> Trying to achieve the threshold without building a broader public constituency does not guarantee success in the future

Goodhart's law

Am American "riot" is a European city after a football game.

Would that Americans use the term more accurately.

The example of Ukraine is complicated, and that situation has become a nightmare With what followed - though in fairness to the Ukrainians, the west could have done a hell of a lot more, and still could.

The Arab Spring turned into The Arab Winter in a wave of repression. Some good has come out of it but the link you have provided says this:

Although the long-term effects of the Arab Spring have yet to be shown, its short-term consequences varied greatly across the Middle East and North Africa. In Tunisia and Egypt, where the existing regimes were ousted and replaced through a process of free and fair election, the revolutions were considered short-term successes.[337][338][339] This interpretation is, however, problematized by the subsequent political turmoil that emerged in Egypt and the autocracy that has formed in Tunisia. Elsewhere, most notably in the monarchies of Morocco and the Persian Gulf, existing regimes co-opted the Arab Spring movement and managed to maintain order without significant social change.[340][341] In other countries, particularly Syria and Libya, the apparent result of Arab Spring protests was a complete societal collapse.[337]

I think the article talks about nonviolent protests - the first two were anything but.

The Slovakian incident worked, because Slovakia has a working representative democracy.

In a deeply flawed, or downright nondemocratic system, like Serbia or Georgia, it's very hard to drive change through nonviolent protests.

It also bears mentioning, that the key issue with protesting, is that it, legally speaking does nothing. Legal representatives are under no obligation to do anything in response to protests.

The usual boogie man.

Did you read that link? It’s hardly damming.

“Through a fund, the foundation issued a $3 million grant to the Indivisible Organization that was good for two years "to support the grantee's social welfare activities.” The grants were not specifically for the No Kings protests, the foundation said.”

If 7 million people protested, that 3 million over 2 years sure went a long way. They work for pennies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2025_No_Kings_protests

I think you are making assumptions that are not correct. And as a ‘normal person’ surrounded by ‘normal people’ at the last No Kings protest, I very much object to your framing.

There’s a big difference between funding organizing groups like Indivisible (which, yes, foundations linked to Soros do - although I suspect not at the magnitude you’re imagining), and directly paying protestors (which doesn’t happen to any notable degree)

Want to understand this? Go to a local Indivisible or Democratic Party meetup and you will see the normal people with your own eyes. Go to a big protest like ‘No Kings’, or a rally during campaign season and you’ll be surrounded by ‘normal people’.

I’d personally be fine with restrictions on where funding for political organizations comes from (although I’m not sure how you make that compatible with the 1st amendment) - but what you’re saying is ridiculous, and it’s a worrying symptom of our current political climate that people can be so out of touch as to believe it.

> No normal person engages in this stuff

On top of being false, that's kind of a non-statement. You probably don't see average people around you protesting because if the average person was engaging in this then that'd imply close to half the country protesting. But they're definitely out there even if a small minority.

The average person doesn't have the time to protest (because how do you protest when you need to go to a job to put food on the table and keep health insurance). Or they're doing fine with the current state of affairs even if they don't like what's happening. Protesting is naturally always going to be a fringe thing and you better hope for everyone's sake that it stays that way or else you end up with a coup or revolution like in less developed nations.

What does it mean to "fund protests"? I'm also a "normal" person who has been to a couple No Kings protests, and no one paid me. Someone spent some money on fliers, I suppose.

The major No Kings events were in June and October last year. January is not a great time for outdoors protests in much of the country. Does it somehow make the protests inauthentic if focus has now shifted towards ICE?

> No normal person engages in this stuff, it’s hyper activists part of organized groups with real financing

I guess I'm not a normal person then. I didn't realize that I was a hyper activist because I drew on some cardboard and that my group of friends was being financed. I better go demand for my Soros-check from them.

I wasn’t aware that “ managing data and communications with participants” is considered to be funding the protests.

> No normal person […]

A form of:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

?

No really, I'm a normal person, and I went to the most recent No Kings protest. I've never protested anything before in my life, but now I've gone to two protests against Trump because he's just that bad and dangerous and my country is important to me.

I wasn't paid anything. I rode the bus downtown, thinking it'd be easier than driving / parking, which wasn't quite the brilliant strategy I thought it'd be. I marched down the street with literally tens of thousands of people.

There were definitely some people there who seemed to be the activist type (who find something to protest every weekend), but it was mostly normal people. I saw at least three people I know. I saw regular-looking men in cargo shorts and women in straw hats. It was during the football game, and I saw many people wearing team colors and one sign that said, "It's gotten so bad I'm missing football to protest." One guy was wearing a "Jesus is King" t-shirt. A woman was carrying a "Hicks Against Facism" sign. Another guy was carrying his vinyl copy of Rush's "A Farewell to Kings" as a protest sign.

So, not paid protesters carrying boilerplate signs supplied to them by some organization. Just regular people who are not OK with what's going on.

Many years of taking care in protests against rightwing politics and I haven’t received a single penny; meanwhile everyone else is getting paid, I really fucked up I guess…

> Where are all the new organic No Kings protests?

I see them regularly just driving around.

Incredible bait job lol. Lots of engagement.

I've never been paid to attend a protest nor has anyone I've talked to at those protests. Most people make their own signs. No Kings was a bunch of regular citizens expressing their concern for the state of US Democracy. Why is that so hard to understand?

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IMHO, the value of the protest is to demonstrate a portion of the electorate does not agree with whatever they are protesting. There are a lot of people in a bubble that seem to think the majority always views things exactly the same as they do. Maybe you will always default do doubling down on the status quo, but some people will eventually inquire as to why someone is willing to inconvenience themselves to protest. Once someone starts to be curious about other people's motivations and reasoning, it often does impact their own opinions, for good or bad.

A protest demonstrates a level of unhappiness with a group or policy. People may not believe what they see on the news, facebook, or youtube, but hopefully we have not reached a point where they refuse to believe what they see with their own eyes.

The point is to demonstrate "we are not alone in this feeling", that's it...

They didnt have to "force them to do what they want" just tip the balance of votes at the ballot box. For that aim protest seems like it could be quite effective.

In the age of centralized broadcasting where everyone watched the same TV channels ...

Those TV channels were virtually always (and to this day still are) controlled by "the government".

Meanwhile other TV channels, if there even were any, and if enough people even had chance to watch them (because limited frequency/transmission allocations, artificial limits on cable distribution ..etc) - were and still are labeled as "funded by foreign (state) actors that are trying to destabilize our independance/values/etc".

And it's more of the same online.

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This reminds me of an old website that's an absolute gold mine.

Knock yourself out https://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/minority_inf...

> It was always naive to think 3.5% of the population could force the other 96.5%

This makes 100%, right. But how many actually care and act, what are the dynamics?

Regarding the end of centralized broadcasting, one could argue that social networks might actually act as amplifiers of "small" events.

I don't understand this comment. What protesting does is let other people know there is dissent, and some people are willing to take to the streets. Enough people do that and you have networking effects as other people are motivated to take a stand. It makes the mainstream media, and representatives feel pressure to address the issue. I've been to a number of protests over the last year, and I can tell you there are even more people honking in support who drive by.

I'm not sure it's an anomaly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aqBls-qpRM

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I'd separate protestors from supporters.

It's a fact that Kamala burned through $1 billion in four months, including paying tens of millions on performances (Beyonce, Lady Gaga,...) and $1 million to Oprah to host an event. That attracted supporters indirectly even though they didn't get "paid". "Incentivized" is better?