[anigbrowl]

(2019)

Chenoweth has backed off her previous conclusions in recent years, observing that nonviolent protest strategies have dramatically declined in effectiveness as governments have adjusted their tactics of repression and messaging. See eg https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2025/07/erica-chenoweth-demo...

One current example of messaging can be seen in the reflexive dismissal by the current US government and its propagandists of any popular opposition as 'paid protesters'. Large attendance at Democratic political rallies during the 2024 election was dismissed as being paid for by the campaign, any crowd protesting government policy is described as either a rioting or alleged to be financed by George Soros or some other boogeyman of the right. This has been going on for years; the right simply refuses to countenance the possibility of legitimate organic opposition, while also being chronically unable to provide any evidence for their claims.

[somenameforme]

I think it's more of just Goodhart’s Law in play: 'When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.'

In a case of relatively organic or somewhat spontaneous action, 3.5% of people doing something is huge. The reason is because in organic or spontaneous action, those 3.5% probably represent the views of vastly more than 3.5% of people. But as actions become more organized and less spontaneous, you reach a scenario where those 3.5% may represent fewer and fewer people other than themselves. At the extreme example of effective organization (where you get 100% participation rate), those 3.5% of people may represent nobody beside themselves.

I was perusing the dataset they used [1] for the '3.5% rule' and it seems that a more unifying theme is leaders losing the support of their own base. And it's easy to how that could strongly correlate with large organic protest since you've done things to the point of not only pissing off 'the other side' but also your own side.

I think Nixon is a good example of this. There were vastly larger protests against Nixon's involvement in Vietnam than there were for Watergate. Yet the Vietnam protests had no effect whatsoever, while he left office over Watergate. The difference is that he lost the confidence of his own party over Watergate. Had he not resigned, he would likely have been impeached and convicted. Had 3.5% of people protested Watergate, he would even be included on this list, which I think emphasizes that protests (or lack thereof) are mostly a tangential factor.

[1] - https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi...

[saghm]

I'm not sure this is Goodhart's law, but I think you're right that the data doesn't really seem to support the claim, as well as with Nixon. My understanding is that the reason Nixon ended up resigning is that the Republicans in Congress told him that there would be enough votes to convict him after being impeached, so it didn't make much sense to stick around and get permanently stained as the only president ever to be forcibly removed from office after being impeached rather than leaving on his own terms and at least being able to claim innocence.

[sersi]

> This has been going on for years; the right simply refuses to countenance the possibility of legitimate organic opposition, while also being chronically unable to provide any evidence for their claims.

That strategy is also typical of China. Whenever there's a protest (for example the HK protests), it's always financed by western interests. Even volunteers organically organising themselves to help victims of the Tai Po fire were deemed to be western interests trying to discredit China. It's a surprisingly effective tactic.

I just always wonder how we have so many people eating this up when the strategy is so blindingly obvious.

[throwaway17_17]

I can’t help but be a little depressed by this realization. But to take it a step further, while I think there are some people who are genuinely buying this propaganda, I expect that a chunk of the propaganda aligned side also don’t think there is any point correcting the misleading statements. They benefit from the overall control of their ‘side’ and so just go right along sliding toward the fanatical fringe extreme of their side. On the other ‘side’, many people seem to have decided there is no use attempting to counter message after seeing the failure to move any extremists from their positions (and a failure to get even a milk toast correction from the non fanatics who are aligned). I think that the end result of this pattern is a gradually accelerating move towards the far ends, leaving no one to have any reasonable discourse in the center.

I’m not saying I support the center positions, nor that I don’t support what is often called an extreme position, just that this seems to be a watershed moment globally.

[notarobot123]

Polarization leaves very little room for reasonable discourse at the poles too. Pure tribalism doesn't care about reason unless that reason is in service of the identity and ideology of the tribe.

What if political discourse was focused on policy not identity and couched in terms of mutual interest instead of party affiliation? There would still be tensions, trade-offs, conflicts and political strategy at play but the discourse would be infinitely more reasonable.

I think this is what we mean when we talk about "center positions": a "value-based realism" that recognizes that society is nothing but the mutual alignment of values and interests. I don't understand why "common sense" has become so unpopular.

