Still No Kings: Millions to Protest Trump On Saturday
Still No Kings: Millions to Protest Trump On Saturday
prospect.org
Still No Kings: Millions to Protest Trump On Saturday
112 comments
-
-
relaying words from a handmade sign I saw at the last one: "Don't Underestimate The Power Of Just Showing Up."
-
But, like, don't overestimate it either.
-
-
Be careful. Im fearful of a false flag type operation where something violent happens and is immediately blamed on the left, when in realityitll be far right thugs. Leave your phones at home and don't give these thugs a reason to place blame on us for violence
-
i keep saying; do not let fear hold you back! the gop will do the things you fear no matter what, if nothing happens, they will invent a cause. might as well go down swinging
-
-
We sit around and bitch about the corporations caving to the alt-Reich, about Congress people just giving in to Trump, about ICE not having a conscience to do the things they do.
Yet as long as we only sit and bitch, as long as we're not fighting back in some way, we are also complicit in what our country's government does.
If you honk your horn to warn people ICE is around, you are protecting them. If you protest the regime, others will see that there's are others standing up and this is not inevitable. If you call your Congress people, you are telling them what the will of the people is, and that people are watching their actions. You don't have to do everything, but you should be doing something.
How can you expect corporations to care or Congress people to have a spine, if you won't even pick up a phone? Courage, and consciences, are contagious.
-
I've been at the other no kings protests and been emailing my senators and reps in NC almost every week for the last 4 months. They keep responding only with the Faux News false information but if they won't give in they I most certainly will not either. Ensure every week they and their staff have to face what they're doing.
-
Protest at their homes, and keep doing it day in and day out til they cave. they'll start listening
-
-
-
-
Fuck No Kings. It’s a Democrat controlled, pro-Israel, pro-cop, and anti-trans group. They’re trying to absorb activist energy by pretending to be an activist org, and redirecting people to the Dems. They’ve also called the cops on leftists that show up to protests.
Reddit admins have been removing leftist mods, and installing Democrat operatives, who then turn it into a No Kings advert. See r/ChaoticGood
-
Uhh citation needed. Nobody I know working on No Kings locally is pro-Democrat, pro-Israel, pro-cop, or anti-trans. I also don't know of any leftists who had the cops called on them at a No Kings protest.
-
No one believes that it was the democrats who took over chaotic good.
-
Well then weird that after the takeover they immediately changed all of the images to No Kings, a Democrat org.
-
-
-
You need to translate this to political power at the city and state levels. Sweep out the meek Democrats and legislate the resistance: force local police to not cooperate, ban masks, make it easy to acquit people resisting, pass personal liberty laws, etc. Then ratfuck the feds any chance you get. Get your municipalities to do roadworks at the access points to ICE buildings, cut off their water and electricity for maintenance, slow them the fuck down. Put up an actual resistance. Come on yanks, you can do it!
-
Thank you for encouragement rather than disdain. I mean it.
-
-
I participated in the first. I wish a single person cared or a single thing changed.
-
Protesting and marches are no longer an effective tool. Times change, tactics need to catch up.
-
As the other comment says, it is an effective tool. However, you've been told that protest creates change on its own, which it has never done. Our media and education fills us with stories of, for example, the civil rights and that protests worked.
However, that was backed with direct action. There were people stopping businesses from functioning, breaking laws, and some targeted violence. Without this it's likely nothing would have changed.
We're told the "right way" to protest is peacefully. However, that's only the starting point. You get people to peaceful protests and then you organize them into groups who are willing to commit to more action. A lot of people won't be willing to go that far, and they're still useful in these peaceful protests, but these are a way to identify people who may want to take the next step.
-
Protesting and marches are still an incredibly effective tool. I think what you're rightly pointing out is that communicative protests are not having many concrete effects in their own right, but that's already a known factor.
Communicative protests bring people together, they give people a sense of hope, and they strengthen existing community organizers and groups by allowing people to be recruited into local efforts that do produce concrete actions.
For example, I went to the recent Workers Over Billionaires rally near me. I knew damn well that it wasn't going to physically do anything to stop Trump, to harm billionaires, or reduce the power of the administration in its own right.
But y'know what I did see happening there? Hundreds of people signing up with a local group that helps immigrants safely make it to, and stay in, local public schools, and hundreds more getting advice on how to unionize their workplace, along with many people getting socialism-related literature, signing up to canvass for a local progressive candidate, and being given tons of stickers and pamphlets that will likely help promote a ton of other local progressive groups that all in their own way either concretely harm the administration's efforts, or help people in the community with all sorts of socioeconomic problems.
And at the end of the day, I, along with many others, felt much less despair. And if you want a strong movement, you want people that have hope, and not hopelessness.
Sure, there's a ton of very liberal people there wearing their "if the 3.5% rise up, dictators FALL" shirts thinking that communicative protests like that one will magically depose Trump if more than 3.5% of the population participates, but in the end, these protests have time and time again massively increased participation and funding going to groups that strengthen working class people's power, and harm the administration's efforts to harm all sorts of people, and that's better than nothing.
You're not going to get a 60 year old wine mom to go and break the windows of an ICE building, but you can get her to donate money to organizations that consistently file legal challenges, or encourage some friends to vote for a candidate that could eventually put much stronger legislative protections in place.
-
-
We still have to build the base. If we want to talk about a nationwide work stoppage but we can't even get 1% of people to a protest, then it won't be effective.
-
-
Show up armed next time.
-
And do what?
-
-
I mean... were there other people present at the protest?
Probably at least one single person cares. Maybe a few married people too.
Hard to have a protest by yourself.
-
-
Monday to Friday people... not on weekends
-
I don't understand. Where was this energy when it came to voting? I understand Kamala wasn't exciting but cmon.
-
Going outside on a Saturday isn’t “energy”. This is a clown show for the purposes of easing white liberals’ guilt over their inaction.
-
Possibly. I'm really starting to take Chomsky seriously when he says the collective memory window is very short
-
-
How do you know that most of those are not people who voted for Harris?
-
I understand Kamala wasn’t exciting
If you think this is why people stayed home, you understand nothing. Or you understand perfectly well and never want the party to ever move to the left at all.
-
The party will never move left because people don't show up to vote in primaries. Then they barely show up in generals. And if Dems ever win, the house only barely gets slim a super majority. So no meaningful legislation gets passed. So then the Dems base gets disillusioned and they barely show up to vote in the next election and the cycle continues.
Then people on Lemmy come to complain that the party isn't "left enough" << you are here now
-
-
She was boring. This is exciting. People don't vote because of their thoughts, they vote because of their feelings.
-
She was boring.
Government should be boring.
-
-
112 comments
People want to make an impact they should do it on fucking Black Friday. You need to hit capitalism where it hurts.
Do that too, but protesting gives folks the opportunity to connect with local resistance organizations and make a real, ongoing impact.
Sure just like the last one, am I right?