The USA has an astonishly effective machine at stomping out protests for anything more than holding up a sign. BLM in Minneapolis was allowed to go on because the politician agreed with it. (Tim Walz's wife famously noted how much she enjoyed the smell of the burning tires.) []
When I was young and still under the illusion protests did anything, I recall going to a protest during the 'occupy' days. Obama was coming into town and we wanted him to be able to hear us chanting or see our signs.
My memory is pretty bad at this point on the context, but roughly how I remember it going was he was going to some sort of convention center. We started walking there, and about halfway there this mysterious but incredibly confident and authoritative person with a megaphone showed up and told us we had succeeded and the protest was over. About 90% of people actually believed that and left. The 10% of us that were like "who the hell is this lady and why would anyone listen to her" kept going. Then the police surrounded us and beat the shit out of anyone they could get to. We never got anywhere close to Obama's route.
When I was young and still under the illusion protests did anything, I recall going to a protest during the 'occupy' days. Obama was coming into town and we wanted him to be able to hear us chanting or see our signs.
My memory is pretty bad at this point on the context, but roughly how I remember it going was he was going to some sort of convention center. We started walking there, and about halfway there this mysterious but incredibly confident and authoritative person with a megaphone showed up and told us we had succeeded and the protest was over. About 90% of people actually believed that and left. The 10% of us that were like "who the hell is this lady and why would anyone listen to her" kept going. Then the police surrounded us and beat the shit out of anyone they could get to. We never got anywhere close to Obama's route.
[] https://nypost.com/2024/08/07/us-news/gwen-walz-said-she-kep...