[M95D]

> I don't understand why "common sense" has become so unpopular.

IMHO, that's exactly it. You named it. Common sense is actually missing from more and more people. Why that is? I don't know - lack of basic common sense education, family, primary school, too much facebook, tiktok, common sense defined by YT shorts?

It's going to get far worse once the AI generation grows up.

[guerrilla]

> I just always wonder how we have so many people eating this up when the strategy is so blindingly obvious

It shouldn't be surprising considering how naive people are in general. People actually believe we live in democracies despite a century of evidence to the contrary. Propaganda and indoctrination are highly effective, and why wouldn't they be? I think it's the same reason we end up with so many unhinged people believing in reptilian conspiracy theories ir whatever: the media is always lying to them on a daily basis, so they can't trust it and without educations of their own have no way to distinguish truth from falsity anymore... why not just go with what sounds good or feels right. What other option do they have? Buy in, tune out or be lost. Those are the choices for 99% of people alive. Also, who has the energy anyway? Few are as privledged with time and energy as we are.

[temp8830]

Thing is, someone is paying all these bills. Yes really. Trump gutting USAID funding brought a lot of this out in the open: many organizations that claimed to be independent turned out to be mouthpieces of the US government and closed down as soon as the funding dried up.

[jonway]

Can you please tell me which organizations are just mouthpieces because they closed down due to lack of funding vs just closed due to lack of funding?

It makes perfect sense that when an organization loses funding it ceases operations, why is this now evidence of cointelpro?

[caminante]

I don't understand how you're aware of terms like COINTELPRO, yet are dismissive that black box slush funds like USAID weren't facilitating US soft power.

Heard of ZunZuneo, National Endowment for Democracy, Reporters Without Borders? The DOGE campaign put a spotlight on the ulterior motives of these "independent" USAID funded initiatives.

[jonway]

I guess so, it’s certainly no secret that US soft power has been a HUGE part of foreign policy, but I do t really see the connection between cointelpro( which had a lot of moving parts, like infiltration of news rooms in the USA and following around black student on college campuses for example) and this soft power.

American soft power is good. It means we don’t need to use direct action aka bombs and missiles.

I just reject your claims on this. US soft power is, for the United States, good and desirable.

[caminante]

> I just reject your claims on this. US soft power is, for the United States, good and desirable.

Not sure where this is coming from.

[alephnerd]

That's a misreading of Chenowith's argument which itself is heavily based on Timur Kuran's Revolutionary Thresholds concept.

The thesis is once mass mobilization of non-violent protesters occurs, it reduces the threshold for elite defection because there are multiple different veto groups within a selectorate, and some may choose to defect because they either view the incumbent as unstable or they disagree with the incumbent's policies.

I also recommend reading Chennowith's discussion paper clearing up the "3.5%" argument [0]. A lot of mass reporting was just sloppy.

Tl;Dr - "The 3.5% figure is a descriptive statistic based on a sample of historical movements. It is not necessarily a prescriptive one, and no one can see the future. Trying to achieve the threshold without building a broader public constituency does not guarantee success in the future"

[0] - https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/2024-05/Eric...

[pinnochio]

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

Goodhart's law

[throwaway17_17]

Are you aware of whether Chennowith ever discussed the presence, implied or actual, of more extreme resistance groups/factions operating in the same locations and time periods? I’ve seen some informal work discussing the ‘pressure’ on the incumbent power being supported and made more tenable in comparison to the potential for a more radical approach. I have seen anything widely popularized discussing this outside of ‘How to Blow Up a Pipeline’ which does have some good references and particular examples.

[alephnerd]

Yes, and the result is negative.

Violent Action only incentivizes the selectorate to not defect. This is something Kuran pointed out decades ago as did Chennowith.

The reality is the only way to affect change is to incentivize elite defection, and that requires organized nonviolent action along with exogenous variables.

[EGreg]

In many countries, it does work, and continues with some regularity:

2011: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring

2013: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity

2018: https://www.occrp.org/en/project/a-murdered-journalists-last...

2025: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aqBls-qpRM

2026: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/01/iran-authorit... -- outcome TBD ?

