I’m increasingly wondering why people in the US aren’t taking to the streets in their thousands.
I’d also like to share a poem by Martin Niemöller, who was a pastor in Germany during the Nazi regime and even supported the Nazis at the beginning:
First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me (Martin Niemöller)
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Any place to find good protests near me? I wanna join one for fun
It is normal… first Social Media desensitizated all of us… by the masses. It is hard to prove now what is true or false… Even “sensible Governments”, left and right are applying techniques that Trump popularized… Look at the EU today! Add that to a fragile real economy (not what you see in the stock market) so everyone is afraid of a bold move and being written into a black list. I used to have a professor in that showed us documents (from FOIA) how, in the 80s, the FBI contacted his employers after his interviews no to hire him because his Communist ideas… Today you would not even get FOIA on that. Imagine now with the technology how a government hostile to you can ruin your life. The best way to survive, put your head down and go as unnoticed as possible.
There are protests but they are toothless.
There have been tons of protests and there have been some pretty widespread ones outside of Tesla this weekend. The media is just hardly covering it making them seem way smaller than they are
Here’s a map of recent Tesla Takedown protests alone
https://actionnetwork.org/event_campaigns/teslatakedown
Here’s just a handful of photos from yesterday
Most people within the US aren’t aware these protests are happening either. There are also broader nationwide protests planned on April 5th as part of the 50501 movement. This will be the 4th nationwide 50501 protest
Thanks for saying the name of the org. Much easier to join up that way.
Complacent masses. As long as there is stuff to consume and cheap entertainment to numb the feelings, nobody cares.
Class solidarity is hard to archive. It’s funny seeing people get mad at my tiny little projects when the government is out there ruining people’s lives
There were well over 1000 people at the protest I was at on Saturday…
Next Saturday (April 5) is supposed to be a huge day of protest across the country, notably with a very large demonstration planned for the National Mall in DC. I plan to be at that one.
Out of curiosity what do you do at the protests? Is it just standing around or something more involved?
At the Tesla protests, yes. it’s mostly standing there with signs and chanting. At the one I attend, the dealership is on a major road with a TON of traffic. People line the street on either side stretching for about 1/2 a mile. The first protest had a bunch of people at the front door of the dealership, but police came and arrested one person. Since then, there has always been a police presence right at the front door. The cops tend to leave us alone if don’t go up to the door of the dealership. A couple of times every hour a group will organize to try to block the road. They’ll usually hold the space for about 5 minutes before the police come and force everyone back to the sidewalks. The point here is to challenge authority.
On a broader scale (I attend a LOT of protests), it depends on the protest. At those that are planned and coordinated by a larger organization (think the Women’s March, March for Science, etc) there’s usually a stage with a series of speakers “preaching to the choir” to energize the crowd. There’s lost of people chanting in unison various slogans/chants. Usually there’s a single rallying point where the speeches happen, then there will often be a march from that point to somewhere else. Along the route the crowd shuts down the streets, chants, carry signs, etc. The point here to make connections with like-minded people and demonstrate that there is popular support for whatever issue/concern there is.
At less coordinated protests without a central organizing committee (think the 2017 airport protests, the 2020 uprising) there’s not as much of set “schedule of events”. It’s more of a way for a community to express their collective anger/fear/outrage/etc. The specific goal will depend more on the specific event. For example, the 2017 airport protests were against the first version of Trump’s Muslim Ban. People entering the US from the countries he had tried to ban people from were being held in holding rooms at airports. A large number of activists showed up at airports where those people were being held and the sheer numbers and anger we were expressing got the people working at the airports to let the people go. There were also immigration lawyers who showed up to those protests. When the people in holding were released, they had legal representation right there waiting to support them. The 2020 uprising events were about showing that people weren’t afraid of the police and wouldn’t be silenced by police violence.
At every protest I’ve ever been at, there are always people from various organizations walking through the crowd trying to get people to sign up. Sometimes it’s just collecting names/emails/phone numbers for a fundraising list. Sometimes it’s staffers for politicians raising signatures to get on a ballot, or to get a referendum on a ballot. Sometimes it’s activist organizations trying to get people who might be willing to take further actions.
