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TIL No Kings Protests were the 3rd Largest in US History
(en.wikipedia.org)
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this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2025
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Protests aren't about the Political and Money "elites" as you put it because they don't care no matter what.
You think they'd give a shit if what is happening in LA is happening everywhere? They're like cockroaches that will skitter into hiding until it's safe to come out and monopolize on the ruin.
Protests are about galvanizing support and building unity among the populace. The US has been so divided for so long and that division has been manipulated and grown to benefits those "elites".
I do think a general strike may be effective but it's unrealistic. A nationwide general strike would require massive financial and material support. Where will that come from?
They work on a smaller, union scale because they're supported by the union and outside supporters that are not on strike. They work in other countries that have the social programs in place to support the people which is something the US does not have.
I keep seeing this repeated comparison to France but let's look at that. France is a country a little smaller than the state of Texas with an adult population only slightly more than the total population of California.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's a little easier to coordinate a general strike in a country with 1/6 the population of the US spread across an area 1/15 the size of the US.
Protests in the US are getting bigger and more widespread but it's like a slow wave, it takes time to build.
Look, it can totally seen how the protests give hope to others by showing them that "they're far from alone in their concerns" and doing so in a way which is independent of mainstream political parties (which is good, since in my experience when political parties capture protests, they use such movements for their own personal good, in the process weakening the original movement).
In fact I totally approve of the protests and (even though I'm not American) I'm happy with just how big they were because maybe American has enough good people to make it a better country in the World stage (plus, frankly, I have some American acquaintances from minorities and don't want to see them suffer).
What I fear is that people here in Lemmy are crazily over-celebrating the protest as some kind of ending in itself when it's at best a beginning, and not even the beginning of the end but the beginning of the beginning.
If these protests aren't leveraged to organize grassroots movements to start doing things like guerrilla (in the marketing sense, rather than violent sense) campaigns to oust the crooked politicians no matter what their party is and weaken the influence of Money in politics, they're worthless, same as the George Floyd protests ended up being worthless because they didn't led to any organized follow through to force politicians to restructure policing in America.
So my point is that people need to keep their eye on the long term solution for America's problems, and that doesn't stop with kicking Trump out, it requires a far deeper cleanup of the American political system and addressing the problems of common Americans so that another guy like Trump (or, more likely, worse) doesn't get eventually get in power after Trump is out.
Trump is not the disease, he's a symptom, so merely Trump out isn't going to cure it.
Denigrating the effort to date doesn't do anything to further your point. Instead it serves to quell support and push a negative outlook and view of protesting.
Offering support, encouragement and advocating for sustained effort would.
You mentioned the George Floyd protests and said, in relation to that, "merelly coming out and walking for a bit in your own time while holding a board up doesn’t seem to achieve anything" but that's not true.
During and immediately after George Floyd the protest effected a lot of change but then the protests stopped, complacency set in.
No, the cure is sustained effort. The problems in the US have been building and evolving for decades, if not longer, and they'll take at least that long to get a handle on.
Notice the merelly starting the very sentence sentence you quote from me about the George Floyd protests.
The pigs are still often holding people down by putting their knee on that person's neck, so how exactly has the largest demonstration in America changed anything?!
Again, my point is that demonstrations have to be more than walking whilst holding a board up - at the very least they have to be opportunities to get contacts from other people with a view of joining grassroots groups for change.
If all that people do is walk and shout with lots of other people and then at the end of it go home with a feeling of achievement and do nothing further, all you get out of it is what you got with the George Floyd ones - empty promises from politicians and no actual change - when what all those millions of American should have gotten was a restructuring of policing in the US.
People here are way over-celebrating something which means very little unless we see that it has led to many following it with getting involved in politics and/or grassroots movements - it's premature and it makes me suspect that for many who participated this one demonstration was it and they aren't following it through with next steps.
Assuming you meant merelly as merely I saw it but your claim that no change occurred is wrong. The change that did occur was unsustained because people in the US got complacent. They protested and cared for a while but then they stopped paying attention and things started back the way the were, now worse in some areas.
Notice how I said sustained effort? The thing that didn't happen after George Floyd.
"Do nothing further"? You mean further than the protests 2 days ago that set record numbers? Or the ones that have been ongoing every weekend for months? That have been building and increasing to the No Kings day protest? Is that the do nothing further you're referring to?
Are you in regular contact with the majority of the US population that you can say that hasn't been happening? I'm pretty sure the growing numbers of protesters is people getting "involved in politics and/or grassroots movements".
Oh, you're predicting the future 48 hours post protest. This is just the same bullshit "your protesting isn't good enough" sentiment everywhere else on Lemmy repackaged and with more words.
I think we're talking past each other here and we agree on objectives, just not on methods.
In response to public opinion outcry, Politicians will first make empty promises, then superficial changes which are easily reversible, and only beyond that actual structural changes which are hard to reverse hence are more permanent.
The latter ones is what I meant before with "permanent". What politicians did in response to the George Floyd demonstrations was all the way up to superficial changes, but not structural changes, hence it didn't take long for things to go back to roughly the way they were, and the underlying problem of police violence in the US of which the George Floyd killing was a symptom, is now the same or even worse.
The only peaceful march kind of demonstrations (so, not things like strikes) which I know of were politicians went all the way to structural changes are the kind which lasted months (and at times they weren't actually peaceful), and it's very hard for people to sustain that without organizing.
This demonstration, on the other hand, lasted a single day. I have never heard of any demonstration that lasted a single day and changed anything in a sustained way ever anywhere in the World. I'll be happy if you find me an example to prove me wrong (as that means there's hope).
I think we both agree on the need for sustained pressure and for people not to grow complacent, and as I see it that means that people have to get involved in grassroots efforts and civil society groups to force that change and keep up the pressure until the change is structural and hence deep and near-irreversible. Merely going to a one-day demonstration won't achieve sustained change, but if it acts as a step to joining said grassroots efforts and civil-society groups that keep working well beyond that demonstration then it's a means to an end.
My point is that loudly celebrating a single day peaceful demonstration without the caveat that "it must be a start not and end", risk making many if not most feel "mission accomplished", become complacent and not do anything further, exactly the opposite of your objective of "sustained push for change were people do not grow complacent".
As I see it, if you want the people to keep on pushing there should be a "what next" after the "good job everybody" in the celebrating of this demonstration, but that's not what I see in the countless threads here in Lemmy: all I see is people celebrating it as if "showing Trump he's not liked" was the whole objective of the thing and it was achieved by this demonstration, as if "showing Trump he's not liked" is anywhere close to enough to achieve a structural change of American politics.
If people were indeed getting into the kind of organizations that can deliver the sustained effort both of us think is required, we would be seeing "this is just the start" kind of statements, but I haven't seen any yet and this together with the historical track record of peaceful demonstrations in US leads me to believe this one isn't a beginning of something more, just a one-off.
Your sample size is Lemmy. No issue there, definitely representative of the US and its population as a whole.
Your premise is flawed and the Occupy movement demonstrates it. 5 years of sustained protesting to not achieve the kind of change you seem to expect to see.
Your under the misconception the sustained non-stop protesting is equivalent to sustained action and activism. I've already covered this and I'm not going to go over it again, I'll just copy and paste what I already wrote:
Non-stop protesting has the same hurdle as a nationwide general strike and is just as unrealistic, especially considering how long it would have to last.
Again, you're just repackaging the same bullshit sentiment as OP and all over everywhere else on Lemmy.
I'm not going to engage you any further as your agenda seems to be to argue in opposition of the movement occurring in the US.