[lostlogin]

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]

[mcmoor]

It's always ironic seeing Arab Spring in hindsight. I've seen western observers celebrating Arab countries society upheaval, when the very same thing will also happen to them in less than 10 years.

[EGreg]

Yes. I am definitely no fan of regime change through revolution. It has an extremely bloody track record.

I am just pointing out that nonviolent protests usually get it done, especially after crackdowns.

[techcode]

The tring that Ukraine and Arab Spring have in common - is that same folks that managed to bring Milošević down in Serbia (known as Resistance/Otpor), later went on to talk/teach protestors in Ukraine, Egypt ...etc.

Check out #Post Milošević; and #Legacy; sections on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otpor (couldn't figure out how to get deeplinks on mobile).

TL;DR: Besides Ukraine and Egypt, they went to a few more places, in some it worked, in others it didn't. And there were revelations of foreign (e.g. USAID) funding.

[torginus]

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.

[vkou]

It in itself does nothing, but it is necessary to embolden anyone who can do something.

If nobody protests, people who have the choice to do something will see that nobody gives a shit... And why should they stick their necks out for a cause that nobody gives a shit about?

[awesome_dude]

"Paid" demonstrators has been an accusation used by governments for several decades.

Edit: https://www.yourdictionary.com/rent-a-crowd (Rent a crowd/mob is often used to claim the protest is attended by people paid to be there, and was first coined in the mid 20th century, but apparently the actual accusation (though) is as old as demonstrations)

[lostlogin]

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

[awesome_dude]

I'm not sure why you are attacking me, I am clearly replying to someone who is claiming that recent times the retort of "paid demonstrators" is effective, and I have pointed out that the claim of people being paid to demonstrate has been made for decades, if not centuries.

Thank you for articulating the accusation, giving me the opportunity to respond, but try to take your own advice and read what's actually being said.

[lostlogin]

You appear to have edited your comment after I replied.

When I replied to you, the link in your comment was the below one.

https://abc6onyourside.com/news/nation-world/no-kings-protes...

[onraglanroad]

You replied to the wrong person. Look further down thread for the person who posted that link.

[lostlogin]

Argh. Thank you.

[awesome_dude]

Uhh - My client is showing that my comment was up for a couple of hours before you replied

That's around the maximum time allowed to edit a comment on Hacker News.

For the level of attack you injected in your previous comment, and now a claim of dishonesty, I would need to see some actual evidence of your claims (I know that I never posted that link, and am confused why you would try such a bizarre claim)

[onraglanroad]

They replied to the wrong comment. The one they meant to reply to was from monero-xmr further down.

[lostlogin]

Awesome_dude, the error is all mine and my reply was to the wrong comment.

@onraglanroad thank you for pointing out the error.

[CTDOCodebases]

> This has been going on for years; the right simply refuses to countenance the possibility of legitimate organic opposition, while also being chronically unable to provide any evidence for their claims.

Even their own. Jan 6 for example. It was a guided tour given by FBI agitators apparently.

[lazide]

It all makes sense if you think of it in the form of emotions, and not rationality.

Unless there is some concrete penalty (and even then!) why wouldn’t they believe the thing that makes them feel justified and righteous.

[a_conservative]

Note that you aren't providing evidence either :)

Providing evidence is tricky, because most evidence hints rather than proves, so it's very subject to confirmation bias and is easily dismissed by those who disagree.

There are large filter bubbles right now that make it hard to agree on basic facts. I don't think any of us really knows for sure what's organic and what's synthetic right now.

[anigbrowl]

The burden of proof is on the claimant, as an intelligent person like yourself is surely aware.

[beloch]

There appears to be a few factors combining in the U.S. right now that make protests less effective than they once were.

1. Politics are religion more than ever before. There is a solid MAGA core that will not turn on Trump for any reason. When confronted by uncomfortable truth, they dismiss it as lies. When they can't dismiss it as a lie, they choose not to care. The Democrats have people like this too, but they haven't been hired and turned into a paramilitary goon squad the way ICE has. Yet. The "unreasonables" on both sides of the spectrum are not going anywhere. After Trump dies they could easily be harnessed by someone else. When so many people cannot be swayed, the impact of protests are dulled. The "unreasonables" aren't swayed when the other side protests, and the mushy middle will tend to dismiss many protests as products of people they view as extremists.

