No there isn’t
Not true, I don’t live in the US lol
Jesus Christ I don’t think I’ve ever seen a posts comments so full of reasons this won’t work.
You guys don’t even need your media to dissuade you, you just convince each other not to do anything.
The thing is if everyone said “fantastic! This will be huge” and the actual protests are underwhelming, well that serves to confirm the false narrative that a very small minority of people are upset.
Declaring high expectations and delivering low is a path to undermine your cause. Waiting until after the fact to explain why sounds like making excuses rather.
The protest in my region was like maybe 50 people. I don’t think this is because people are broadly happy, it’s because as many many people pointed out, this was poor planning. The optics of pulling off a huge protest in only a week would have been amazing, but just impossible in the real world.
as many many people pointed out, this was poor planning.
So fucking organize it better then.
Jesus this American shoulder-shrug-why-do-anything-if-it-isn’t-perfect is so frustrating to watch.
The thing is if everyone said “fantastic! This will be huge” and the actual protests are underwhelming, well that serves to confirm the false narrative that a very small minority of people are upset.
But nobody did, they just said “this day this time go protest in your capitol”.
The optics of pulling off a huge protest in only a week would have been amazing, but just impossible in the real world.
It was a protest across the entire country, and it can be done again, and again, and again.
Seriously do you guys even need opponents? You just give up and convince each other to not do anything unless it’s perfect and then sit back and watch your neighbours get put in camps, declaring that you sure don’t agree with those actions.
Even if it was a huge protest, the psychopaths in charge will walk over their backs and casually walk into the capitol.
Protests don’t do shit because you cannot convince people who don’t feel emotion to suddenly care about your situation. They only care about self-enrichment, power, and self-preservation. Do you have enough political capital or leverage to influence a politician?
Maybe if you threaten their sense of self-preservation, you might cause them to notice.
Maybe if you threaten their sense of self-preservation, you might cause them to notice.
I think that’s really the unstated point of large protests. You get hundreds of thousands of people being present and obviously angry, but “peaceful”, you have to be doing the calculation of how many of those are on the brink of something more if their voices are not heard and things proceed or even accelerate.
Of course, on the other hand we are dealing with an administration that thinks an ethnic cleanse of Palestinians to set up a resort city sounds like a safe idea, so not sure there’s anyone really thinking about the risks.
Haha, that happened in 2011 with the Wisconsin Act 10 protests. It was literally the most peaceful thing you ever saw in your life: singing, chanting, mutual aid stations, pizza, people on their goddamn hands and knees cleaning salt and sand off of the floor of the Capitol in the evenings.
And the Republicans were cowering in pants-shitting terror! (I mean, more than their usual.) The governor would enter the Capitol through the utility tunnel from a nearby state building. One legislator was terrorized by scratches on their car, and got the State Patrol to investigate the attack. (The SP concluded that the perpetrator was a stone kicked up by the wheels.) I know people who got arrested for having cameras in the Assembly chamber.
Bunch of craven idiots, the lot.
I wonder why a bunch of people might be jumping onto social media, spreading pessimism and suspicion about protests and discouraging people from attending.
Edit: I asked every single person who said that their protest-aware friends told them this was a “false flag” or something, what protest their friends would recommend attending instead. I’m curious to see what the responses are.
Edit: One of the accounts which is expressing well-intentioned nail-biting concern that something really bad might happen to the people who go to these protests, and urging people to stay safe if they do decide to go… is the same account that has been telling me about how Ukraine is the bad guys, and the Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans, and other interesting things.
I expect you’ll he hearing a lot of crickets.
Some of them are downvoting me for asking them the question.
The Women’s March on January 21, 2017 was one of the biggest protests in US History. It did jack all. The US gov’t has been taken over by anti-Consititutional, anti-American, anti-law Republicans at all 3 branches. Going to a protest has about the same impact as typing outrage on Lemmy. It’s not pessimism, it’s reality. Until masses are seriously prepared to get violent, we are fucked. Personally I’m just getting the fuck out and watch it implode into Gilead.
Interesting how you skipped over the BLM protests, which were literally 100 times larger than the Women’s March, and resulted in significant changes to the exact thing they were protesting, which had previously been a basically unchangeable fact of American government and society.
There’s also Euromaidan, which toppled a corrupt government, with about 4 times the attendance of the Women’s March.
