Continuing the discussion from “Hands Off!” mass rallies scheduled nationwide for April 5:
Anyone planning to join one of these?
This time there’s one within a 20 minute drive of me; organized by (among others) some people I know.
Yeah, I’m gonna be there.
I wonder how many additional locations will have one on the 19th that didn’t have one on the 5th?
Peripheral information. At my “Hands Off!” link I found this interesting advice about bringing your phone (or not) to a protest.
I’m glad to see this may be sustained/growing. Rather than a one-off. Just to keep the resistance in the news and peoples’ minds. Too often I question what isolated protests accomplish. But sustained demonstration of disagreement seems more potentially effective. (Until it drags on with no success and becomes invisible background noise!)
I would like to join one if there’s one in my town, but it’s very hard to drill down and see about locations. Every time I try to follow a link to see about locations, it goes to Facebook or Instagram or TikTok, none of which I am signed up with nor do I have any intention of doing so.
The best I can make out is that there’s one in San Jose, CA, 25 miles away.
ETA: And on nextdoor, if someone starts a conversation to ask about it, the topic immediately becomes a shitshow of MAGAs burying the thread with their garbage.
Every night Rachel Maddow has been covering the continuous smaller protests that have been happening all over the country. They haven’t stopped. There are some every single day.
Try this
I’m also not on Facebook, TikTok, or Instagram and I’ve had no problem finding events.
That site’s showing no events within 25 miles of me. Which isn’t true.
– or, at least, it isn’t true unless the one I know of isn’t registered there or hasn’t shown up there yet; it’s a recent addition. I’ll send a link to that page to one of the organizers.
Somebody has to upload stuff to those websites and maintain the sites. In these cases, probably volunteers. Keep looking.
I don’t need to keep looking; I know where the local event is. It might not have been reported to that site by the people organizing it, though.
Who’s going tomorrow?
I hope the national turnout surpasses the first one.
We went to the protest in Topeka again today. A smaller crowd than the first one, maybe 2000 today instead of 3000 for the April 5 event. It probably didn’t help that it’s Easter weekend, plus rain in the forecast probably kept people away (although rain didn’t happen).
They did not have any scheduled speakers for this one, they just had people from the crowd come up and speak for few minutes each for about an hour, then there was a march around the capitol and then a “photo op” on the steps for all the people with signs. They said they would let more people speak but it just kind of broke up after that.
Small town, small county, very Red district. 60 or so people (maybe more, I’m not good at counting crowds, but at least that many) standing first on all street corners at the busiest intersection and then marching to the county courthouse for a couple of speeches made from the courthouse steps. Lots of passersby honking in favor. A few raised middle fingers or lowered thumbs, but way outnumbered by the sounds and gestures of approval; though I think overall the “stare straight ahead and pretend this isn’t happening” were in the majority of passersby. Some of that group may have been so determinedly looking elsewhere that they didn’t read the signs, and may just have not wanted to get tangled up in any demonstration whatsoever.
This village/county didn’t have a previous Hands Off protest; neither did a small city fairly near by, which I heard also had one today. So we added to what I hope was a larger increase.
Rain was forecast and threatening, but didn’t fall while we were there.
Would there be enough data to compare them?
It would just be estimates. Already the coverage I’m reading is saying the turnout is lower than 2 weeks ago. But also that today’s demonstrations aren’t just marching but also doing community service projects like stocking food banks.
From NYTimes article* today:
The turnouts in some places like Washington and Chicago appeared to be smaller than the protests on April 5. Several thousands marched in the nation’s capital on Saturday, compared with tens of thousands earlier this month. Still, more than 700 events were planned from Jacksonville, Fla., to Los Angeles for Saturday, according to one of the organizers, the group 50501, and in New York, marchers in Midtown Manhattan filled 15 blocks on Madison Avenue.
…
Although many of the events on Saturday were traditional protests, many also were intended to unite local communities through activities such as food drives. Mass protests during President Trump’s first term, like the Women’s March in 2017, often focused on a single topic, but demonstrators on Saturday expressed concern on a wide range of issues: federal job cuts, their 401(k)s, veterans’ rights, Social Security, the war in Ukraine, transgender and gay rights, and misinformation autism and vaccines.
…
My bold.
On April 5 I read that around 1,500 to 1,700 events were planned, meaning someone had registered on one of the protest web sites.
* Not a gift link. I don’t want to use up all 10 of my gift links too fast.
There was a demonstration today at a local Tesla dealership, which I put in an appearance at, then I went a little further on to another one a a local park.
Then I went over to the nearby brew pub and had a couple of beers and a nice lunch. All in all it wasn’t a very strenuous bit of protesting, but I’d like to think I did my bit.
“No events found” for my zip code.
Yeah, it really didn’t do a good job of telling me what was actually happening in Chicago, and when. I have a FB account but not Instagram, but I think I will mention to the 50501 folks that they should really cross-post on their website because not everyone has every social media account out there.
The one I went to wasn’t reported to the overall organizers until after it had happened — just advertised locally.
I attended one in my city today. The name of the protest was “Stop the Billionaire Agenda”. I went to protest DOGE’s dismemberment of federal employment and grants, and the influence of Musk and the other obscenely wealthy Trump toadies. I expected the agenda to focus on protesting these individuals, with a smattering of other common Liberal causes including protesting deportations without due process, supporting Ukraine, and opposing US assistance to Israel.
After being there for over an hour, I’d heard the word “Trump” maybe 10-20 times, “Elon” and/or “Musk” maybe once, no mention of other American Billionaires and Oligarchs. However, “Genocide”, “Gaza”, “Israel”, and “Palestine” were mentioned by every single speaker, and were the focus of at least two speeches, for a total of nearly a hundred mentions combined (I obviously wasn’t counting on a notepad, but the prevalence was impossible not to notice). Ukraine was not spoken of, and I saw one lonely blue and yellow flag (I would have brought mine from a pro-Ukraine protest I attended, but I didn’t think it would be appropriate to mix the message for a focused protest). We did get a speech from the local Socialist chapter telling us that we need to dismantle Capitalism because the Democratic Party produced Genocide Joe.
I didn’t feel like I had a place there. If I were king (heh) I’d cut off the Netanyahu government from military assistance until settlement annexations in the West Bank were reversed, and ROE in Gaza were tightened and a mechanism to assess compliance was in place. However, this was like when comedians such as Bill Maher and Dave Chappelle spend a whole show on trans jokes and then insist “We’re not transphobic; can’t you people take a joke?”
I don’t regret going; stopping fascism in this country supersedes any foreign policy disagreements I have with the demonstrators, but I felt genuinely uncomfortable. All of the speakers had a right to protest Israel to their hearts’ content, but they should have advertised the protest as such so I’d known what I was walking into. I’d also like to add strong social safety nets like UHC without completely dismantling the Capitalist system, thank you very much.
I’d love to see a protest with a speaker selection organized by moderate Dems and Lincoln Project Republicans.