As virtually every protest winds down, there’s usually a group of people, almost always not affiliated with the “official event” who organize to continue taking action, typically less sanctioned, and dubiously legal actions.
Most protests don’t achieve their immediate goal. That’s how it’s always been. The way we tend to talk about it, any given movement or event has 3 sets of goals: short-term/immediate goals, mid-terms goals, and long-term goals. We usually fail at the short-term goals (although not always). But we’re almost always successful at the medium- and long-term goals. These Tesla protests, for example. The short-term/immediate goal is to shut down the specific dealership we’re protesting at. That has only happened where police presence has been light and where protesters are willing to take illegal action and get arrested (which is always a minority of protesters). This goal has largely been unsuccessful. The medium-term goal is to destroy the Tesla brand so much that the stock price plummets. This is already happening. After the election, Tesla stock prices skyrocketed. Since the protests started, the stock price has already dropped back to where it was before the election, wiping out all that value added since the election. Keep this up, and we’ll hopefully force it even farther down. If we’re lucky, they’ll have to start closing dealerships. The long-term goal is to remove Musk and Trump from power. Obviously, that hasn’t happened yet, but that’s why it’s a long-term goal.
Thanks! That helps a lot!
Because they largely don’t care maybe
Harsh but true. When you take away those that actively supports the regime, then those that are apathetic, that’s well over half the population. A present day Boston tea party would mostly result in mass anger over sweet tea availability.
Then those few that remain may not want to risk getting their skulls cracked, legally run over and declared terrorists by the institutions they’re asking to change. It simply doesn’t leave the critical mass necessary to have thousands in the streets.
Why would they show you the who and where to congregate to fight? Streisand effect real
A lack of organization. There’s no one central voice organizing large scale protests, so you get hundreds or thousands of smaller protests that don’t attract media attention.
define large, because every major city is already hitting frequent protests in the thousands
There are many protests, more than there were in 2017, but they are mostly smaller in attendance. The difference is the media coverage. And you are right, there hasn’t been a single event like the Women’s March that has broken through to international coverage.
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2025/03/resistance-alive-well-us/
Its making the news alright, traditional news won’t stfu about Tesla vandalism.
Good
There are. It’s just the US is a large car-centric country which makes travel difficult and the ruling party controls almost all of the media and thus there is a media blackout on protests.
This right here is the main reason why Trump might succeed… The media has been beaten into submission and refuses to report the actual events that are occurring which make Trump look bad.
The media hasn’t been beaten into submission, it’s owned by MAGA billionaires. There are plenty of independent media news sources reporting facts, but they don’t have the same reach.
Was there anything on the scale of the 2017 women’s march? I’m sure your arguments are true to some extent, but I am surprised and concerned that I haven’t seen anything in similar scale to 2017’s protests, despite the situation being so much worse this time. Back then they managed to mobilize over 200,000 people despite being car-centric.
Yeah, and in 2020 we elected a democrat and gave democrats a majority. Instead of codifying Roe, they protected the filibuster.
We saw how much good the women’s march didn’t do because one party wants women dead from sepsis, and the other doesn’t give a shit.
Why protest when NOT EVEN THE GOOD PARTY LISTENS?
Yeah the democrats have been a disappointment. I’d kinda see that as a reason to protest all the harder though. Using more disruptive measures like general strikes as well. Make them listen. Protest movements have overthrown tyrannical regimes before. Gets harder the more they’ve consolidated their power though.
Really impossible to say because, to reiterate the point the post you’re replying to made, the media is not covering protests like it was in 2017. There have been multiple protests in all 50 states, some very large, but the word just isn’t getting out about them.
Foreign media would report on it though, wouldn’t it? There are many European reporters in the US. And there should be plenty of videos, pictures etc showing the scale. I haven’t seen anything comparable to pictures of the women’s march personally. I’ve seen pictures of protests but they seem, comparatively, quite small.
