I’m shocked that I haven’t seen one protest yet. Is the media suppressing them? If there aren’t any, why?
Because protests don’t do shit. There were mass protests over police brutality in 2020. Didn’t do shit and the right wing media reaction arguably helped kill off police reform legislation that was in progress before the protests.
The reason protests from the left don’t do shit is because the most popular media is controlled by Maga. The top social media network for news, the top podcast, and the top cable TV news are all outright maga propaganda. A narrative can arise without them, but they will determine what happens to it. So last time, the protests arose due to George Floyd, but the right wing media turned it into a narrative about lawless riots, using exaggeration and fake images.
See also Palestine protests.
Basically, the left is fucked in the US until something changes in the media so there’s no point in trying.
Sadly, this is the correct answer. Protests really only look effective on paper, (or social media) however, gathering in protest is only ever going to work if those they protesting against, actually care to listen with an open mind.
There is no way the current administration has any plans to listen to anyone that disagrees with their attempts to personally own America.
protests represent the threat of violence. the threat went away and the rulers stopped listening.
I think the nice thing about a protest is that it’s a show of power, strength, and unity. It sends a message to those on the outside that there is a number of people who believe in a common goal. And really, the message is one all Americans can pretty much agree on and that’s trickle down isn’t trickling and corporate profits are soaring.
The longer the protests, the worse taxes become from tariffs, the more cuts they make to social services, the more people could snowball this into a movement.
The power of protests are People.
Again, it really looks good on paper. In practice- it does little.
Tell that to pretty much every rights movement in the history of our species. Apes strong together.
Here lies the problem. People think that because something once worked- it’ll always work.
Perhaps we should use swords the next time we’re at war? I mean, they were very effective in the 1300’s, right?
Protests don’t work anymore. We’re way beyond anyone listening to gathered crowds.
Because protests don’t do shit. There were mass protests over police brutality in 2020.
I get why you feel that way, but it’s just not true.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_police_reforms_related_to_the_George_Floyd_protests
Because protests don’t do shit.
Occupy Wall Street had an impact.
This is not true, protests have a measurable impact and the defeatist nonsense of “there’s no point in trying” is exactly what enemies of democracy want.
Because the Americans don’t know how to protest.
To a Frenchman a protest is storming and taking control of the representation of authority in the country.
To a Greek a protest is filling the streets of many cities throughout the country with hundreds of thousands of people.
To an American a protest involves standing in a square by the few hundreds, holding signs with semi-sarcastic or passive aggressive messages written on them.
Such ferocity.
Eh, I feel like every day there’s a new story of Tesla’s being torched. That’s a pretty directed and forceful form of protest that gets no credit.
Also, it’s not like America never has large scale protests. Hundreds of thousands of people fill the National Mall pretty regularly, skimming Wikipedia I counted 14+ since 1950 of over 200,000.
Just 5 years ago 15m-26m people participated in some especially roudy protests across all 50 states, but no credit for that either.
Large protests that get even slightly out of line in the USA usually end with:
- well armed, paramilitary police violently dispersing everyone
- the CIA assassinating protest leaders
- and/or the 6 media conglomerates suppressing coverage at the behest of the ~15 people that own them
If you’re criticizing Americans for anything, it should be for their response to that and not their ability to organize and orchestrate protests.
protest is storming and taking control of the representation of authority in the country.
Jan 6. 2021… just the other side protesting though.
Yeah, I hope every American here realizes that the lunatics behind Jan 6 are more effective protesters than they are.
J6 was an astroturfed operation by the current dictator in charge. We currently have several grassroots protests around the country being suppressed, and have a long history of protesting and rioting for civil rights in this country.
You clearly get your news from corporate media or else you’d be aware of this.
Jan 6 had a lot of money behind it. People fundamentally do not understand how hamstrung leftists groups in the U.S. are. Yeah, the people who received millions of dollars were able to charter busses to bring people to the capitol, and the people who are receiving tens of dollars are barely able to have a media presence. No shit.
