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The “No Kings” protests in every state may have been the biggest day of demonstrations in American history, a data analyst has suggested.

“Based on hundreds of crowd-sourced records of No Kings Day event turnout, and extrapolating for the cities where we don’t have data yet, it looks like roughly 4-6m people protested Trump across the U.S. yesterday,” independent data journalist G Elliott posted to X Sunday.

For reference, that’d mean Saturday’s demonstrations featured 1-2% of the total population of 340 million taking to the streets in more than 2,000 cities to voice their opposition to the increasingly authoritarian, far-right policies the president has pursued since assuming office for the second time.

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[-] OhStopYellingAtMe@lemmy.world 145 points 1 month ago

Biggest protest in US history so far.

[-] wanderwisley@lemm.ee 16 points 1 month ago
[-] arrow74@lemm.ee 10 points 1 month ago

The next one will probably be No Kings 2 combined with anti Iran war protests.

[-] dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

I was gonna say. Now we get to add anti-war protesting to an already lengthy list of complaints. This is going to get huge.

You want to protest the war? We have a whole anti-trump protest movement already warmed up and ready to go. C'mon in.

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[-] the_abecedarian@piefed.social 69 points 1 month ago

The protests show you have support. Find ways to resist ice

[-] distantsounds@lemmy.world 65 points 1 month ago

You just need to get in the way. Slow them down. It works

[-] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

i wonder, what do you, personally, think of slashing ice's car's tires? Do you think it's too violent, or is it just right?

the idea behind it is to "not let them get away with it".

I.e., when ice shows up in a place to disappear citizens, instead of driving away with these people, they get stuck because they can't drive away. This way, they don't get away with it.

[-] Banana@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 month ago

Destroying property, as long as it's not somebody's home, is not violence in my opinion. Government vehicle? Fucking go for it.

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[-] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago

You see masked people with guns don't engage with them or ask for ID. That's dangerous for you, and it's not your job.

Instead, immediately call 911 and report a group of masked individuals with guns at your location.

[-] TipRing@lemmy.world 46 points 1 month ago

It was the first protest I've ever attended.

It won't be the last.

[-] CitizenKong@lemmy.world 39 points 1 month ago

Historically, a regime falls when around 3.5 percent of the general population protest. You can do it, US, I believe in you!

[-] Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de 31 points 1 month ago

Protest by itself achieves exactly jack shit. It's a tool, effective in conjunction with all the others, but you can't expect any change if you just put 3.5% of people on the streets. They will fuck around aimlessly, and then go home.

[-] Natanael@infosec.pub 12 points 1 month ago

Yes - it's a signal that a large fraction of the population is mad, it's not the protest that does it but rather the fact that there's so many people involved in opposing the regime that it becomes difficult for the regime to act and easier for the population to find like-minded to fight back.

It's the willingness to act that makes a difference.

[-] Anomalocaris@lemm.ee 11 points 1 month ago

it's at best a warning sign and a way to organise and prepare actual riots

once movement starts hurting the economy, regimes will collapse.

[-] Mohamed@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 month ago

I think the statistic of 3.5 is more of a symptom rather than the cause of a regime's fall. For 3.5% to protest means that:

  1. Anger has reached a high level in the general population (a lot lot higher than 3.5%),
  2. The state of affairs is dire enough and hopeless enough that the trust that the system can improve on its own is very very low.

Probably other reasons.

[-] MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago
[-] frezik@midwest.social 17 points 1 month ago

Correct stat, but it's not like you get to 3.5% and then the regime magically falls. There's context around that. It requires keeping up the pressure.

We can't fizzle out the way the George Floyd protests did.

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[-] Mister_Feeny@fedia.io 25 points 1 month ago

The other day I was seeing 13.1 million people, now I'm seeing 4-6 million, these are some big gaps.

A ton of people either way, but anyone know why the discrepancies are so big?

I can't even imagine how people are counted for things like this. The one I went to was in a town of about 100k total people so I'm sure it was on the smaller side of things, but if asked how many people were there I'd guess around 2000, but that would still just be a completely wild guess essentially. Is that how they count attendance for these things, wild guesswork?

