will try to exhaust you with “debate”.
I personally saw thousands of young and middle aged folk at my local protests including POC, in higher concentration than old people. not sure what you’re talking about but it isn’t representative
I really don’t like the amount of violence being suggested here. Trump needs to be removed but a lot of you are suggesting to support violent fantasies.
By the way that’s a very strong tactic be terrifically Republicans to make the left look unhinged. And they’re correct. It will turn a lot of people against you. Most are not violent people.
Same here. The peaceful inclusive protest in Sackets Harbor, NY over the weekend worked. The immigrant children and their mother are being returned from Texas as I type this. Don’t give Trumpy any room to paint the left as unhinged.
The point of making the ‘left’, or any opponent, look unhinged is to pressure them into submission. The reason why this works very well is because your media is complicit in amplifying any wrongdoings by any opponents and twisting the perception.
i mean, check out protests in Europe and how they’re framed by their media. Even your Vietnam war protests back in the day; your media started banging on about them being drug users and layabouts to make dismissing their cause much easier.
I just think Americans have lost a lot of people power if you have to protest while walking on eggshells. Best thing to combat it is to have a conversation with everyone. Get people chatting face to face rather than having the TV spout nonsense at them.
There’s one of the worst ways in modern times to get any message across. It’s like suggesting we use carrier pigeons to communicate on a battlefield.
The Internet exists. Hey did the Republicans protest in the streets to get their message across?
I didn’t see that yet every single person I know could reiterate almost all their talking points. If protests were stuff an effective medium for creating supporting and spreading a cause, how did they accomplish it without it.
Republicans hired think tanks. Same way the cigarette company did you delay laws. Same way energy companies did to delay and sew distrust on climate change.
The left for all the geniuses they say they are have not adapted to the modern world. Imagine if every single person at these protests stayed home instead and shit posted on every platform they could. That’s how you get messages out in modern times. You use the algorithms. You create content. You boost signals.
What you do not do is drag people into the streets banging pots. It’s not the 1960s
Everyone is online. You need people burying their signals and amplifying our own. You need memes. You need everyone to force their hand. The fucked up thing is they have such entrenched culture that you’d think it’s obvious where to apply pressure. It’s not calling them a Nazi. It’s culture jamming our society so we associate trucks with femininity. They are more sensitive than ever and it should be easy to find their soft spots. Can’t hit it from the middle of the road
What you do not do is drag people into the streets banging pots. It’s not the 1960s
Are you sure? I’m pretty confident that’s what happened on the weekend.
Also, relying on technology owned and controlled by the billionaire class is a bit rich…
Anyway, I don’t want to antagonise you. Just don’t discount the traditional methods of communication thinking it’s ineffective. In a world where privacy is almost non-existent and you’re constantly being monitored, going analogue is one of the best tactics there is.
Are you sure? I’m pretty confident that’s what happened on the weekend.
My point is it isn’t effective. What is the result as of today, tomorrow, a week from now. What has it accomplished. What will it accomplish. And as I said, if the goal is to spread awareness about an issue than let’s measure this against another method like shit posting. Which was my point about governments and think tanks who get paid to spread awareness. These groups are not doing protest, they create engagement online and in media. There’s a reason for it.
Also, relying on technology owned and controlled by the billionaire class is a bit rich…
Why? What will happen. How is that any different than relying on the city, the state and the government to not just beat your head in and arrest anything. If anything protests seem to benefit the other side when the other side are authoritarian. It lets them see who the leaders are and knee cap them.
Anyway, I don’t want to antagonise you. Just don’t discount the traditional methods of communication thinking it’s ineffective. In a world where privacy is almost non-existent and you’re constantly being monitored, going analogue is one of the best tactics there is.
I am an antagonist but not trying to troll. I just don’t see value in protests as they exist today. I think protests are a solved game. I believe police and authorities have such an upper hand that they prefer people to protest. The authorities ability to organize, coordinate and apply force is greater than the protestors. It’s a wasted effort on my books. The risk to reward is unbalanced and we need to adapt to modern times.
“There be no shelter here, the frontline is everywhere.” - Rage Against the Machine