It’d be really cool if maybe some of the people who wanted Americans to be doing more would actually put their money where there mouth is and work to get large donation efforts going towards leftist groups in the U.S. The way I see it, you can start funding partisans here now, or you can start doing it after Trump tries to invade/destabilize whatever country you’re living in.
Yeah, insurrection is a form of protest, I guess.
I’m pretty shocked by this as well.
I always thought that America was on the ready to stand up against fascism and tyranny.
I guess they aren’t.
Many of those same people simply weren’t equipped for the media blitz of the 21st century. Commerical Social Media has most of them on a string.
Because a lot of Americans think he is the warrior fighting the evil gub’ment
The people who were super vocal about stockpiling guns to “stand up to tyranny” dont think this is tyranny. They are actively cheering for it.
They think tyranny is the government passing laws that amount to “don’t be a dick”. They hate that. To them “freedom” means being selfish, obnoxious, and racist to their hearts content, and Trump has finally given them permission to do so. That’s why they cheer him.
Remember, these are just simple people of the land. The common clay of the new west. You know, morons.
Low density and car based infrastructure neuters protests. I usually work from home but I had jury duty a few weeks ago in the courthouse in my downtown area. There were several protests daily the entire time I was there.
Because it turns out they were just little afraid bitches the whole time. Russians in waiting. Little goblins waiting for an overlord.
Yes. The media is suppressing them. See c/50501
Explain this?
50501 refers to “Fifty States, Fifty Protests, One Movement” (originally “One Day”). While some states have more presence than others, it has 50 chapters for the 50 states.
I don’t think there’s as much presence on Lemmy, but lots of media gets posted to Reddit at https://www.reddit.com/r/50501/.
Their website also links to social media accounts covering more of it: https://www.fiftyfifty.one/
There have been protests in every single state for awhile now. At least that is what I have heard through the grapevine. I’m Danish so I haven’t seen the protests with my own two eyes, but I have seen pictures, read posts and talked to Americans who are out protesting. From what I have been told, it is unheard of that there are protests for the same cause in all 50 states at the same time. It is historic, but I’m not surprised that the greatest president who ever lived wouldn’t want that information to slip out in the media. It would hurt his fee-fees bigly.
Next Saturday is a massive country wide protest at 500 Tesla dealerships and charging stations all across the country. I’m hoping that’s too hard for the media to hide.
And then there’s another massive protest on April 5th! Get your friends and come out, we need everyone who isn’t willing to live under authoritarianism!
I am!!!
Yeah all 50 states is crazy. New York and Cali have enough people to get a protest going at the drop of a pin.
Texas has Austin, you get protests there. East coast cities, Chicago, you can get protests.
But there are dozens of states that just don’t have that kind of energy or population density, but they do now.
Maybe you just aren’t where it’s happening?
“Protesters in Philadelphia and at state capitols in California, Minnesota, Michigan, Texas, Wisconsin, Indiana and beyond waved signs denouncing President Donald Trump; billionaire Elon Musk, the leader of Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency; and Project 2025, a hard-right playbook for American government and society.”
Sorry but there are like 100 people at each protest. There should be a million marching through Washington… What are we talking about here
Getting a million people to Washington D.C. is a tall order when places like CA, OR, WA are 3,000 miles away, plus people have to, you know, work and stuff.
Yes I hear this all the time. So what you are saying is that 1)people in Europe don’t have jobs and 2)the population density in us is low. Regarding 2) yes it is lower in the US however Washington dc and surrounding area (maybe 2h drive by car or so) have several million inhabitants. Let’s assume 5, if only 1% of them are going we would be talking about at least 50.000 people joining a protest. I don’t have seen any reports about that, are those just not reported?
I guess I’m just shocked that they only waved signs. In France, the guillotine would have been out. Here in Canada we entirely shut down our capital for months, and both for way less. When will the real protests start?
In the US, protests are largely performative. People want to make a show of it do they can say “Look, I did something!” even if they’re doing nothing. They’ll break their own arms patting themselves on the back.
I live in Portland which is protest central. We had 100 days of Black Lives Matter protests which meant and did nothing as the city largely agreed with the sentiment.
