I’m shocked that I haven’t seen one protest yet. Is the media suppressing them? If there aren’t any, why?
Bread and cicuses, when those run out people will be in the streets.
My friend said that if Steam and Netflix both went down at the same time there would be huge riots. I am not sure they are wrong.
There are, The media is own’d by the rich and now so is the government.
There are, they are being reported. I couldn’t speculate as to why you are missing them.
Can you provide 3 links to different protests?
Not being snarky. Just haven’t seen any reporting on it.
Check out @usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml posts. They are posting pictures of grassroots protests across the country every day. Like has been said, there hasn’t been THE big mass protest, but there is constant local activism and protest, just mostly ignored by media.
Glad to hear my posts are going noticed. Indeed, there are lot more than you might think. I’ll repost one of my long comments with details about protests here. Wrote this five days ago so mentally subtract 5 days from all the times
They are being suppressed in media coverage, but there are people protesting. Media coverage paints a false picture that no one in the US is fighting back
Here’s one from today [meaning five days ago] with 1000 people in Boise, Idaho
Here’s a super incomplete timeline with just a handful of the nationwide protests. I’m missing a lot, I’m just showing your the photos I had from recent memory
8 days ago there were national protest for science funding cuts. Here’s the main one in DC
11 days ago there were nationwide protests in all 50 US state capitols + DC + Many cities within those states. This was part of the 50501 movement
Portland, Oregon
Monroe, Wisconsin
San Fransisco, California
Albany, New York
Raleigh, North Carolina
Richmond, Virginia
Austin, Texas
Protests Outside Fox News in New York City
16 days ago there were large protest in the Iowa Statehouse
19 days ago, a protest in Cherry Hill, New Jersy outside Tesla Showroom as part of a nationwide movement protesting Telsas. There have been tons more than just this one and these happen basically every day
21 days ago, large protests in DC for Ukraine aid
And so on. There’s a lot more going on than just this
Thanks for documenting and posting all these. Keep at it. I appreciate your coverage.
What are they doing that isn’t easily ignored?
Ahh… THAT is the difference.
In the US, most of the media is complicit in what’s being protested. And online social media coverage is being contained to small bubbles.
50501
Represent baby!
There are. Heaps of them.
The US is just a big place and very spread out. And the ruling government and its media conglomerates are trying to keep them out of the media.
There absolutely are not. There are anemic little marches scattered here and there.
Americans were protesting George Bush in 2004 more forcefully and in vastly larger numbers than they are protesting now.
Apparently there were about 375,000 people protesting the Iraq War in New York in 2003 compared to about a million people marching for women’s safety in 2004 in DC
In the years since there have been about 5 protests the same or much larger than that. In 2017 2.3 Million people protested the Trump inauguration, and protestors also showed up for Trump’s 2025 inauguration which was held indoors for reasons including harsh snow. The exact number estimates for the 2025 inauguration protest and the 50501 protests are unknown at the moment, but it is occurring in all 50 states which is comparable to the George Floyd protests.
Where are you getting these numbers from?
Various articles
Ah, the MAGA defense.
So you jut don’t believe that protests exist unless they all signed a sheet when they got there?
No I mean provide sources for your claims, otherwise you sound like a MAGA person saying “Just trust me bro I saw it on facebook.” Making a claim and then saying “various articles” is vague and dismissive at best, where did you find these numbers? Facebook?
I don’t have an answer but I have wondered the same. Serbia, Georgia and Türkiye have currently some very large pro-democracy demonstrations, but the USA hasn’t. What there is seems to be pretty small scale.
Maybe pro-democrat Americans don’t feel like their actions matter? Perhaps the opposition just isn’t that popular? Maybe the USA just didn’t have all that strong traditions of civil action to to begin with. At least when compared to countries lile Georgia or Serbia.
Can’t mass protest if you don’t have a way to get people in one location. United States car infra prevents that.
Source: seen mass protests, seen “US protests”. Night and day difference
Maybe you just aren’t where it’s happening?
“Protesters in Philadelphia and at state capitols in California, Minnesota, Michigan, Texas, Wisconsin, Indiana and beyond waved signs denouncing President Donald Trump; billionaire Elon Musk, the leader of Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency; and Project 2025, a hard-right playbook for American government and society.”
