I’m shocked that I haven’t seen one protest yet. Is the media suppressing them? If there aren’t any, why?

  • TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.ca
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    11 days ago

    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.

    • whodrankarnoldpalmer@startrek.website
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      11 days ago

      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.

      • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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        10 days ago

        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.

  • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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    11 days ago

    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.

  • vfsh@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    10 days ago

    It’s being suppressed, I can’t find the graph I saw yesterday but cumulative daily protests this year have far outclassed the protests from 2017, yet there’s very little coverage of it from the major outlets.

  • Tezzerets_Tea_Time@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    There are regular protests of thousands of people all across the country, but it never hits top headlines. There aren’t nearly as many as there should be, but we’re largely a broken people, a collective beaten dog cowed in the corner. We’re burnt out. Literally every direction we turn, things are falling apart. The working class is almost entirely one or two paychecks from homelessness. Minimum wage hasn’t increased in 15 years despite year after year of record earnings and productivity. A third of the country genuinely believes a rapist conman is their literal biblical savior.

    We’re fucking tired, man.

  • ElleOhh@lemm.ee
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    10 days ago

    Estimates show 65-75% of households live paycheck to paycheck. We financially can’t miss a day of work, let alone long stretches. Or we are allowed so little time off that it has to be saved for sick/emergency days (if you get any at all!).

    That’s setting aside things like long hours, multiple jobs, unaffordable daycare, lack of medical care on top of hard hitting inflation without any wage changes.

    It’s by design. It’s like intentionally under feeding slaves so they don’t have the energy to run away.

    • smeenz@lemmy.nz
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      10 days ago

      Hang on, that doesn’t sound like the American dream I’ve been told about !

      • Jamablaya@lemmy.world
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        10 days ago

        The American dream was the freedom to pursue your goals, not those rewards being handed to you. Common misconception. You had a bunch of kids before financially ready or didn’t go to the right school, picked up a felony young, whatver you did, that was on you, by the old timers logic. Literal royalty just wasn’t preventing you anymore.

        • TronBronson@lemmy.world
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          9 days ago

          Oh I thought the American dream was having crony capitalism destroy your small business and send you to work at the Walmart that replaced you. Only to have to rely on government benefits because its the only job in 50 miles and it pays $7.50 an hour.

          Thats the rural american dream baby. Sprinkle some opioids on it. It’s glorious.

          • Jamablaya@lemmy.world
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            8 days ago

            It’s fucking amazing how people that populate these sites are incapable of having a simple, historical fact explained to them without whining about how bad they have it, from their own choices.

            • TronBronson@lemmy.world
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              7 days ago

              I just described rural America. From sea to shining sea. Did you actually have a historical fact? It sounded like you were just were just speculating without conculsion and casting judgement like that was the only intent you had.

                • TronBronson@lemmy.world
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                  1 day ago

                  Oh so you don’t care about actual americans. Thats all i needed to know. I’m not whining, im doing fine myself. Clearly i didn’t die from Oxy overdose and im happily retired forcused on gardening. I just care about the people who’s lives were ruined, i forgot empathy offends you fucking snowflakes so next time i’ll tone it down. Good luck feeding your welfare dependant family memebers this year!

  • VanillaFrosty@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    50501 is very active, we’re hitting the streets all the time. I’ve been at a demonstration almost every week for the past month and a half. Please, join us!

    Edit: From one of my other comments in case you’re uneasy about getting involved:

    I don’t even like talking to people in the first place.

    SAME SAME SAME. When I started confronting these [Trump supporters] people in my life my anxiety would flare up to the point my voice would shake lol. And I never in my life thought I’d be out marching in the streets.

    It gets easier, but it takes practice (Prozac helps too). Now the anxiety has become anger. But not anger at them, rather anger at the system. Anger at what we let this country become. Anger at how lazy and complacent I’ve become.

    Do your best, stay safe, and most important of all don’t get scared. Get angry.

  • MochiGoesMeow@lemmy.zip
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    10 days ago

    Whenever I attend a protest, there is 0 media stations in attendance or covering it.

    By design. They’re under control.

    Honestly, I think everyone’s waiting for the masses to be just pissed off enough to kick it up a notch.

  • agent_nycto@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    Ok so everyone wants one, right? Feels like it’ll be dramatic and big and change and fix everything, even if it gets violent.

    But there’s problems with that, not only in execution but also results.

