Seem to be a lot of people posting this so I'll just repost what I wrote elsewhere :

The 3.5% theory is extremely questionable. The first paragraph of (the BBC) article is problematic if you know like 3 things about Philippine politics.

I’ve dug deeper into the data and it is very opinionated how it defines “success” and violence/nonviolence.

I’m not a pro-violence guy, i defend liberation struggles, but work to create educational/political/cultural revolution. Also the 3.5% mobilized population would be rad AF in USAmerica.

I haven’t read the whole book the study is based on, though I was working on it for a while. But IMO it misrepresents historical fact to make a nice-sounding abstraction, and I’m not sure how people will react to its failure, which would be based on a faulty premise.

We need to be more focused on what we will do with the power that will come from mobilizing like 12 million Americans rather than hoping some members of the political class notice and decide to fix things. The actual problem is that power is kept out of the hands of workers. The thought of building that power and giving it away would be a catastrophic blow to our movements.

The political system is empowered to fix problems, but not equipped. As far as I can tell, the only people who have ever created or fixed a goddamn thing in all of history have been workers.

A good number of sympathizers were too busy working to stay afloat

There are protests damn near every week... I've gone to at least 20 this year

Protesting every day might be less effective without economic disruption going with it.

That's just the nature of the news cycle, we've had over one mass shooting a day this year and it's not as much news as 10 years ago when they were much less frequent.

If it's always happening, it isn't news.

All of that said, there's other ways to protest that don't need to be news. Like out front of ice buildings. When you see ice harassing folks, disrupting them, recording them etc.

Who disagrees with this?

That should be the point of protests. Reminding them that the government should work for the people, and that they will be held accountable for what they did. Because if you don't, no one else will

I think both are kind of true. They have more power than perhaps any administration in history given how stacked the Supreme Court is and how subservient the entire GOP is to Trump and the billionaire apparatus.

That said, I DO sense a panic of how so many months have gone by and midterms are right around the corner. With Trump's approval-ratings plummeting to Jimmy Carter levels already and their lack of justifying consolidation of power while Democrats are energized — IF they don't succeed by next midterms, GOP are going to lose pretty big.

Prop 50 Yes in California is a must as well.

Dude what. Last presidency he got scared during the anti-abortion law protests of May 2019 and installed new fencing around the Whitehouse that are roughly twice as high.

https://apnews.com/united-states-government-f0dae0200dd945dcb868d98b1e8ff378

Then he had additional fencing and concrete barriers installed around the already huge fences during the BLM/George Floyd protests, and when one of those fences was partially pushed down (still leaving a 14 foot fence protecting the Whitehouse), he ran off and hid in a bunker.

Then he spent the next weeks telling everyone he's very brave and did not go to a bunker. While Whitehouse leakers confirmed he did.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/06/trump-is-literally-building-a-wall-around-the-white-house

He's repeatedly shown he's a scared little piss-baby, especially of protesters.

Thewhite house panicked so hard the President of the united states posted a video of homself with a crown on shitting on the protesters. Think about that for two seconds.

A dictator is always afraid of the people the rule over. Law is not something they fear. It is lawlessness. Protests is the way to show them a glimpse of that.

People need to accept this.

They've seen zero drop in the money they're pocketing or stealing.

They're seeing zero ramifications for their actions.

So they'll keep doing what they're doing.

All good, but saying that antifa is a group of rock-throwing radicals is dumb at best and plays into the fascist's narrative.

The people that oppose this administration don't want anarchy and guillotines though. They want integrity, law, order, justice, etc. The teeth of the anti-MAGA movement will have to come through at least semi-legitimate means, i.e., I think it will have to come through the authority of state governments.

And we see state governments become increasingly aggressive against this administration. These marches embolden the mayors and governors that oppose MAGA; they say that the people are with them.

Can we just stop policing people's acts of resistance? At this point I'm more upset at the people doing absolutely nothing other than maybe post stuff online.

The important part is that the protests are carrying weight with other people who care. The protests have been getting bigger and bigger, and when someone who cares about the cause but doesn’t show up sees this it gives them more imperative to show up too next time. The larger the protests get, the more likely that it will lead to a general strike, which is what will make a very big difference. Once the billionaires and centimillionaires genuinely feel like their profits are being threatened, they’ll pull the administration’s strings.

Please, start the rolling out of the first guillotine and gallows. Fire the opening salvo. If you are going to shit on people doing something you consider to not be enough, step up and lead a stronger resistance rather than standing by and bitching that someone should do something.

Those people did more than you this weekend. I’m sorry that trying to inspire change amounts to masturbation for you.

When you instigate violent change with a purely positive outcome and no ground-swell behind you, we’ll make you a statue. Until then, these protests will continue.

Do not split

They stopped estimating crowd sizes because it made Trump look bad

Seven thousand thousand.

Where they just counting like some suburb of some city?