“No kings in America:” More than 1,000 protest in downtown 50501 movement
https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/san-antonio-50501-downtown-second-protest-20284512.php?utm_source=marketing&utm_medium=copy-url-link&utm_campaign=article-share&hash=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZXhwcmVzc25ld3MuY29tL25ld3MvYXJ0aWNsZS9zYW4tYW50b25pby01MDUwMS1kb3dudG93bi1zZWNvbmQtcHJvdGVzdC0yMDI4NDUxMi5waHA%3D&time=MTc0NTE1MzkyMTA5NQ%3D%3D&rid=Njg5NzlhMmQtMmZhMy00YTAwLWFmYTktMjAzOGNkYjg4MDcw&sharecount=MA%3D%3D
This was quite a few more people than April 5. A mile-long march is kind of impressive.
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Protestors then marched along a mile-long that traced a square through downtown, going south from Main Plaza to East César Chávez Boulevard, east to South Alamo Street, North to East Commerce Street, then West back toward Main Plaza.
The demonstrators carried signs that read “No Kings In America,” “No one voted for DOGE,” “Hands off my social security,” and “Eggs are so Expensive Because ALL The Chickens Are In CONGRESS.”
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Maybe you should have been at ours instead. There was a great deal of anti-Musk chanting, and a good deal of “No Kings!”. There was at least one person with a sign about Palestine. There was at least one person and/or dog with a sign about a whole lot of things; Ukraine and deportation included; I didn’t take a count of how many signs were about each. I’d say the third major focus of our particular group, after Trump and Musk, was trans rights; due probably to that being one of the primary foci of the organizers of the protest.
The particular groups are going to vary. I think this is a probably-necessary result of this administration’s technique of throw-everything-at-the-fan-at-once. What we need to do is to prevent this from dividing opposition and instead add up all these multiple outrages into an overall force.
Any idea why there haven’t been any of the “occupy” type of protests that we saw over the past few years? If they occurred in blue areas, I imagine the administration would just view them as further cause for disdain. And if in red areas, could imagine harsh responses. I’m not sure how effective those protests were, but I’m just curious about why the current protests seem so much more modest.
Yesterday I went down to the demonstrations (to get my fair share of abuse) and actually they were very peaceful and respectful. I think that may be related to the fact that outside of a few obvious grandchildren there was almost no one there under 60. Myself included
There were a lot of very clever signs covering various obnoxious things that Trump has done, but most of them were along the lines of, “Bring things back to the way they used to be. I don’t like these changes.” It seemed to me that the opposition to Trump was fundamentally very conservative in the original sense.
I find I have a problem with this. Trump has broken the government very badly, and I don’t see how it can be put back together again in it’s pre-Trump form. Even if the mid terms go well, and there are more or less honest elections in 2026 and 2028, a significant portion of the electorate isn’t satisfied with the status-quo.
If what you mean by “more modest” is “involving fewer people and/or fewer places”: I don’t think that’s true at all.
If what you mean by “more modest” is “keeping the protest legal and not occupying public places for extended periods of time”: that’s quite deliberate. We’re trying to win people living in the areas over, not to piss them off.
I don’t know anything about what makes a protest effective. To the extent any are. But my impression is that the past couple of days of protests have been awfully easy to ignore. A brief search suggests this Saturday’s were smaller than the previous ones. Not at all sure what that indicates - is it evidence of “winning people over”?
Not sure how much the occupy and BLM protests accomplished either, not to mention the “lock me up” 60s-70s. But they did seem harder to ignore.
I don’t know if they were smaller on average; but I think there were a lot more of them. And people are probably more likely to keep showing up if they don’t have to travel as far.