    One problem is the US is massive. It would take almost as much planning as a moon landing to effectively organize a protest that large, even if you only do the continental 48 states. Some of those states alone are as large as some European countries, some are larger, so the size alone gets in the way of things.

    Then you have the problem with getting all the people protesting to agree to a cohesive protest. Where to protest, what to protest specifically about, and to have a solid list of demands. Trying to get that amount of people to agree on anything alone would be huge. Like my mother says, it’s like herding cats.

    And then there’s the matter of getting that info out there. Occupy wall Street and BLM did have a comprehensive list of demands but the media pretended they didn’t. Almost all media is owned by like, six corporations, so even getting the instructions for that protest would be incredibly hard. And lest people forget, those media companies are final, so most of the media in other countries hearing about this will have just as much information surpression and do already. So it would be incredibly hard to get a comprehensive plan, demands, and instructions out el to everyone.

    Also don’t forget that we have the technological spying that didn’t exist before. Cameras are everywhere. Not only in your phone, but on almost every street. People even put those Ring doorbells on their homes and that company sells it’s video footage to the police, and doesn’t turn off, so any protest could be monitored and nipped in the bud. We have whole agencies devoted to surpressing protests and entire handbooks in infiltrating them.

    Then there’s logistics and provisions. Most Americans can’t afford to travel, much less take a week or two off of work, or a month, to protest long term. We can barely afford to keep ourselves fed with what we’re getting paid, and if we were protesting in one specific location, most of us couldn’t take the time to get there much less afford to. We have to feed the majority of almost an entire continent in one location for an extended period of time.

    And if it was one specific location, the hospitals, hotels, grocery stores and restaurants would be so overwhelmed that they couldn’t handle everyone.

    Speaking of hospitals, if, as in when, the police and military attacked the protest, most people could never afford the medical treatment to be able to get patched up, much less their lives saved.

    And speaking of the police and military, we have the most militarized police force on the planet. Our police don’t have just batons, they have live rounds of ammunition and full on tanks. And they are more than willing to use them on civilians, especially in protesters. Look up Blair Mountain and the Kent State shooting. Not only could this crush a protest, but people would have to be ok with the idea they would very likely die.

    And our prison system, being for profit, would salivate at the idea of getting more slave labor en masse, and the current administration is more than happy to detain people over trivial things. So everyone would have to be ok with life imprisonment if they didn’t get shot.

    On top of that, not everyone is on board. About a third to a half of the country is in favor of what’s happening and have a cult around Trump and Musk. A lot of people voted for this and are in favor of it, because they really, really hate the liberals, Democrats, gays, minorities, etc. There’s a whole media pipeline for this that they listen to, especially young people who normally are the type to protest this stuff. So there would be resistance from civilians on top of not everyone being in favor of the protest.

    Then there’s the problem of what that protest would actually accomplish. Even if you pulled it off, because of the supply issues, it would be short lived. Maybe a week or two, being surpressed by the military and police, and demonized in the media. The oligarchs would simply wait it out. It wouldn’t enact long term change, even if everyone could agree with what they want changed in the first place. So it might not be effective even if it was pulled off.

    And the primary opposition party, which should be doing anything, has adapted a strategy of self preservation. Concede to the fascists for now, bide your time, then come election season tell everyone that you are the better and only choice (because winner takes all so they are the only alternative) and hope for a blue wave in four years. Can’t make any changes if you’re not in power, so do what you can to keep it now and believe that if things get bad enough now people will come crawling back. So very little actual support for a protest would come from on top.

    And then, if we look at history, a lot of rebellions needed other countries to support them in order to be successful. Most of them had outside influence from other major powers. The other major powers right now are either in favor of the government, turning fascist themselves, or if they did intervene would risk starting a war with the US which has the biggest military in the history of humanity. So not a lot of help would come from the outside, if any.

    So while we also would like a massive protest, there are huge issues in the way of effectively pulling it off.

    So what’s been happening has been local efforts. You might not hear about town hall protests or stuff in individual state capitals in other countries, but those smaller fires are burning. There’s been economic protests, like the backlash against Tesla and the no buying day, which apparently was started to get people to dip their toes into a national protest. There’s been a lot of smaller community organizing, which hopefully adds up. I think and hope there will be more individual direct action, perhaps more Luigi strategies on specific individuals, as things get worse. Maybe more guerilla tactics, French resistance style efforts, are what is going to happen rather than a massive protest.