I guess I’m just shocked that they only waved signs. In France, the guillotine would have been out. Here in Canada we entirely shut down our capital for months, and both for way less. When will the real protests start?
Are we really comparing the French Revolution and the annoying-ass, snowflake trucker protest?
I’m not a historian, but my guess is that we have lived too many generations without major political incident; the kind you’re supposed to make heads roll over.
We’ve been indoctrinated since birth to blindly love our country, to mind what we say; we have seen other countries and their political unrest, and we ignorantly convinced ourselves that it will never be like that here.
And despite the cop out response of “we vOtEd fOr it”, otherwise good, hardworking Americans were lied to by their friends, family, church, and beloved government for so long that they can’t know any better.
Make no mistake, we fucked up and let our hubris get the better of us. I hope we can see the error of our ways and fight back before it really is too late.
I’m not a historian, but my guess is that we have lived too many generations without major political incident; the kind you’re supposed to make heads roll over.
Really though? Just off the top of my head:
Eisenhower to Nixon
- Vietnam
JFK
- Rigged elections in Illinois with aid of the mafia.
- Bay of Pigs
Nixon
- Watergate
- Being Richard Nixon
Reagan
- Illegal invasion of Grenada
- Iran-Contra
Clinton
- Executing a developmentally-challenged man as a campaign stunt.
- Lewinsky Affair
- Many rape allegations over decades
- Whitewater
Bush II
- Illegal invasion of Iraq
Obama
- Bugging of Merkel’s phone
Trump
- Everything
Biden
- Medical incapacity
Many of your examples are just the US fucking up the lives of citizens in other countries. The average American at home does not give a fuck about the people being murdered by his government, he isn’t going to skip a day of work to protest against that. I think maybe you are forgetting how much Americans loved the idea of invading Iraq, for instance. It took a long time for support to decrease, and even then it was only to like 50/50 levels. Americans weren’t the ones protesting against that war, it was the rest of the world who saw it for what it was. When it comes to foreign affairs the American citizen has consistently been blinded by a mixture of patriotism, ignorance and the myth of American exceptionalism.
I’m surprised Nixon gets: “being Richard Nixon” but Reagan doesn’t get: “being the sack of shit that took the massive clear steps to destroy your country through corruption”
How the fuck did they let Reaganomics slide?
There’s that old thought experiment on who someone would take out of time travel existed. I used to think that Hitler would be a good target. However, seeing how many of the current issues started because of something Reagan gutted, reduced, or schemed to disrupt or remove makes him my new target. So much of our current shituation can be directly tied back to Reagan.
Americans are notoriously terrible at protesting. I was in high school in the '00s and our American history textbook had a sidebar about the 1999 Seattle WTO protests. The bit that stuck with me: a French dignitary interviewed on the scene was unconcerned about the protesters. He pointed to an untouched BMW (or similar luxury car, I forget the exact make). “In Paris,” he said, “That car would be burning.”
We don’t have the level of social safety nets that France does to allow people the freedom to pretest without starving or becoming homeless. It is by design. They keep everyone just on the verge of poverty so nobody can afford to be disruptive.
if you haven’t seeb the news, some protestors and professors have been taken captive by ICE in the US and that’s had a chilling effect. however, that also builds some tension - as soon as some major property destruction breaks out and it becomes obvious that ICE can’t disappear them all, people will be bringing police precincts and declaring autonomous zones again like they did in the BLM protests (did your news sources report those?)
You gotta remember. The majority of voters wanted this. Trump won the popular vote. He still has almost a 50% approval. Half of Americans are good with what’s happening. Let that sink in.
This is the part that made me give up. No amount of anything will make up for the fact that roughly 53% of voters wanted this, which is probably like 40% of the country. A country which has like 3.5 billionish people, and 40% want racism. They want to support the wealth gap because they’re too dumb to understand they’ll never be on the other side of the gap, and this is just renforcing it. They’re more than happy to hurt themselves if it means the OTHER people get dragged down with them. Which just makes them a tool for the rich to use the poor to destroy the poor.
We’re alienating our allys, we’re destroying our country. We’re destroying the global economy, and this is just the start. The next 4 years this asshole gets to sit on his throne, and KNOW he’ll face no consequences. He’ll face no reprecussions for his actions for him and his little asshole buddies.
