Starting soon folks, get ready!
I have attended protests and will do so again, but I have no illusions that the fascists will simply ignore them. This may build up more frustration from people, but the sooner we can plan a general strike the better. The nazi ticks are just burrowing deeper.
The protests by themselves are certainly inadequate, despite the impressive turnout. What makes the difference is what we do with them. Last time I went out, I distributed statements, made contacts and even received some donations. People are seeking out fighting perspectives. They need organization and leadership.
What we need is for someone to openly share addresses of the billionaires homes and start protesting there. That’s the only way we can negatively effect them. Make them scared to be comfortable in their own homes.
June “No Kings” saw the largest single day protests in US history. This is a healthy response by the population. We do absolutely need to move beyond the limits of street protests, and onto the development of a mass strike movement; however, the fact that masses of people are willing to go out and protest on a largely spontaneous basis is significant. What is needed is clear revolutionary political perspective. When this understanding grips the masses, particularly the working class, the movement will take on an explosivly historic significance.
I don’t feel like it’s ever going to progress past this though. It only gets this far because it’s as convenient as possible. The no kings protest emptied out after only a couple hours last time I expect the same here no one commits any amount of sacrifice.
I think this sort of pessimism is hopelessly self defeating. People are looking for meaningful ways to fight back. What they lack is organization and leadership. What are you doing to develop this?
I don’t do enough clearly and while I am being pessimistic I’d like to point out that I’m just saying I don’t think it’s going to progress past these protests not that it’s a worthless endeavor entirely.
I am still very hopeful that something does end up happening I’ve not given up entirely. But most of my opinions based on this have come from direct interaction of many people in these protests several of them have told me that they simply cannot monetarily commit to anything longer they have pooh-poohed the idea of multi-day protests lest a full strike.
I even had some of these people at these protests tell me that they thought the end goal was the protest that this was the win not all of them though but many like I said said they couldn’t even go a single day without the possibility of either losing their job or otherwise and none of them even considered it said it was too risky for them.
For the middle-class organizers of these protests, who lack a serious political perspective, the protest is their victory. They have no concept of the independent organization of the masses doing anything, besides protesting and calling it a day. They believe and promote the belief that mass rallies will be sufficient to pressure the Democratic Party, some Republicans, and the trade union bureaucracies to oppose Trump more vigorously. They will not.
It can be difficult to imagine the possibility of general strike when we haven’t seen a real organized mass movement in at least two generations. It’s not enough for isolated individuals convinced of the necessity to simply strike of their own initiative. That would be a recipe for disaster, with the participants facing certain reprisal and victimization. The movement must be prepared, starting with the most advanced sections of the working class organizing the leadership.
The protests express a broadly felt desire for action, but that cannot spontaneously generate the necessary movement. It will take the input of people like you, talking to your neighbors and coworkers, organizing action committees in your neighborhoods and workplaces, reaching out to people from other neighborhoods and workplaces, and organizing in preparation for a struggle. The protests provide a prime opportunity to do just that.
For what it’s worth, in case you’re interested, this is the statement we distributed at No Kings: Mobilize the working class against Trump’s dictatorship!
I’ll also recommend this perspective following the protest: The mass protests against dictatorship in the US and the way forward in the fight against Trump’s coup.
If you read something in there that strikes a chord, I would suggest reaching out through the contact form.
We need to do a peaceful protest every month till this administration and their dear leader are gone.
Peaceful protests won’t get rid of the regime. What they’re good for is connecting, organizing, demonstrating opposition is a viable size to uncertain bystanders who fear being part of a tiny minority and getting crushed, and generating enthusiasm for further, more ‘strategic’ work.
F*** them up boo, let s**t hit the fan. We need a breaking point, the whole world is DONE with america, or go strike nationally. Paralyze the entire country
Can you please uncensor the two words in your comment? I can’t tell what they’re supposed to be.
Pretty sure it’s
Fart them up boo, let soot hit the fan.
Makes sense. Thanks!
Oh you sweet summer child.