    Tldr: We ARE doing stuff here. We hate this more than anyone. The change will have to come in less exciting ways than a big, national rebellion, so sorry you’re not getting as much of a spectacle, we’d like that, too, but there’s a lot of prep work that would need to be done to pull it off that needs to happen first. We aren’t sitting by and letting this happen, and we are working towards fixing things.

  • ohulancutash@feddit.uk
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    11 days ago

    There are, they are being reported. I couldn’t speculate as to why you are missing them.

  • bluegreenwookie@bookwormstory.social
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    11 days ago

    There have been but i suspect they may have slowed down.

    I feel like one reason why trump has crashed the economy is to hurt people so they are too busy working and struggling to be able to protest his fascist policies.

    It’s hard to help your neighbor when you are drowning yourself

      • bluegreenwookie@bookwormstory.social
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        11 days ago

        But people aren’t starving, they are struggling. That’s the difference.

        They want us exhausted so we can’t protest. But they don’t want us so desperate we bring out the guillotines.

        • VaalaVasaVarde@sopuli.xyz
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          11 days ago

          Other countries go for a wide gap between individual load and guillotines, while the USA is actively searching for the sweet spot just before guillotines.

        • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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          11 days ago

          I’m just saying that struggling isn’t much of an excuse. You think Egyptians weren’t struggling before the Arab Spring?

          • stickly@lemmy.world
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            10 days ago

            The Arab Spring is a great case study on why that type of resistance will never happen in the USA. The proliferation of social media was a key spark in those movements. Let’s take a look at what stance those platforms take today:

            • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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              10 days ago

              Wasn’t social media necessary because the government blocked SMS? We now have plenty of alternative solutions that aren’t under the control of billionaires…

              • stickly@lemmy.world
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                10 days ago

                Any that are widely in use or accessible?

                Signal is based in San Francisco and, last I checked, runs on AWS/Azure. Bsky is similar, US based and operated. Google/Apple could be ordered to delist anything from their stores preventing wide adoption of other apps.

                Best I can think of is something very decentralized like Briar or Matrix/fediverse/i2p alternatives. As of right now, adoption of those is limited. If you pulled the lever tomorrow and cut the major platforms, most people wouldn’t even know where to go as a fallback.

          • bluegreenwookie@bookwormstory.social
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            10 days ago

            Im afraid arab spring is something im not all that knowledgeable about so i can’t really speak to that.

            But there have been mass protests in the us and riots too. Just look no further than attacks on teslas.

            However there is also a culture of non violent protests in the us that has been taught to us throughout our lives while the truth about how that actually works and the fact non violent protests weren’t the only things happening has been surpressed unless you go researching things for yourself (or it’s our shitty education system, can’t say which for sure).

  • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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    10 days ago

    I’m not sure where these questions are coming from, there are tens of thousands of people conducting dozens of protests across every single state at every level of government, and multiple stories about those protests in this feed.

    there’s absolutely some media suppression since Trump is friends with the owners of some media outlets, but there is also a lot of media documenting the literally Nationwide protests.

    there’s a super popular post like a few tiles up about the dozens of ongoing Tesla protests going on that are tanking the company.

  • Nangijala@feddit.dk
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    10 days ago

    There have been protests in every single state for awhile now. At least that is what I have heard through the grapevine. I’m Danish so I haven’t seen the protests with my own two eyes, but I have seen pictures, read posts and talked to Americans who are out protesting. From what I have been told, it is unheard of that there are protests for the same cause in all 50 states at the same time. It is historic, but I’m not surprised that the greatest president who ever lived wouldn’t want that information to slip out in the media. It would hurt his fee-fees bigly.

    • BreadAndThread@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      Next Saturday is a massive country wide protest at 500 Tesla dealerships and charging stations all across the country. I’m hoping that’s too hard for the media to hide.

    • Triasha@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      Yeah all 50 states is crazy. New York and Cali have enough people to get a protest going at the drop of a pin.

      Texas has Austin, you get protests there. East coast cities, Chicago, you can get protests.

      But there are dozens of states that just don’t have that kind of energy or population density, but they do now.

    • socialjusticewizard@sh.itjust.works
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      10 days ago

      These days i get quite a lot of US news off Lemmy, and aside from Tesla torchings (great start) I mostly just hear about people going to rallies. Are there actually americans out there obstructing something? If so, why aren’t they sharing their own news for solidarity and motivation of masses? How is capitalist media causing fediverse content to be censored?