There were hundreds of BLM protests over the course of several months. This needs to be a sustained effort or it’s going to die on the vine
100% agreed. That’s why I was lecturing the person who was depressing support for them, and saying that protesting in general wasn’t effective.
It’s going to take sustained effort over time, so… don’t start? I’m struggling to find the logic here.
Who said not to start? Not me, that’s for sure. I said not to stop.
I didn’t realize police stopped shooting black people. Also, the media’s fucked up coverage on the BLM protests had a big impact on ignorant troglodytes supporting fuckhead trump this time around.
I didn’t realize police stopped shooting black people.
Dude that’s totally disingenuous and you know it. Protests/strikes aren’t fucking fairy magic. They show people in power what the people in general think of something. The more people do these things the more it’s clear to those in power what will play out and what won’t.
If americans, say, went out en masse and started protesting, striking, blocking day-to-day life from happening, in response to putting people in concentration camps, capitalists would put a lot of pressure on the fascists to step the fuck back. Then people could, I dunno, realise they can’t passive-resistence their way out of this and started fighting the fascists, this would be over extremely quickly.
Fascism requires you do one of two things: Help them, or don’t resist them. If you resist it becomes too hard for such a small number of people to succeed against a massive amount of people constantly defying them.
Interesting how you skipped over the BLM protests, which were literally 100 times larger than the Women’s March, and resulted in significant changes to the exact thing they were protesting
^ that was what I was responding to. Context matters.
The police have been shooting about 1,000 people per year, of which a plurality have been white. Same as every year before, during, and after BLM.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/
(I would take that graph with a grain of salt BTW. The underlying data sources are pretty incomplete. I highly suspect that the sudden steady increase starting in 2020 is due to better data gathering by the FBI, after years and years of pretty much the same incomplete picture being shown every year.)
In any case, the question is, how many of those shootings were justified? That there is no way to know simply from the data. I know that in 2020, there were enough shootings that were so totally disgustingly unjustified that it caused a mini-civil-war which engulfed the country and in which several people died, and I can think of one time since then that it happened (Tyre Nichols), and as far as I know the officers involved are not doing well in court, and the unit they were part of was disbanded almost immediately. There was absolutely none of this “oh well these things happen” reaction like for Breonna Taylor.
I would call that a positive change. Wouldn’t you? Or no? There have been various “reforms” of varying degrees of intensity and staying power, but to me the larger issue has been the change in the culture of policing. Something changed between 2020 and the years that came after that caused the change in the number of highly-publicized killings. Right? Or no?
That’s a long way to say not much has changed. BLM may have improved things, or maybe just the reporting changed. Or maybe something else. I don’t know. There are so many foundational level problems in this country, and I hear nobody talking about them. Social sicknesses that lead to so many symptoms, including, but certainly not limited to, both police violence and magat voters. I’ve been voting for progressives in primaries, walking precincts, engaging with conservatives (back when they existed) for several decades now, and I’ve just watched shit get worse and worse. My time is over, I’m leaving my gloves in the ring, and turning into a full-time spectator now. Good luck.
That’s a long way to say not much has changed.
Okay, so four hugely publicized totally bullshit killings in one single year, after a consistent drumbeat of regular police killings every single year where any level of scrutiny would show that it was totally unnecessary brutality, followed by four years with a lot more scrutiny (in the form of activists, pretty much universal bodycams now, and media) exposing one total bullshit killing in the entire country. That to you is “not much”?
You can disagree with me obviously. But you sound like you just totally ignored what I said, and wanted to repeat what you said again, as if I hadn’t said it, and then expand on it.
I’ve just watched shit get worse and worse
Most of it, yes. Police reform is one big type of reform that actually happened. Of course, if you don’t care about what happened and simply want to insist that you know everything is getting worse and worse, because it is, that’s your right to do, I guess.
The Women’s March on January 21, 2017 was one of the biggest protests in US History.
I didn’t say protest, I said strike. They are not the same thing. Protests require Centrists and ‘moderates’ to care enough to join them. Strikes are meant to directly impact Capitalism. Going to marches every night for a week doesn’t hurt business owners, but a week of strikes loses them money in a big way. With sympathy strikes you can get the capitalists fighting each other. With a General Strike all of the lines-go-downward and they’ll freak out.
Until masses are seriously prepared to get violent, we are fucked.
Guess which step precedes that?
Get the fuck out in the streets, prevent cars from getting places, block entrances, cause consumers to avoid places, then they’ll start paying attention.