2. There is a ruling class (i.e. Billionaires) with a firm grip on power (through both parties) and complete insulation from the public. In his discourses on Livy, Machiavelli observed that Roman officials who protected themselves from those they ruled with forts or castles tended to rule in a more brutal and less productive manner than those who lived among the governed. If you want good government, those governing should feel vulnerable enough to behave reasonably. U.S. billionaires, and the politicians they own, are completely sealed off from public wrath. Minnesota could burn and none of them would get more than a warm fuzzy watching it on the news. If a protest doesn't scare billionaires it will have no impact on how the U.S. is governed.

3. "Flood the zone" is just one of the tactics being used to numb people and encourage them to switch off from politics. The nastiness of hyper-partisan politics is, at times, a distracting entertainment, but it's fatiguing the rest of the time. People rightly observe that both of the U.S.'s diametrically opposed parties tend to do similar things (e.g. tax breaks for the rich) and are funded by the same billionaires every election. If people will scream at you for picking a side in what looks like a sham of false choice, why not just stay home, plug in, and tune out? When a big protest happens, people who are numb and tuned out are just going to change the channel and consume some more billionaire-produced pap.

As a Canadian, what's going on in the U.S. has been terrifying to watch. We're so culturally similar that what happens in the U.S. could easily happen here. Even if it doesn't, we're still subject to the fallout. A classic pattern of authoritarian regimes is to lash out at allies and neighbours in order to give their people threats to fear more than their own government. Well, that's us. If MAGA isn't checked, Canada will likely be subjected to far more than tariff's and threats.

It's hard for Canadians to appreciate how nations elsewhere in the world can harbour such bitter and long-lived enmities against one another. We're now experiencing how they're created. It's not hatred yet, but the trust we once had for Americans is gone and won't return for generations. For the rest of my life, we'll always be four years or less away from what could be the next round of American insanity.

[tbrownaw]

Well also the old school civil rights stuff didn't have supporters needing to engage in linguistic gymnastics in order to drum up support. Which makes just drawing attention to the issue rather more effective.

[PunchyHamster]

well, aside from alleged riots there have been actual ones and those have unfortunate effect of making it easier to dismiss the cause

[komali2]

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

Would that Americans use the term more accurately.

[anamax]

How often do people die during football riots?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests says $1-2B in damage and more than 19 deaths.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/americans-kill... says 25 deaths.

[komali2]

Now look up Romanian or Israeli football hooligan incidents.

[throwawayq3423]

Considering Americans get shot during riots, I would say you're wrong.

[hansvm]

Even the Rodney King riots didn't have as many deaths (gunshots or otherwise) as the worst EU football events. Guns are scary or whatever, and the US should definitely handle them better or ban them or something, but I still think I'd rather take my chances in an average US riot (give or take recent ICE murders) than something heated in the EU.

[throwawayq3423]

> Even the Rodney King riots didn't have as many deaths (gunshots or otherwise) as the worst EU football events.

I honestly don't even know what you're referring to. There have been tragedies related collapses of stadiums and trampling due to poor crowd control.

But that is not even remotely similar to what we're talking about.

[buckle8017]

> Large attendance at Democratic political rallies during the 2024 election was dismissed as being paid for by the campaign

And then they lost and the odds of those people being paid actors seems less ridiculous.

[caminante]

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?

[monero-xmr]

It’s true that large leftist groups fund protests. 100% true. Here’s a recent ABC News report on the No Kings protests https://abc6onyourside.com/news/nation-world/no-kings-protes...

Also they completely stopped once the new anti-ICE thing became popular. Where are all the new organic No Kings protests? Everyone wrote about it in all the major publications and now we forgot(?) and the Tesla dealership protests? No normal person engages in this stuff, it’s hyper activists part of organized groups with real financing

[jrmg]

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.

[SturgeonsLaw]

>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)

Despite what the proponents of Citizen's United might have us believe, money != speech, and adding restrictions to political donations is perfectly compatible with the first amendment.

