• They help individuals channel their frustration, isolation and desperation
  • They are a show of strength
  • They typically lead to more political involvement
  • They have already produced wins
  • They must remain nonviolent to be effective
  • They must be in small towns in the heartland, not just big coastal cities

Find one near you at nokings.org

This post uses a gift link, but some people do seem to be prompted to register. I can’t change SF Chronicle policy about that. They also have a history of sending lawyers after people who post archive.today links to their articles, so whatever you do, don’t plug the URL into that site.

  • elrik@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    The biggest win is getting more people involved and comfortable with protesting and non compliance. Today was the largest single day protest in American history and up 40% from No Kings I.

    You can’t go from zero to prolonged protests over night. Each event needs to build on the last with increased experience and new participation.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    I’m not calling for violence, none at all, but peaceful protests like these that one day are and the next day aren’t are just ignored.

    At the very least make it a protest that bever stops. Every day people are on the streets. Block the streets, whatever it takes, within a non violent protest, to get their attention and keep it

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      Abolitionist movements, women’s suffrage movements, and civil rights movements were all successful non-violent resistance movements.

      What did violent resistance movements achieve other than getting a bunch of people killed? Oh right sometimes the leaders of violent resistance movements get power and there is the 100% predictable result of putting violent people into power.

      On the internet there’s always some foreign troll farm whispering “burn down your own capital” in everyone’s ears all of the time in every country they don’t like. But it’s stupid to listen to them, their motives aren’t to improve anything for you, they just want to create chaos.

      Violent resistances don’t accomplish anything. Non-violent resistances have accomplished a lot if you actually study history instead of listening to the troll farms.

        • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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          21 hours ago

          Most fascist movements actually fade away. We tend not to focus on those too much since it’s not as interesting as the fascist movements that started WWII.

          It’s not as exciting to do non-violent resistance, but it makes it difficult for authoritarians to accomplish anything and failed authoritarians don’t have a very long lifespan. There are those that respect authoritarians because “they get things done” but when the opposite happens and nothing works as good as it used to they aren’t respected by anyone. Even an authoritarian needs a base of support to have power and through non-violent resistance this can be accomplished.

          Violent resistance actually helps a fascist movement in the early stages. See the assassination of Charlie Kirk… it didn’t weaken them in any way, it actually made them stronger. A loner with a gun isn’t going to change anything, even a small armed group can’t change anything. You need to build a significant base of support to accomplish anything and that’s what the No Kings group is doing. Most likely the non-violent resistance will succeed, and even in the case where the fascists use violence against a non-violent movement, there’s actually a framework for a resistance movement to succeed by other means.

          You gotta have numbers to accomplish anything and No Kings is building up their numbers. That’s a real movement that can do something more than just whining on the internet.

    • flop_leash_973@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Yep, for these things to matter there has to be no end in sight until those that want the change get heard and taken seriously.

      Bonus points if they are headed up by sympathetic and visible politicians and/or other public figures. A well spoken orator in the vein of MLK at a podium giving a loud united voice to these sorts of movements are what creates something non-violent that is really hard for those in power or those on the side lines that would otherwise support the movement to sweep it under the rug as a one off.

    • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      this,

      it’s shareholders who prop up trump.

      as soon a protests start hurting the economy and their bank accounts they’ll drop trump like a turd

  • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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    2 days ago

    Some months ago I was giving a coworker shit for not doing much of anything. No protests. No volunteering. No donations. Just works his mid six figure job, plays video games, and dates his works-at-google girlfriend. He admitted maybe he could do more. I said I could nag him the next time a big protest happened. He said sure.

    Well, I messaged him with a quote from that conversation. He was like “oh it’s Saturday?” And then no further responses until I followed up a day later. He’s not going to do anything.

    The other guys from that group also don’t do anything.

    Something about rich white straight (-passing) men comfortably just keeping their heads down and not even doing a half assed minimum bothers me.

    But I guess there’s nothing to be done. I’ll be doing my best.

    • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
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      2 days ago

      Get a woman in the group to invite spouses and girlfriends. The men will mostly follow.

      A handful will decide they like cybertrucks more than sex

      • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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        1 day ago

        Interesting idea. I know at least one of them is dating a Google employee who, from what I can tell, is rather “apolitical”. I don’t know about the others, though.

    • scaredoftrumpwinning@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Just look how stupid the administration is sending troops to Portland because all of the “violence”. If Portland was more violent then they could carry the narrative rather than people dressed up in costumes. People will remember the frogs and the absurdity of the situation.

    • takeda@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      They don’t have to, but data shows over and over that non violent ones more often end to being more successful at regime change.

      Benefits for the non violent:

      • more people are willing to join protests
      • much harder to use force to squash protesters (they can still try, but that often motivates more people to join, that is what for example happened in Euromaidan)
      • it is much harder to frame that those protesters are there to hurt ordinary people
      • sends signal for good people in power to do the right thing and that we have their back
      • validates people that they aren’t alone and that it is a lot of us

      We actually have more power than them, they only succeed if we get scared and think there’s nothing we can do. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

    • queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone
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      21 hours ago

      Because violent revolts elevate violent leaders. Because violence is the last, worst option for influencing the behavior of your fellow humans. Nonviolence isn’t more effective than violent political action if all you want to do is swap out who’s in change, but it is more effective (I would argue necessary) if what you want is a nonviolent society governed by a nonviolent democratic government. Once both sides have devolved into violence, really the only thing that sets policy is which faction is able to inflict the most pain. It also proves the fascist rule of “everyone is ultimately violent, so your best bet is to stick with the violent team that shares your religion / skin color / flag / etc.” and dominate through might, rather than trying to build a genuinely peaceful coalition that could, if empowered, build a genuinely peaceful government that makes its citizens’ lives better.