[-] barkingspiders@infosec.pub 18 points 1 month ago

The 13M type numbers came out early and captured a lot of attention but didn't have much legitimacy, but they anchored people's expectations. The smaller numbers are coming out now and have much more legitimacy. They may be smaller but in the big picture this is all still impressive, the movement is big and growing

[-] cenzorrll@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 month ago

I saw 13.1 million come out from the alt national parks Facebook several days after seeing 5-11 million estimate. From that post it seems like they had people at each protest doing the work, whereas the others are back of the napkin estimates. So I'll go ahead and accept the absolute minimum conservative estimate being 4 million, while probably actually 10+ million.

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[-] elucubra@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I dont know in the US, but in my country, in Europe, where we have a tradition of taking to the streets, the police have developed some pretty good methods for counting, based on helicopter photos, video, and physical references.

I imagine that with drones, lidar, machine learning, and other technologies, you can probably now tally attendance to ridiculous accuracy

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[-] limer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 24 points 1 month ago

The numbers only count if it’s constantly repeated, otherwise it’s just a sort of a national holiday.

“Here in the USA, we are so progressive that we actually protest 4 times a year”

[-] leadore@lemmy.world 15 points 1 month ago

I keep seeing estimates of everything from that 4-6 million up to 11 million or even 13 million.

I also saw estimates of 5 million for the Hands Off protests and these were definitely a lot bigger than that (certainly at least twice as big at my location), so either the Hands Off one was over-estimated or the 4-5 million for No Kings is underestimated.

[-] Deceptichum@quokk.au 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

And it’s achieved nothing at all, so can shitlibs finally stop pretending that protesting does something and start campaigning for violence?

Because while you were feeling good about yourself for standing on the street, they tried to kill the two democrats they needed to flip the state to them. Only one side was going to achieve something and it only took 1 person not millions.

[-] Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de 20 points 1 month ago

Silly liberals, your strategy of standing on the streets pales in comparison with my strategy of sitting at home.

[-] cynar@lemmy.world 15 points 1 month ago

Think of it as a medieval army forming up. An army didn't generally march straight into battle. They took the time to organise and prepare. It also acted as an opportunity to intimidate your opponents into backing down.

The protests are the army forming up. Connections are made, wills reinforced and tied to a more focused cause. In many cases, the powers that be recognise the danger this represents and back down. When they don't, that's when things escalate.

Protests like this are a necessary part of reaching the goal. They are a link in the chain. People don't want violence. It will be accepted, if required, but not joyously.

Just remember, in a blunt head to head fight, the enemy would be the US military. You would need to either defeat them directly, or break their will. What would it take to cause large scale defections within the US army? Are people willing to pay that price?

Failing that, the slower, less drastic methods must be employed. It's a war of psychological attrition, not a fist fight.

[-] some_designer_dude@lemmy.world 14 points 1 month ago

A better use of protest time would be a general strike. Protesting does little more than slow these assholes down in traffic.

[-] barkingspiders@infosec.pub 31 points 1 month ago

These rallies/protests/whatever are exactly how you build momentum for a general strike.

A general strike is useless without a significant percentage of the population joining. As these protests keep happening the attendees trust that the networks that are drawing them together will step with them into more drastic action, like a general strike. We are building a small amount of trust and cooperation between literally millions of people. It's not going to happen overnight.

[-] sunbrrnslapper@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago

I can show up to a protest, but I cannot afford to participate in a general strike. 🤷 I think you would see dramatically different numbers with a general strike.

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[-] insomniac@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 month ago

Isn’t it still significantly smaller than Earth day 1970? I’d also like to see how it compares to percentage of population since the US has more people now than when other big protests took place. But still, good job America.

[-] jsomae@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)
[-] KingCake_Baby@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

Biggest polite walk and talk for two hours.

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[-] ExtantHuman@lemm.ee 6 points 1 month ago

And yet a different auditing group says it was 13.14 million protesters.

[-] PattyMcB@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

Did someone say "tea party?"

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[-] Freshparsnip@lemm.ee 5 points 1 month ago

But did it accomplish anything?

[-] leadore@lemmy.world 14 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Unfortunately change requires repeated and/or sustained protests over time, so we'll have to see. But this was a good sign that it may be possible. If we go to war with Iran, a whole new cohort will be added to the numbers.

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this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2025
685 points (100.0% liked)

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