Besides all the other anti equal rights, anti justice, anti democratic, fascist bullshit trump likes, this is also acceptable to him and netanyahu:
More images from Anadolu @ Getty Images
This is acceptable to Israel. People in the west watching BBC or CNN seeing images like this is not though. It’s why they are now repeating the cycle of “letting in aid” that we are seeing now.
Any seemingly “moral” action that Israel takes is literally to ensure they can continue doing their genocide. Giving the west just enough coverage of aid trucks so their media can pretend that it’s no longer happening.
I am ashamed to live in this time of human history that we allow the people causing these images to remain in power and not have their heads placed on a spike (metaphorically of course).
De zoekopdracht voor “anadolu” heeft geen resultaten opgeleverd
You can filter on photographers, and then search the name Anadolu, that worked for me!
If these happen in Democrat-run cities, what is the over/under that Trump sends in the National Guard?
Democratic governors need to be attempting to take control of their national guards
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Kathy Hochul? Yeah I don’t think so.
These types of protest. While large and making national news are very unlikely to have that type of response.
These protest are liberals going out and feeling like they did something. Which is obviously better than liberals not going out at all.
The protests that get physical response are the ones that have the potential to build into larger and more active movements. Protest with simple goals like “prevent vehicles from leaving the ICE facility”. As someone that’s been to protest with that goal. 100-200 people with a real material goal are much more likely to have police response than a planned parade.
These “no kings” style protest are essentially just that: planned parades. And are directed through the city in very much the same way. Again, I am not against them. But they are not serving the same purpose.
The military is NOT being used because the size of protest are large. The military is being used as a political tool to form a narrative that justifies more use of violence against civilians.
They wont attack these “protest parades” filled with large amounts of people that are not directly effected by negative effects of their fascist policies. It is much better to keep them as once a month parade members than to risk radicalizing large amounts of them into full time activists if they ever felt the sting of tear gas.
Organizing is step one. Calling it a liberal feel good party does the fascists work for them.
Yes. Because that’s all I said in my comment and that’s the only thing you should take from it. /s
Replies like yours are why I fucking hate the internet. Engage in the actual substance of the comment maybe; instead of just straw manning what I said for the sake of disagreement.
What about my comment implies I didn’t read the whole thing? My point still stands
No. It doesn’t. You rewrote one sentence I said and then pretended like that was the thesis of the comment.
The comment was talking about the use of force and military towards protests. I was pointing out the material difference between “weekend protesters” collecting in mass for a few hours and other people actively preventing ICE from leaving their facilities and being met with violence.
It wasn’t a “bash” on liberals. I want them to go out and do their mass protests. It does help them become radicalized to do more.
It was an explanation of WHY you won’t see high levels of police violence at these large “No Kings” style protest.
Because they don’t threaten the ability for ICE to hurt people. Are they good in other ways? Absolutely. But that wasn’t the point of my comment and it wasn’t what was being asked in the comment I replied to.
It’s the difference between a person holding up a sign that says “save the Forrest” and another person chaining themselves to the God damn tree.
That was my point. So, nothing you have said in response is at all being critical of what I actually said. You’re just straw manning.
Yeah you give the stalinists and the conservatives jerkoff ammo while raising OTHER good points. That’s my point. Let me just write a whole hard hitting manifesto to try to appeal to this audience but let me start off by calling you a BOOTLICKING CUCK. This is why I HATE the internet you take the ONE RETARDED THING I SAID and ignored the rest of it. That’s what you sound like
Nice comment. Thanks for confirming I’m talking to someone with complete brain rot.
Nothing will change until Americans are willing to disrupt. General Strikes are effective. Shut it all down and see how quickly things change. It’s not easy but until you get the appetite for it, nothing will change.
As an American (I know some people will scoff at that statement but that’s what we would genuinely say), but I feel like protests are effectively pointless in the modern day. The people in power don’t care and even Amy Coney Barrett has said how she has people around her house day and night and that they are wasting their time. Protests are great for the morale of the protestors, but they effectively don’t have any impact on people in office. I like the idea of protests, I support what most protestors are doing, but I don’t feel like they are making any real difference to the political stance of those they are protesting.
Agreed. Protests that don’t disrupt anything are about as effective as online petitions.