God it’s so fucking frustrating watching your older brother whining there’s nothing they can do when there are provable things they’ve done in the fucking past that have worked.
Look at the Pullman Strike. Seventy people were killed by cops/military, the strikers still won and it was a massive, historical win for American labour laws.
I didn’t say protest, I said strike.
Well, you didn’t, and the post is about a protest. But your point is a good one.
Apologies I made another comment in a virtually identical exchange where I mentioned strikes.
To be clear: Protests -> Strikes -> Sympathy Strikes -> General Strikes.
That’s how you beat fascism. As soon as people push back at their money base they crumble. If people let them do what they want they keep pushing for more and more until stopped.
Fake news, not american
Well if you’d show up it could have been a solidarity protest in your provincial capital but you don’t care about democracy!
This was Colorado. I agree that the timing sucks for people with regular jobs, but we also need to get the attention of our representatives and disrupt the peace.
The instant anything is posted on here it’s already been scraped. Know this. Act accordingly.
Some tips to help you out
- don’t take your phones to the protest
- if you take a burner, don’t take it home. buy it, and trash it at the protest.
- don’t take anything that could identify you as you
- superglue and baking soda on your fingerprints. don’t go crazy, just enough to make printing you impossible/difficult
- write any important phone numbers on your arm or ankle in permanent marker if you can’t remember them
- stuff a couple hundred dollars for bail in your shoe
- don’t give ANYONE your real name. don’t care how hot they are or how impassioned they are, just fucking don’t
- designate one trusted individual to come get you from jail. they are not to bring their phone, they should park at least 1/4 mile away and walk to get you(long enough to realize you’re being tailed by police).
Pay attention to your surroundings, specifically the movement of officers/agents. if they’re running you should be too. if there’s a large group marching or a wall marching, leave immediately and regroup.
ICE will be there. they will be picking people up. many of them not illegal. if you’re not white, wear makeup if you can get away with it. paint your face with state colors if need be. not a mask, so it shouldn’t be covered by “no-mask” states.
Know your rights. Bring the proof of your rights. Force them to acknowledge your rights.
Stream everything.
If you are picked up you will;
- go on a list
- be unlawfully monitored
- become a link in a larger web to ensnare organizers
You will now go dark for at least a month. No social media posts about the protests, no discussions about the protests, nothing. After that, it should be difficult to pair your online activity with your real world activities.
If you can’t make it to the protests, record the streams, share them online, pressure the public to demand answers for the crimes committed by the officers/agents.
One last thing.
There will undoubtedly be people there to provoke the protests. do not let them. once one incident of violence is determined all bets off and the police will become physically involved.
Trust no one, question everything, power to the people. 🫵
This message from a colleague will live here until the death of Lemmy
For further research here’s a great video on mutual aid.
I went to my local capitol protest today and it went peacefully. I was prepared for (and very much expecting) escalation. I wrote the ACLU phone number on my leg, left my phone at my girlfriend’s house, and carried pepper spray in my pocket. My gf and I (and a number of other people) wore medical masks. We also brought clear, full-face shields in our bag too, just in case.
The capitol and the police station were near each other; lots of cops drove by our crowd, but thankfully that’s the only interaction we had with them. But a lot of drivers, bicyclists, and other passers-by made noise in solidarity.
I should also probably note that I live in a blue state. I haven’t heard yet about the experience in red and purple states, but hopefully people will be sharing their stories soon.
One last thing - I’m glad you made the note about phones. Apparently some of the people at the protest reasoned, “I might get arrested, therefore I should bring my phone.” Then they were confused when I used the exact same reason to justify me not bringing my phone. Do people not realize that the police seizes a person’s belongings when they arrest them? Considering the way this administration is going, I wouldn’t be surprised if they rewrote the law to allow police to break into phones without a warrant. At the very least, they certainly won’t stop cops who do it unlawfully.
Happy you made it. Ours was small and uneventful except one person brought us all a bunch of pizzas which was cool for those that could eat cheese, I brought a big pack of hand warmers and a big caraffe of hot mint tea. It was pretty much just a lunch. None of the state reps came out, and there was no counter protest. Fliers were handed out for another protest soon. Hopefully others are seeing the attendance numbers and planning for more better organized protests.
I handed out the EFF protesting .pdf that I had printed out at work.
https://www.eff.org/files/2017/06/19/protest-one-sheet.pdf
It’s usually enough for most people.