You want a protest that matters? You take it where the action is happening. In the case of Trump, you can set EVERY Tesla dealer on fire, it means nothing.
Take that shit to D.C. and shut that city down for 100 days? Assuming the Feds don’t kill everyone, that’s a protest that would matter.
That’s a big “assuming.” It wouldn’t be treated like Jan 6, those were his friends.
Trump would order them to be squashed and that could easily trigger a civil war.
Take that shit to D.C. and shut that city down for 100 days? Assuming the Feds don’t kill everyone, that’s a protest that would matter.
for an example of this, see the March on Washington during the civil rights movement of the 1960s
Yup!
I’m not a historian, but my guess is that we have lived too many generations without major political incident; the kind you’re supposed to make heads roll over.
We’ve been indoctrinated since birth to blindly love our country, to mind what we say; we have seen other countries and their political unrest, and we ignorantly convinced ourselves that it will never be like that here.
And despite the cop out response of “we vOtEd fOr it”, otherwise good, hardworking Americans were lied to by their friends, family, church, and beloved government for so long that they can’t know any better.
Make no mistake, we fucked up and let our hubris get the better of us. I hope we can see the error of our ways and fight back before it really is too late.
I’m not a historian, but my guess is that we have lived too many generations without major political incident; the kind you’re supposed to make heads roll over.
Really though? Just off the top of my head:
Eisenhower to Nixon
- Vietnam
JFK
- Rigged elections in Illinois with aid of the mafia.
- Bay of Pigs
Nixon
- Watergate
- Being Richard Nixon
Reagan
- Illegal invasion of Grenada
- Iran-Contra
Clinton
- Executing a developmentally-challenged man as a campaign stunt.
- Lewinsky Affair
- Many rape allegations over decades
- Whitewater
Bush II
- Illegal invasion of Iraq
Obama
- Bugging of Merkel’s phone
Trump
- Everything
Biden
- Medical incapacity
I’m surprised Nixon gets: “being Richard Nixon” but Reagan doesn’t get: “being the sack of shit that took the massive clear steps to destroy your country through corruption”
How the fuck did they let Reaganomics slide?
There’s that old thought experiment on who someone would take out of time travel existed. I used to think that Hitler would be a good target. However, seeing how many of the current issues started because of something Reagan gutted, reduced, or schemed to disrupt or remove makes him my new target. So much of our current shituation can be directly tied back to Reagan.
Many of your examples are just the US fucking up the lives of citizens in other countries. The average American at home does not give a fuck about the people being murdered by his government, he isn’t going to skip a day of work to protest against that. I think maybe you are forgetting how much Americans loved the idea of invading Iraq, for instance. It took a long time for support to decrease, and even then it was only to like 50/50 levels. Americans weren’t the ones protesting against that war, it was the rest of the world who saw it for what it was. When it comes to foreign affairs the American citizen has consistently been blinded by a mixture of patriotism, ignorance and the myth of American exceptionalism.
You gotta remember. The majority of voters wanted this. Trump won the popular vote. He still has almost a 50% approval. Half of Americans are good with what’s happening. Let that sink in.
Half of Americans who cared/knew enough to vote.
Reminder that voter turnout was still only 63.7%. Half of voters didn’t vote for Trump, half of that 63.7% did. Still way too fucking many, but it’s not half of the US.
The half that didn’t vote are OK with other people deciding for them.
Great point, there are at least 77,284,118 people who are OK with the current state of affairs.
And that 63.7% is of eligible voters. The disenfranchised, teenagers, and noncitizens aren’t counted.
If you don’t bother to vote, you’re not a voter.
This is the part that made me give up. No amount of anything will make up for the fact that roughly 53% of voters wanted this, which is probably like 40% of the country. A country which has like 3.5 billionish people, and 40% want racism. They want to support the wealth gap because they’re too dumb to understand they’ll never be on the other side of the gap, and this is just renforcing it. They’re more than happy to hurt themselves if it means the OTHER people get dragged down with them. Which just makes them a tool for the rich to use the poor to destroy the poor.
