And thousands of dollars that most households would go homeless if spent, and, oops you're now fired and have no health insurance, hope you didn't have any medicine you need to stay alive.
America is amazingly structured in ways that make such protests nearly impossible.
Listen.
While you're listing me all the reasons why it a big protest like this would be unfeasible for most Americans, I'm 100% sure you could find 600,000 Americans who would say:
"I could do that."
It doesn't have to be you.
It doesn't have to be everyone.
It just needs to be a lot of people.
Ok, but that means Belgrade has about 1 million people, and the demonstrators correspond to 1/3 of that. If Washington DC has 0.5 million people, and 1/3 take to the streets, it’s 165 000 in a demonstration. Call in some neighbouring states and you should manage 200 000 which is pretty impressive.
Dude. The 2017 DC Women’s March drew 470,000. Other major cities held their own the same day for a combined turnout of several million. And…it made such a splash that here you are, less than a decade later, telling us that a protest of 1/3 of DC’s 2017 turnout would fix us right up.
I thought I was responding to the question, "what do we do?"
Not, "what does it take to fix this?"
The public aren't going to fix a burgeoning dictatorship on their own. But a big thing the public can do is send a deafening message that supporting this president is a politically untenable position.
A lot of us feel like we’ve been doing that for years—for several presidents. I’m not saying the correct response is to do nothing but we don’t know *what* to do. I really cannot overstate how much there is a sense that the usual script has just failed over and over again. We need a new one.
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I'm so sorry.
I didn't take into account that protesting would be hard. And the travel to and from the protest might be days. And there's personal risk involved.
It was easy for Serbians to protest against their authoritarian government because it was so convenient and safe for them.
America is amazingly structured in ways that make such protests nearly impossible.
While you're listing me all the reasons why it a big protest like this would be unfeasible for most Americans, I'm 100% sure you could find 600,000 Americans who would say:
"I could do that."
It doesn't have to be you.
It doesn't have to be everyone.
It just needs to be a lot of people.
250 in a large city.
And that's when it's expected behavior!!!!
We are so much more powerful than we know.
Washington DC has less than *Half* the population of Belgrade.
Not, "what does it take to fix this?"
The public aren't going to fix a burgeoning dictatorship on their own. But a big thing the public can do is send a deafening message that supporting this president is a politically untenable position.
I'm sure you can find people in red states who are raring to protest.