Seriously I'm very tired of people outside the US screaming at us to "do more" and "protest harder", and "general strike". Hundreds of thousands ARE protesting. And getting shot with rubber bullets AND real bullets. Gassed. Beaten. Arrested. It's a big fucking country. Texas ALONE is bigger than France.
@JessTheUnstill and that work is having effects. We need solidarity and support and more people in the streets.
@djmitche Trump is getting increasingly lower opinion ratings. There's no "war bump" "really around the flag" happening with Venezuela or the immigrant pogroms. He's negative in every demographic, even including whites. Yes, our Dem reps are feckless shits, but there're increasingly large waves of retirements from both parties, there's real opportunities for many many more progressives in Congress. The special elections and odd year elections went many points farther left than they used to - flipping away from the establishment in NYC and Seattle. 2026 MIGHT flip control of both houses of Congress (the Senate is a wild card, most of the elections this year are in red states so it's going to take a big wave.
Basically, the tide is moving, but US politics is all about resisting progress. So the wave takes a long time to move.
https://www.economist.com/interactive/trump-approval-tracker
@JessTheUnstill If people in California wanted to protest at the nations capitol, it would be like people from Spain having to travel to Moscow to protest. For people in the state that is currently being invaded by ice to travel to the capitol to protest against the people who are actually sending ice, it would be like people in Belgium having to go to Belgrade.
And like, that's not the only reason to protest, and with the US system really you need to influence your local reps, like decisions are made at the federal level but powers and representatives come from the states. So the local protests are doing work and need to be done, and people are trying. But yeah, it's a big friggen country, with a federated structure, and that affects things.
@Shivaekul If you wanted to fill the National Mall from the Capitol to the Washington Monument, it'd take like 1.5 million people. Something like 5% of the entire DC and Baltimore, maybe Philly and Richmond population.
@JessTheUnstill @Shivaekul it does seem daunting for folk in big states or far from DC to get to a “meaningful place” for demonstration.
Just going to a streetcorner with a sign seems futile or invisible.
Except its not. Make traffic slow for a few hours and you will be noticed. Also thinking that if a significant place is needed, many are close enough to their county seat to build the kind of scale for a really righteous rejection of authoritarian murderers