I’m hurt. I’m tired. I’m in pain. I have no idea if I even HAVE medicaide anymore. They say it’s not cut off, but it was supposed to get cut off Feb 28th because of lack of state funding. I think the state itself doesn’t know. But worst of all, I have no hope. I have no logical plan for what comes next to work towards making a better tomorrow. Yesterday sucked. Today sucks. Tomorrow will suck by all indications. The GOP at this point are actively trying to destroy this country. I’m not proud to be american. I’m ashamed. I’m tired of appologizing to others for existing. And right now, if Canada decided to just atomic bomb us, I’d understand. Go ahead Canada. Take us out. We deserve it.
I don’t disagree with what you said but there’s not 3.5 billion people in the US. There’s like 340 million.
Half of Americans who cared/knew enough to vote.
Reminder that voter turnout was still only 63.7%. Half of voters didn’t vote for Trump, half of that 63.7% did. Still way too fucking many, but it’s not half of the US.
Great point, there are at least 77,284,118 people who are OK with the current state of affairs.
If you don’t bother to vote, you’re not a voter.
And that 63.7% is of eligible voters. The disenfranchised, teenagers, and noncitizens aren’t counted.
The half that didn’t vote are OK with other people deciding for them.
In the US, protests are largely performative. People want to make a show of it do they can say “Look, I did something!” even if they’re doing nothing. They’ll break their own arms patting themselves on the back.
I live in Portland which is protest central. We had 100 days of Black Lives Matter protests which meant and did nothing as the city largely agreed with the sentiment.
You want a protest that matters? You take it where the action is happening. In the case of Trump, you can set EVERY Tesla dealer on fire, it means nothing.
Take that shit to D.C. and shut that city down for 100 days? Assuming the Feds don’t kill everyone, that’s a protest that would matter.
Take that shit to D.C. and shut that city down for 100 days? Assuming the Feds don’t kill everyone, that’s a protest that would matter.
for an example of this, see the March on Washington during the civil rights movement of the 1960s
That’s a big “assuming.” It wouldn’t be treated like Jan 6, those were his friends.
Trump would order them to be squashed and that could easily trigger a civil war.
Sorry but there are like 100 people at each protest. There should be a million marching through Washington… What are we talking about here
Getting a million people to Washington D.C. is a tall order when places like CA, OR, WA are 3,000 miles away, plus people have to, you know, work and stuff.
Yes I hear this all the time. So what you are saying is that 1)people in Europe don’t have jobs and 2)the population density in us is low. Regarding 2) yes it is lower in the US however Washington dc and surrounding area (maybe 2h drive by car or so) have several million inhabitants. Let’s assume 5, if only 1% of them are going we would be talking about at least 50.000 people joining a protest. I don’t have seen any reports about that, are those just not reported?
Fluoride. Domesticated mfer. They’ll put yellow ribbons on a tree for some bullshit.
I’m going to guess
- poor media coverage
- media is explicitly hostile to protests and pro trump/right-wing-extremism
- many people are living paycheck to paycheck + we have minimal labor protection
- years of left-wing organizations being kneecapped (eg: the murder of fred hampton)
A lot of people are angry but there’s not really much organization. As much as I would love someone to take 50,000 of their closest friends, march down to DC, and shoot every republican in the head, without years of organizing that’s just a fantasy. Unfortunately, the right wing has been doing years of organizing and it’s now bearing fruit for them.
There’s no leader. Most people are followers.
I think the reason more people haven’t started to openly organize is mostly concerns about self preservation. This govt obviously doesn’t care about civil liberties and are openly calling anyone not with them “the enemy”. It becomes much harder to publicly and civily organize if there is a substantial chance you’ll be branded a terrorist organization. That’s obviously just my take from my perspective.
Unlike a lot of other countries where there’s been mass mobilization, there’s little recent memory of serious government oppression. Americans have generally had it pretty good when it comes to civil liberties over the last half century or so. They assume they can trust institutions like the courts to do the work of protecting democracy. So most people don’t realize how much worse things will get if they don’t actively resist now.