Oh hey, we had someone handing out hand warmers too! She saw me and my girlfriend trading one pair of gloves between us and asked if we wanted a warmer. It was a sweet gesture, the kind of look-out-for-your-neighbor thing we were all there for.
Damn, this reads like a guide for protesting in Belarus. Hope your situation gets better.
It won’t get better if we sit on our asses. It’s also a guide for Lebanon or Israel or Syria or Russia…
Awful short notice. My state capital is 3 hours away and I have work.
There’s a protest at your work today.
I was going to go but after spending almost an entire evening trying to find organizing information, I gave up and decided to sit this out.
There was no information on who was organizing this, who is backing it, and most importantly, who to contact. From an OPSEC standpoint, without a clear contact on who was organizing, it read like a false flag.
- website had no information outside of the event
- all POCs were “to be announced”
- website for my area was on carrd with only the image of the flyer
- all social media accounts are on techbro websites with no presence on mastodon or lemmy. Their bluesky account never directly answered the question of who was behind the account
I hope to God I’m wrong and hope that organizers are well intentioned but given our current political climate, I need to know who is putting this out there. I’m not the only one worried. Many others on Bluesky, reddit, Facebook, etc all raised concerns. One reply I read was “contact us on discord”.
Fuck. That.
There wasn’t even a link to their discord!!!
Edit: compare this to the protest happening in front of the Treasury
- clear organizer (Elizabeth Warren iirc – I stumbled across this yesterday and can’t seem to find the source) and promoted by other prominent Democrats
- shared publicly along Democrat official channels and accounts
- press notified and documented the event
Which upcoming protests would your friends recommend going to instead? Assuming that someone can’t travel to DC.
I hope to God I’m wrong and hope that organizers are well intentioned but given our current political climate, I need to know who is putting this out there
What might happen to someone who attended a not “well intentioned” protest, that wouldn’t happen to someone who attended a normal one?
Which upcoming protests would your friends recommend going to instead? Assuming that someone can’t travel to DC.
One that:
- organized by people you know or by organizations you trust
- organized by people who have “skin in the game” (i… people of color, LGBTQ+)
- organized by someone with a name that is searchable
- promoted by organizations within the opposition (e.g. Democrats, DNC, etc.)
As many of the above that can apply.
What might happen to someone who attended a not “well intentioned” protest, that wouldn’t happen to someone who attended a normal one?
If you end up going to a protest because “I want to do something” without doing any due diligence, you are placing your faith and trust to someone you do not know. If you arrive there, they may pretend to be a part of a leftist organization. You may end up trusting them more than you should, giving them more information than you should. If they are running the protest as a false flag and in bad faith, then you’ve given your private information to someone who intends you harm.
Best case scenario, the organizers don’t know what they are doing and are running the protest in good faith, but it also means they are new to this and don’t have good operational security.
Which upcoming protests would your friends recommend going to instead? Assuming that someone can’t travel to DC.
One that:
- organized by people you know or by organizations you trust
- organized by people who have “skin in the game” (i… people of color, LGBTQ+)
- organized by someone with a name that is searchable
- promoted by organizations within the opposition (e.g. Democrats, DNC, etc.)
As many of the above that can apply.
Such as? I’ve actually been looking for information on protests that are coming up, so that I can publicize them here, and have more than one day’s notice. What are some that are upcoming that I could spread the word about, that are good and trusted ones?
If you end up going to a protest because “I want to do something” without doing any due diligence, you are placing your faith and trust to someone you do not know. If you arrive there, they may pretend to be a part of a leftist organization. You may end up trusting them more than you should, giving them more information than you should. If they are running the protest as a false flag and in bad faith, then you’ve given your private information to someone who intends you harm.
Is it common for you that when you show up to a protest, people to start asking for your name and information about you? I have been to some protests and I have literally never had this happen or heard of this happening. Has it ever happened to you? Are you suggesting that the feds or somebody who doesn’t like protests, is creating new protests, so that they can then collect the information of anybody that shows up, and that they are not collecting the same information (or somehow unable to collect the same information) at real protests that happen, that they don’t like and want to punish people for taking part in?
This event would have faired a lot better if it had any sort of actual organization and a core team of organizers to answer questions and provide solid information. All of my friends who would have been interested in an event like this decided to avoid it because there just wasn’t enough information for it to not seem “sketchy,” and something so poorly organized was likely to only draw small groups of supporters, thus reducing the “safety in numbers” that protesters would greatly benefit from against a crowd of fascist police and anti-protesters.
