Sept. 1 Workers Over Billionaires is not intended to be as large as HANDS OFF or NO KINGS. Tomorrow, people will protest at approximately 1000 locations. HANDS OFF was at ~1300 locations and NO KINGS 2170. Each had roughly 2500 people with 5-6 million total June 14 which is the all time U.S. one-day protest record. The next BIG one is rumored to be on October 18.
From the numbers above you'll see that growth was achieved by adding locations rather than growing the number of people at each. To that end I suggest planning more protest locations and there's 7 weeks to do so.
The two largest protests this year (April 5 and June 14) included a coalition of over 200 partners and that takes time to coordinate, execute, and recover from. The smaller Good Trouble Lives On protests were to partner with new people and tomorrow's Labor Day events are to combine forces with labor. Broad movements -- age/demographics -- have proven to be historically important.
Edit: Good Trouble Lives On and tomorrow's actions don't appeal to everyone and will be smaller. A big tent day like HANDS OFF or NO KINGS includes many sub-interests.
How would one know that it hadn't been intended to be as big? Because this messaging has not been getting out, this is my first time hearing that that was the intention or hearing that the October one is intended to be bigger.
Even so, though, turnout is also WAY down at the places that are having them. I am here at the rally in Portland and we got at least 50,000 people for No Kings, and probably close to that many for the rallies in April, and the one today is maybe like 1,000. I'm feeling pretty pessimistic at this point
Like so many you feel the movement is at Stage 5 when it's still working its way through Stage 4. Protest is just one part of a much greater whole. Are you involved in your local group?
Stage 2: The intensity of public feeling, opinion, and upset required for social movements to occur can happen only when the public realizes that the governmental policies violate widely held beliefs and values.
Stage 3: The “take-off” of a new social movement requires preconditions that build up over many years.
Stage 4: New social movements surprise and shock everyone when they burst into the public spotlight on the evening TV news and in newspaper headlines.
Stage 5: After a year or two, the high hopes of movement take-off seems inevitably to turn into despair. Most activists lose their faith that success is just around the corner and come to believe that it is never going to happen. They perceive that the powerholders are too strong, their movement has failed, and their own efforts have been futile. Most surprising is the fact that this identity crisis of powerlessness and failure happens when the movement is outrageously successful—when the movement has just achieved all of the goals of the take-off stage within two years.
I see that. Occasional protests, which the elites ignore, are a regular feature of the American system. So I would say we're in the "business as usual" stage. A few months ago it looked like things were building up to something bigger, but that no longer seems to be the case
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