Ya… I think that’s a really good point, a scary one
Hmmm then we are deeper into this than the world has realized. I think the gilded sheen is still there—but the rot underneath is deeper than the outside thinks.
Meaning, the mass protests that broke out in the millions across the country from 2017 to 2020–that era was the “protest era.”
What are we in now? Sure as hell not a protest era. We are way beyond.
As someone who has closely studied the evolution of spycraft from Ancient Intelligence to the development of the modern Intelligence Community—I know that because of my knowledge—I feel exactly as you say here. If I am taken out now for being too open or too loud, the side of humanity loses me in the fight. And it is so god damn easy to misstep.
We are and have been under massive constant surveillance. The facial scanning at airports has expanded to the physical border if you’re crossing by land. They say they delete your photo—but I assume they’re instead storing the biometrics. This is and will be used against us.
The tech companies in control know most of us better than we know ourselves. We are tracked every second of every day. They don’t need warrants when they already have access to profiles of data on almost every human in America. Even if we were in a normal world—the constitution generally doesn’t apply to private corporations. This is and will be used against us.
There is no safety “protesting” or organizing unless it’s done in a tight, cell operations that have some communication in between but function so that if one goes down the network stays intact. Intelligence and resistance groups survive when they’re federated.
Master’s tools cannot dismantle the master’s house. Organizing on a mass scale across the country without using any tech that touches our adversaries right now is not possible. So, first we must figure out how to share information quickly and easily in a way that excludes big tech capture and government capture.
Figuring this independent communication hurdle out is more important right now than getting out on the street with a geotagged phone and smiling for a drone who is sure to snag your biometric data. And I’m saying this as someone who believes in the people protesting (and who has been in full scale car tipping rubber bullets everything on fire riots).
Wholly agree. Vast majority of US Americans cannot afford to lose what little is left. We are two to three paychecks away from homelessness. Economic subjugation has been in the works across political parties.
In Luigi we trust.
I’m glad we have the freedom to say this shit here.
50501 is hard at work! Also check out https://www.mobilize.us/
They exist, if it gets to the point like with the Floyd protests you can bet Donnie won’t hesitate to point the military at the citizens, then things would get very interesting.
Because Americans are by and large complete cowards.
Your mom’s a coward!
Loads of people in this thread saying they’re happening but media not covering them…
I don’t think that’s really what is meant by “mass protests”. In the not so distant past I would have thought every american man woman and child would be weeping in the streets at the corruption and despotism.
There are protests, and maybe they’re not being covered, but it’s not the type of civil unrest I would have expected honestly.
Europe has roughly the same land mass as the United States and less than half the population. The population density and urbanization is even lower.
So for the USA it’s actually quite a bit to have protests of hundreds in smaller towns and state capitols.
Major cities can muster the large groups, but the consistent and widespread nature of the protests should not be discounted.
Incidentally I am also not seeing counter protests or demonstrations of support.
The media is definitely covering it. If your media sites don’t cover it, block that media site and follow one that does.
That’s… not really what I was getting at.
Okay, I’m going to acknowledge that there are protests, yes, but probably what OP is thinking of something more like the BLM protests during COVID where shit started to get real. There’s a few things going on here:
First: People don’t have the time off like they did during COVID. They also aren’t locked up and less able to ignore the news.
Third: Resignation. I think this is the bigger of the three parts. I know for my part, I consider this a complete loss of the federal government. Even if we somehow avoid a dictatorship and get control of the government back, the damage that’s been done is so deep and complete that we’ll likely never fully recover from it, we’ll just have to move on with things as they are. My efforts are now focused on organizing balkanization. If Texas wants to be a fucking stupid theocracy with prosperity gospel televangelists and the antichrist at the top, who am I to get between them and a good time? Maybe without having to hear about what Daniel the terminally addicted Fox News viewer thinks about Critical Race Theory, we can get some shit done, fix healthcare, get some fucking trains and bike lanes put up.
Second: Lack of organization. The federal government has spent the last 100 years stomping any serious leftist movements both here and abroad. There is almost no living memory of what a real leftist movement looks like, or how to get one going, so we’re all having to roll them from scratch, and there’s still a lot of the old high-roading instincts that were implanted in us over the decades. It’s just going to take time.
You won’t see much about protests until we’re closer to the next election.
What next election?
