So did it work?
In cities as large as Boston, Massachusetts, and as small as Lancaster, Pennsylvania, protesters gathered in large numbers yesterday in order to speak out against the Trump regime and all the awful things it’s doing. In terms of turnout, the protests were a success – and hats off to those of you who either attended or helped raise awareness. Now comes the question: did it work?
This one is sometimes tricky to parse, especially in the short term. On the one hand, when mass protests broke out in the early days of Trump’s first term against his evil mistreatment of Muslims and immigrants, the Trump regime did end up partially backing down rather quickly. How much of that was a result of the protests, and how much of it was the concurrent court rulings and such? We may never know. But the larger point is that the combination of protests and the other things worked, which is reason to keep doing protests.
In the end, the effectiveness of any given mass protest may come down to how much media attention it ends up getting. Given that yesterday’s massive anti-Trump protests fit with the media’s existing narrative about the discontent with how inexplicably Trump is screwing up everything right now, there’s a good chance that today’s Sunday news shows will indeed focus on yesterday’s protests in the way that they should.
Either way, we should continue with what we’re doing. Yesterday’s protests managed to be large, widespread, and forceful, without involving even a trickle of violence. So let’s keep doing more of what we did yesterday. And let’s keep fighting on all our other fronts as well. The more we do, the more it’ll add up. It may not feel like it every day, but we are making a difference.
