this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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One thing to keep in mind is how geographically huge the US is comparatively and it makes it a lot harder to organize massive protests. Serbia is about the size of Wisconsin which is a relatively medium size state. Add that into the fact that the US is a very car dependent country where some people live 2 - 3 hours away from their capital or even a city. I'm not using this as an excuse, just a possible reason why ours in the US aren't big yet. I went to a couple in my state and I was extremely happy with everyone there but also extremely disappointed with the turnout. And I had to drive an hour and a half just to get there. I can't imagine how difficult it is for others in the bigger states.
It could be a lot of cope on my end, but I can't just assume everyone is just giving up. The last thing the US needs right now is apathy.
You've got to be kidding me. I'm sitting here in Canada preparing for the unthinkable because the citizens of the country closest to us in every way can't be bothered to take a day off work or get from behind the screen. Need apathy? If you haven't noticed they're full on into it for decades already.
I mean the problem is the people who are being worst affected by Trump are the kind of people who genuinely can't afford to take a day off work without being fired and being thrown into homelessness. There are protests in the US but due to the lackluster worker protections we have people generally either can't make it to them or are well enough off that they just really don't care enough to go out. So they end up being much smaller then the one in Europe. Also add to that fact that a bunch of people here are dumb enough to like Trump and what he's doing and the result is much smaller protests.
It's also worth mentioning that there WERE mass protests when Trump was elected the first time, and people have been standing up against MAGA for a decade at this point. And none of it has kept MAGAts from continuing to put him into power. I think Americans are pretty justified in thinking the protests won't accomplish anything.
I think places you can look for American resistance at the moment are in the courts, boycotts, and in the townhalls yelling at their representative. There are some people protesting, but most liberals are giving a lot of thought to what is strategically effective at this point.
I mean I think even the mass protests we did have are nothing compared to the size of protests in Europe. I think that's a mix of general American attitudes both with people's general apathy and the extremely individualistic ideals that Americans tend to have pushed on them from a young age. As well as a mix of the lack of worker protections like I mentioned before. I think if we could pull off the kind of numbers we see in Europe in even a couple of big American cities they would be very effective. Protests are the kinds of thing that can help build community since while you're there you can talk to people and find groups to join to push for what you believe in. And I mean compared to the other forms of resistance you mentioned two of those, courts and town halls, effectively are protests as you're going to a town hall to protest your representatives or you're going out and protesting to tell the court to do more to stop this. That's why I think we need to focus on building up communities to help breakthrough the apathy and the intensely individualistic attitude people here tend to have, as well as setting up things like mutual aid to provide more of those safety nets that the government is abdicating on right now to help those who normally can't afford to come out and participate. So that when there's a push against something it doesn't just take the form of hundreds of people showing up at something but is thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of people showing up like what you've seen in Europe. Of course that will take time and at least from what Ive seen the number of people being involved in community groups has gone up but definitely not as fast as the number of people angry at Trump and I think trying to funnel those people into groups to help organize is gonna be the big thing that actually lets us fight back and oppose what's going on right now.