Also… at noon during the work week? 😒
To be fair thats the time when its most effective
The news doesn’t cover what happens at 2pm on a Saturday unless there’s multiple bodies.
That part I think I understand. Capitol buildings tend to be kinda empty during the weekend.
All of my friends who would have been interested in an event like this decided to avoid it because there just wasn’t enough information for it to not seem “sketchy,”
Which upcoming protests would your friends recommend going to instead?
What might happen to someone who attended a “sketchy” protest, that wouldn’t happen to someone who attended a normal one?
This is way too obscure. Most people would need more time than this to plan I imagine. I’m only hearing about this today after being tuned into politics for months and I’d only realisticly be able to participate if I heard about this 2 weeks ago.
Yeah, true that. I’ve been hearing about a lot of things like this more or less the day of, which isn’t too convenient most of the time.
If it makes a difference, it seems likely to me that the protests in DC will keep happening on an ongoing basis until something happens to disperse them.
Yeah, I only found out two days ago. Unions usually get the word out weeks in advance for a strike, and that’s for people that are necessarily engaged in protesting those in power and (currently) have the protections to do so.
I’m not saying people shouldn’t try to go, but the expectation for turnout should be tempered accordingly.
Hopefully the next one gives people a lot more advanced notice.
I’m skeptical of this one. On one hand, I am glad that this is going to be visible and let other people know that they aren’t alone and a resistance is there. However, this is unorganized as hell. You’re going to have a lot of first time protestors who don’t know the basics of protesting against an active police state. I think this protest is a net positive, but not a massive one. The best we can hope for is for organizers to make use of this enthusiasm in the future or we get very visible tension escalation.
People have to get started somewhere. Very few people in America are used to organizing and demonstrating; things have been so good in America for so long that we’ve become coddled. Seeing some new faces energized to get out there and start making some noise is definitely a win imo.
Yeah, that’s a good point. European countries have that protest game down strong because there’s such an enshrined culture of collective action. We don’t have that here. Yet.
Today, we start!
these events are about connecting with your community and getting organized. go with that in mind.
Everyone gets their start somewhere.
And you can be sure that the old hats are making sure to record and broadcast everything. So when the jackboots inevitably see a black person and start unloading with “rubber bullets” and tear gas, people will see.
Most people don’t live in their state capitol, and have no hope of attending something there that they learned of at the last minute. They should have been informed of this days ago.
I dont even live in that shithole and I have been seeing these posts for days.
But at best if you saw the very first mention of the ideation of going for this, you still would have had barely over a week of notice. This is not enough time for people to plan someone like this, especially during a school and work day.
GET OUT THERE, STOP MAKING EXCUSES.
(For your protection read the EFF websites protest guide to keep yourself safe).
aweehh !! I have work!! and I love so much to slave away for my corporate slave masters !! bullshit.
it sure is convenient to have an excuse to let your country fall
I feel like the enemy started this so they then say “see nobody cares, nobody showed up” because we saw through their bullshit.
The lack of organizer info after a whole bunch of people have tried to find it is a huge red flag to me.
I was wrong. At least for my state. There was a huge protest in Denver yesterday.
We may have just hit the point where enough people are pissed off that a lot of organizing/motivating isn’t needed.
I’ll be at the next one, and I’m already planning how to comply and assist with a general strike in March. I have the teeniest hope that some momentum might be starting to resist these fuckers now in charge.
I’m pretty interested to see how widely upvoted this is.
Definitely, and they can track the people that did show up as highly motivated.
Well you are wrong I’m not from the US
Did you check?
Yeah, we don’t have states
Are you sure though? Sometimes we call them weird things like territories and allies. :)
Nope not it in croatia
Hold on, it says right here that Croatia is a member of NATO. I’m pretty sure that makes it an American state.
I’m just having fun with you. I have to laugh to keep from crying.
Did they check if they have a state capitol? They probably don’t need to if their country doesn’t have states.
Sounds like someone needs to start an anti-Trump protest in their country. It’s not like it’s not going to impact you, or like your local government is yet doing enough to adapt to what’s going to come.
Yeah, I don’t think that’ll have the impact you think it does. This is something we Americans need to handle ourselves, and not rely on the rest of the world to do for us.