Except that protests that actually disrupt something get you arrested. Still doesn’t actually do much in the USA.
That’s the thing. You have to get enough people arrested that the system can’t handle it. Its tough to find that many people willing to make that sacrifice until things get much worse than they are now
Eh, that’s not really a good example. The US already has more people incarcerated per capita than any other country. The biggest limitation is how many people they can arrest at one time, not how many people they will arrest total. You might be able to get enough people to protest at once that they can’t arrest them all at once, but they absolutely will arrest them over 1-3 years. They kept arresting Jan 6th people for 4 years under Biden, you don’t think that the current administration will be after you as long as possible?
Jan 6 is actually the example I was thinking of. The system was overwhelmed enough that it took so long that their guy took office and pardoned everyone.
Thats a generalisation.
It depends what the objective of your protest is.
Obviously people standing outside a politicians house with a sign are ineffective, thats just not how politics works.
Obviously large scale protests aren’t going to make Trump change his ways or resign.
However, I think large scale protests might activate a lot of apathetic people, and get them connected.
America doesn’t need Trump to resign and Vance to take over. You need societal change. You need your population to realise that your trajectory is pretty awful and that it doesn’t have to be.
Except there’s been no supporting evidence of that. Protests, large or small, get the people who protest to go vote. If they are the type to go to a protest then statistically they were already likely to go vote. The problem is the demographic of people who talk about issues but don’t historically go vote.
Historically conservatives go vote whether they protest, talk at work, or literally say nothing. Conversely, liberals and progressives historically do not go vote despite protesting, arguing, or anything else.
When I was in college I was still conservative leaning based on my childhood. I had a class with ~60 other people and we were given a group activity in which we could pick 2 guaranteed rights. The rights varied greatly, such as being accepted for your sexuality (as in from this day forth your sexual orientation would always be accepted without question), or you will have the right to universal healthcare, or you can move to any country you want without persecution. The premise of this question was that you would get the things you picked, but the others you would probably lose the other things. Out of that group of ~60 people only 2 chose the right to vote. The professor then pointed out that while each person had picked certain rights that couldn’t be taken away from them, two people now had 100% control of the political decisions for the rest of the group. With this they could give themselves more rights or even strip the unpicked rights from others.
I’m not sure how it happened, but conservatives instilled in their base that they need to vote no matter what while liberals don’t think it’s that important unless it’s the literal end of the world.
statement but that’s what we would genuinely say)
I think part of the issue here is not following through with that energy into elections to get progressive platforms in office.
It’s a mixed bag in my opinion. I think the majority of people who show up to protest are likely to go vote, but the majority of people don’t protest. There is probably a small subset of people who would show up to protest and not show up to vote, but the biggest problem is people who say they dislike something, brigade it online, tell everyone at their work or school about it, but then don’t turn out to vote. The one side requires action, the other is just talk, the problem with liberals and progressives today is that they talk but don’t vote. For conservatives the majority of them vote, but don’t talk.
I’m sure that walking or standing around holding signs with passive aggressive messages on them will convince the regime to pack up and leave. That’s how the Nazis were beat the first time around, right?
The Nazis were beaten through foreign intervention. I’m guessing the same thing will need to happen here. Americans are more concerned with making themselves look good (and mainly disagree on whether passive sign-waving or Internet-tough-guy-ism is the best way to do that) than with actually damaging the bottom lines of the people propping up this regime.
To those being diswayed by comments stating that peaceful protests are useless and don’t do anything, keep in mind that these comments are from people who are probably doing nothing but commenting on the internet and are useless themselves.
“Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.”
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Seems like a terrible name for it. It sounds kind of juvenile and the other side will latch onto that immediately.
Seems like a terrible name for it.
Oh we’re doing this again? “Let’s not do what I don’t feel like doing because… uh… I don’t like your tone! That’s it!”
I’m all for it, actually. I’ve just seen things go awry way too many times if you’re not able to condense your message into an airtight sound bite.
And I’ve seen movements killed because tone police give politicians an excuse to bail.
The other side will talk about the huge nationwide “Rage against the Regime” to their base? Even if they try to give it some dumb name, they are still talking about it.
Curious, what name do you think is better?