      Or, to put it another way, you can use The One Ring to defeat Sauron, and you may succeed in defeating him, but you will corrupt yourself in the process and become the very thing you sought to destroy.

    • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
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      2 days ago

      Basically, if we start shooting, that will result in a military response, and the US military is really good at massacres.

      • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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        2 days ago

        Until when? The world wars are clear evidence that eventually violence is the correct response.

        Where’s the line?

        • Weirdfish@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          For me there is no line. I do not have a military super power at my disposal.

          If the US military is on one side of the violence, there is no force on earth I’m aware of to counter that.

          We have to protest peacefully and in larger numbers to be sure if that time comes, they are on our side.

          • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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            2 days ago

            You’re 98% of the way there.

            There is only one force on earth that can counter the US military, and that is the US citizenry.

            Despite how little power people think they have, the citizens of the united states in large enough numbers can stop the US military dead in it’s tracks. Preferably through democratic means, but they could also do it physically if they wanted to.

            Americans outnumber their military by over 100 to 1, and with enough cultural pushback, you’d see a lot of those military members resigning, refusing orders, or just strait up walking out on top of that.

  • ClassStruggle@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    They are empty vessels/pressure release valves provided by the oligarchy to prevent organic protest from rising that would actually threaten their existence.

    • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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      Actually, they are extremely effective methods to put flyers in hands. It’s where people sign up for mutual aid groups or find union advocates

      It’s a networking event. The protest aspect is just to pump up the energy and set the theme for the event. This is how you turn liberals into leftists, and connect them with local organizations.

      • HasturInYellow@lemmy.world
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        I feel like both are true. They are pressure releases that keep fast and dramatic change from occurring and the elites do prefer we do polite protests instead of the guillotines we should be building.

        But they are definitely great for turning libs into leftists and networking. They have produced some benefits.

      • ClassStruggle@lemmy.ml
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        My experience has been that most are excited to participate in mutual aid and organizing while they are attending an event like NK, then they ghost and are never seen again.

        • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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          … what? First, how could you possibly “experience” that? Are you recording every single attendee and then going to every single organization and informal collection of people doing mutual aid and organizing to check to see who shows up? That’s literally impossible on multiple levels. At best you could say that about the people you personally know.

          Secondly, even it’s true, even if only 1% of people do anything meaningful afterwards, 1% of millions is tens of thousands of people organizing and activating their communities.

  • Randomgal@lemmy.ca
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    20 hours ago

    They are there to give the illusion of doing something. So the peasants won’t complain that much.

  • ruuster13@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    Wasn’t that long ago in the evolutionary timeline that humans diverged from sheep. For safety reasons we still want to be part of the biggest flock. Seeing huge numbers of people at protests stirs something in our DNA.

  • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    They typically lead to more political involvement

    Only because people have started to become affected personally by government policies. Many of those who voted for Trump regret are also in No Kings protest.

    • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
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      I’ll happily welcome anybody who flips because they recognize how awful Republican policy is. That’s important if we are going to have a durable majority

      • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
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        Republican policy has always been awful but these people thought it will only affect certain groups until they got affected.

      • ClassStruggle@lemmy.ml
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        2 days ago

        Thats why these parades will do nothing, they are ‘protesting’ a cog in the machine instead of the machine. Our current state didnt form in a vacuum over the last few years, its been building for decades. With Democrats being as complicit in its rise as Republicans.

  • Nomorereddit@lemmy.today
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    2 days ago

    I’d love for protests to have wins, someone teaches what they are.

    What i see: politicians fervently getting in photo op moments vs fixing this cluster fuck w living in. I swear every dem wants to get arrested for the gram…while I actually need them to unify on voting agendas.

    • medgremlin@midwest.social
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      23 hours ago

      If the GOP leadership won’t even allow Congress to be in session for votes to happen in the first place, it doesn’t really matter.

  • Asafum@feddit.nl
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    2 days ago

    “we’re experts, we studied administrations where the government was comprised of people that gave at least 1/3 of a fuck what the population thought so naturally my opinion can be applied to an administration that gives absolutely no fucks whatsoever about the population.”

    • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
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      They care enough that they’re trying to talk it down. Having a big chunk of the population turn out to tell off a dictator is a key step in how they lose power

      • ClassStruggle@lemmy.ml
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        Dr. King’s policy was that nonviolence would achieve the gains for black people in the United States. His major assumption was that if you are nonviolent, if you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart. That’s very good. He only made one fallacious assumption: In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.

        Kwame Ture

      • Asafum@feddit.nl
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        I don’t think they are concerned about it in the slightest as far as it making them consider changing anything for the positive, they’re utilizing it as a way to brainwash the base into believing that America is full of traitors so they’re much more accepting of the increase in political persecution they’re going to push towards.