I will be voting, and all my neighbors, family, and friends will too. I wonder how many ballots they can manage to lose?

1. Public protests express implicit power.
They are a threat, demonstrating to those in power the magnitude of what is to come.

2. Public protests increase participation.
They express a promise to current and future participants that they have comrades who will show up, stand beside them, hold the line, and expect the same in return.

3. Public protests increase organization.
Onsite and post-event recruitment is not only the primary means of increasing participation, it remains the most organic and hard-to-digitally-replicate method of expanding organizational efforts on account of network effects.

4. Public protests are grounded.
They represent a ground truth condition that anyone can see for themselves. There are numerous effective strategies for obscuring, sandbagging, or sabotaging public campaigns conducted exclusively on digital networks and platforms, but it is next to impossible to conceal public displays of flesh-and-blood human beings collecting en masse.

E: removed fifth item to avoid frightening people

Fuck this country.

Counterpoint: the US is a fixer-upper democracy worth restoring… then consensually fucking for the enjoyment of all those involved.

Public protests are critically important building blocks for resistance. Here are just a few reasons:

1. Public protests express implicit power.
They are a threat, demonstrating to those in power the magnitude of what is to come.

2. Public protests increase participation.
They express a promise to current and future participants that they have comrades who will show up, stand beside them, hold the line, and expect the same in return.

3. Public protests increase organization.
Onsite and post-event recruitment is not only the primary means of increasing participation, it remains the most organic and hard-to-digitally-replicate method of expanding organizational efforts on account of network effects.

4. Public protests are grounded.
They represent a ground truth condition that anyone can see for themselves. There are numerous effective strategies for obscuring, sandbagging, or sabotaging public campaigns conducted exclusively on digital networks and platforms, but it is next to impossible to conceal public displays of flesh-and-blood human beings collecting en masse.

E: removed fifth item to avoid misrepresenting actual risk of authoritarian violence, which is expected to be low in most places, and thus discouraging those who might otherwise attend.

Since a bunch of dubious comments here are arguing for a general strike instead of tomorrow’s protest, I’m addressing them all together.

While theory generally supports the idea that general strikes, executed successfully, are the greatest explicit power, the huge caveat is that their effectiveness is directly proportional to organized participation among the rank and file. This leads directly to a few historically important corollaries:

0. A premature general strike is worse than no general strike.
Unlike protest events the general strike has no end date. It tests the reliability of mutual support networks and reserves of collective trust. When a general strike fails, the next attempt is twice as difficult.

1. Public protests express implicit power.
They are a threat, demonstrating to those in power the magnitude of what is to come.

2. Public protests increase participation.
They express a promise to current and future participants that they have comrades who will show up, stand beside them, hold the line, and expect the same in return.

3. Public protests increase organization.
Onsite and post-event recruitment is not only the primary means of increasing participation, it remains the most organic and hard-to-digitally-replicate method of expanding organizational efforts on account of network effects.

4. Public protests are grounded.
They represent a ground truth condition that anyone can see for themselves. There are numerous effective strategies for obscuring, sandbagging, or sabotaging public campaigns conducted exclusively on digital networks and platforms, but it is next to impossible to conceal public displays of flesh-and-blood human beings collecting en masse.

5. Public protests invite public demonstrations of authoritarian violence.
Note that I don’t mean incite an increase of violence, but that the violence which would be used regardless, must instead be executed in the cold light of day, out in the open, likely on camera. The recent photo of the pastor, mid-prayer, being shot in the face by laughing federal ICE troops would not exist if no one showed up that day.

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PSA for new folks: please don’t feed the troll in this thread.

Clearly they’re not referring to that type of wealth.

This straw man is favored by conservatives, so to be clear: On the left when we refer to the problem of “generational wealth” we typically aren’t concerned with pedestrian forms of inheritance like a family farm, a house, leftover retirement savings, and so forth. We have in mind the kind of dynastic inheritance that far exceeds the surplus of many lifetimes of labor, since it begets our current crop of billionaire global elites, individuals completely detached from the experience of their fellow man yet powerful enough to control markets and topple democracies.

We can quibble over where to draw that line, but deliberately misinterpreting someone to inject a leftist idea is not how we win anyone over.

And yet, if you ask them whether this describes their opinions (e.g., “do you believe in white replacement theory?”) most conservative voters will just be confused, wounded, or defensive. They don’t think of themselves this way because their bias remains implicit and unexamined by choice, and that’s why it’s so easy to brainwash them.

Let’s say a conservative casually describes scientific racism to you as a common-sense fact, without necessarily knowing it’s called that. If you told them what it was called, or tried to inform them with better science, they would likely feel insulted that you were basically calling them a racist, which they’re not.

But if instead you agreed with them and offered an anecdote from your experience that reinforced their existing bias, you would instantly build rapport and their desire to repay you that kindness would empower you to plant in their mind one new opinion for free.

Even if it’s a lie, they will want to believe it, and if it doesn’t conflict with what they already think is true, they might just take your word for it for now. They can always reinforce it later the way you showed them. Using this method, over time, you can completely replace the conservative’s old value system and sense of truth with entirely new ones that favor your own design.

Because in their heart, conservatives know for certain that they’re not racists, authoritarians, or any other type of bad guy. That’s impossible because they’re the good guys, by definition, and even if good guys aren’t always right they are certainly never wrong.

Maybe not if it’s done in compliance with a federal injunction with a slow-walked appeal process to prevent SCOTUS interference.

Regardless, admin’s shown willingness to depose blue state governors with absolutely no legal basis whatsoever, so I’m not sure it’s avoidable, and by standing their ground they would at the very least avoid ceding an inch without securing yet another instance of illegal administrative overstep on the books.

OK, it seems you’re hearing something very different than what I’m saying. This message is the opposite of fatalism, and is directed at any progressives reading, not you specifically.

The reason Bernie Sanders and AOC are traveling around the US asking young progressives to run is that they are underrepresented by government because they are underrepresented in government.

I fail to see why progressives must wait for DNC reform before we challenge incumbents and vote in primaries, and I fail to see why suggesting we do so in the future is “helping Trump.”

It’s a call to action, not finger-pointing. Are you more concerned with the fight being unfair before than you are winning it now?

We need more progressive challengers at all levels of government, basically everywhere but especially in rural districts.

Consider running for something: https://runforsomething.net/run/

We also need more participation in primaries, by all voters below retirement age but especially millennials.

Know your primaries. Add ‘em to your calendar: https://ballotpedia.org/Democratic_Party_primaries,_2026

Edit: spare yourself the thread below. I tried.

Yes. As the other comment mentions, Kiwix offers the most straightforward solution. They maintain a package repo, toolchain, and a mobile app for syncing and browsing local mirrors of numerous public domain sites.

It’s also pretty easy to locally host un-licensed archives of sites from before they enshittified, but generally you’ll need to sail for full database replicas.

This is the correct response. All that matters is what you intend to do.

You don’t get points for correctly predicting defeat, calling out other’s inaction, or lamenting how unfair the fight is.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but only cowardice tries to spread it among comrades in the midst of the fight.

As an exercise in empathy, I often imagine what the “dumbest and most cruel people on the planet” would be like if they weren’t constantly exposed to reality-shaping propaganda.

In some cases, I don’t even have to imagine. I can just remember what they were like before.

I think that exercise matters for a variety of reasons principle and practical, but the foremost is that it’s the only antidote and inoculant we know.

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