The one near me had a really huge turnout and was blocking traffic all over the lib’est area during peak brunch hours, so that’s kind of funny. Saw tables for food not bombs, some worker thing associated with Kshama Sawant, and a bunch of people wearing local DSA chapter shirts. Lots of Palestinian flags too. Some people I talked to had earlier in the day been protesting a potential future ICE facility in a nearby town with immigrant rights groups and prison abolitionists. These protests aren’t going to change anything and we have to stop centering nonviolence as the highest virtue. But it seems like a good thing that people are meeting and talking to each other in physical reality… anything that defies the gravitational pull of social media.
But absolutely don’t let libs use this little afternoon field trip as a chance to pat themselves on the back. More people go to sports bars to watch the football game every week.
My lib parents are all about “optics” and remaining peaceful. They also loved some news article of a protester in Kansas with a John Brown sign that just says abolish ice. Libs have zero analysis. They have zero critical understanding of history. How are you going to celebrate the invoking of John Brown, a guy who famously beheaded slavers in Kansas and whose last boldest violent campaign probably led to the civil war and the emancipation of the slaves… and also claim that’s no place for violence?