We’re alienating our allys, we’re destroying our country. We’re destroying the global economy, and this is just the start. The next 4 years this asshole gets to sit on his throne, and KNOW he’ll face no consequences. He’ll face no reprecussions for his actions for him and his little asshole buddies.
I’m hurt. I’m tired. I’m in pain. I have no idea if I even HAVE medicaide anymore. They say it’s not cut off, but it was supposed to get cut off Feb 28th because of lack of state funding. I think the state itself doesn’t know. But worst of all, I have no hope. I have no logical plan for what comes next to work towards making a better tomorrow. Yesterday sucked. Today sucks. Tomorrow will suck by all indications. The GOP at this point are actively trying to destroy this country. I’m not proud to be american. I’m ashamed. I’m tired of appologizing to others for existing. And right now, if Canada decided to just atomic bomb us, I’d understand. Go ahead Canada. Take us out. We deserve it.
I don’t disagree with what you said but there’s not 3.5 billion people in the US. There’s like 340 million.
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Are we really comparing the French Revolution and the annoying-ass, snowflake trucker protest?
if you haven’t seeb the news, some protestors and professors have been taken captive by ICE in the US and that’s had a chilling effect. however, that also builds some tension - as soon as some major property destruction breaks out and it becomes obvious that ICE can’t disappear them all, people will be bringing police precincts and declaring autonomous zones again like they did in the BLM protests (did your news sources report those?)
Americans are notoriously terrible at protesting. I was in high school in the '00s and our American history textbook had a sidebar about the 1999 Seattle WTO protests. The bit that stuck with me: a French dignitary interviewed on the scene was unconcerned about the protesters. He pointed to an untouched BMW (or similar luxury car, I forget the exact make). “In Paris,” he said, “That car would be burning.”
We don’t have the level of social safety nets that France does to allow people the freedom to pretest without starving or becoming homeless. It is by design. They keep everyone just on the verge of poverty so nobody can afford to be disruptive.
Thr burning down of tesla cars and dealerships don’t happen during the protests so they have no boogeyman to give yet. Once the protests turn violent, which I have no doubt they will eventually if they keep getting ignored, thr media will be quick to pain all protestors as bad and ask “why didn’t they try peacefully protesting?”
I think this is a factor of your media echo chamber. I’ve personally attended protests nearly every week since January. I’m going to one tomorrow. They are all over my news feeds.
Chicago has had a few. In particular at the protest for science there was a dude in a trump in diapers blow up costume.
I was hoping those million women in knitted pink hats would turn out again and do the heavy lifting, but they were busy, I guess.
35k in Denver today
It’s going to take a unifying event that is unifyingly abhorrent.
Until that show drops, no movement will take enough momentum with it.
Wait until a Mayors daughter gets sent to gitmo for protesting at college. Wait until the social security checks bounce. Wait until the next viral George Floyd police killing.
The tension is simmering.
I think that the thing that made the protests for George Floyd and Covid policies so widespread was people were out of work. The capitalist system has done a very good job of binding us to our jobs. we need a change that will put large amounts of people on the streets with little to lose. An economic collapse might do it.
this is the classic Rosa Luxemburg vs Lenin dichotomy of revolutionary spontaneity vs vanguardism. do we organize, wait for the opportune moment, both?
I’ve been posting and reposting my little “Eggsecution” short story everywhere I see eggs come up in politics.
I’m hoping the egg economy goes tits up, we have the great American egg famine, and then once rid of the impending bird flu pandemic, egg economy goes the other way, and the masses just toss Donnie and Elmo into a concrete pit and pelt the. with eggs until they’re drowning in broke shells and egg yolk.
“Eggs. Eggs. Eggs.”
to the bloated sun we want to slice open and yolk all over the village
There are regular protests of thousands of people all across the country, but it never hits top headlines. There aren’t nearly as many as there should be, but we’re largely a broken people, a collective beaten dog cowed in the corner. We’re burnt out. Literally every direction we turn, things are falling apart. The working class is almost entirely one or two paychecks from homelessness. Minimum wage hasn’t increased in 15 years despite year after year of record earnings and productivity. A third of the country genuinely believes a rapist conman is their literal biblical savior.
We’re fucking tired, man.
