> We (Eastern Europeans) could not do neither of those things without risking jail time and we still managed to topple dictatorships.
Jail time (and now deportation) has been a risk for protesting for quite a while in the US. I can see why someone that doesn’t live here would see America’s longstanding reputation of being a cool place to protest in and assume that that is still the case, but that is outdated information. Heck, quite a few Americans insist that is still the case, but the ones that insist that there is no risk are mostly folks that “protest” through tweets