Would-be donors are allowed to advocate for political positions just the same as anybody else. Nobody is stopping them. That would still be the case with donation limits. They can still get on TV and argue their case.

There is already a precedent for limiting donations. Try donating money to ISIS or Hezbollah and see if the government considers that an exercise of your first amendment rights.

[xmprt]

> 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.

[monero-xmr]

Well at least be honest that these things are organized professionally and funded with tens of millions of dollars. When major news sources easily refute statements like “the right believes it’s all funded and fake” and then literally they are funded it’s not a small step to believing it’s fake

[parpfish]

who cares if there are professional organizers? the accusations of fake/paid protests are about the crowds and participants, not the people that paid to print the posters and get some permits.

both sides have paid activists because it's a full time job. but those paid activists aren't the crowd.

[sethammons]

> Well at least be honest that these things are organized professionally and funded with tens of millions of dollars

source? best I see from the linked fox news article is less than $8M. Note, we have customers sending marketing email and sms spending more than this and they are not getting the same attention No Kings did.

> though Soros' foundations have awarded grants to Indivisible every year since the organization's conception in 2017. In total, the Open Society Foundations have awarded $7.61 million in grants to the group behind the "No Kings" protest [1]

1: this is the direct source that the abc article was referencing: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/soros-foundation-helping-fu...

[anigbrowl]

Of course there are people who are professional activists. I'm well aware that at a large protest with a stage and sound equipment it had tp be organized and paid for. I've done that sort of work myself.

I was specifically referring to the idea of 'paid protestors'. The extremely online right (which includes many people in the administration) sees a crowd of 10 or 20 or 50,000 people and immediately starts dismissing them all as 'paid protesters', denying the possibility that those thousands of people might have given up their free time to come together and express a political opinion. I think you understand the difference very well.

[ChromaticPanic]

MAGA literally flew and bussed in J6 ers

[gmd63]

As someone who really hates what this unlawful administration is doing, I went to my local progressive club meeting for the first time expecting at least a fraction of what MAGA folks fantasize about - elite schemers developing an actual strategy to fight back.

Instead what I found were a bunch of kind mostly elderly people sharing news that I had read online a week before, and some folks gathering signatures for positions running for office.

You are doing a huge disservice to yourself by staying indoors and making assumptions about stuff that you aren't investigating in person.

[esseph]

That entire argument is designed to discredit.

Of course organizing takes time and money. The amount can vary.

This is like complaining about water being wet.

If you're just going and printing flyers and putting them on poles that still takes time and money.

[monero-xmr]

When people say the protests are organized and operated by paid groups backed by the richest Democrats in the country, it’s 100% true. I pointed out how it’s false to deny it. It’s inconvenient to mention but it’s no use lying about, trivial to fact check the validity

[anigbrowl]

No you didn't. Here's what I wrote originally: One current example of messaging can be seen in the reflexive dismissal by the current US government and its propagandists of any popular opposition as 'paid protesters'.

You went and beat up on a straw man that no professional organizing or funding takes place at all, a claim nobody made.

[lostlogin]

It’s also a bit disingenuous.

So if a single dollar goes to a cause, it’s funded?

You can apply this to protests of all political causes.

[estebank]

> 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.

[monero-xmr]

Are you planning on going to a Tesla dealership again to protest? This was top of my Reddit algorithm for several months, no one even mentions it anymore

[runako]

Over that timeframe, did anything change about the relationship of the CEO of Tesla and the US government?

[monero-xmr]

Doesn’t Musk own the “Nazi social media” website now? Shocking that people literally destroyed Tesla dealerships out of anger and now no one even bothers to show up anymore

[runako]

Is it possible that you did not fully understand the reasons people were protesting at Tesla dealerships?

Perhaps the protests were less about Twitter than you may be assuming, and more about something else that happened much later than the Twitter acquisition?

[coryrc]

Because they won? Have you seen Tesla's sales numbers and market share?

[noxer]

They didn't care about Tesla they wanted to "hurt" Musk Musks net worth is about $270 billion more today compared to when the protests began. Does this look like winning?

[goatlover]

Conveniently you left out Musk's DOGE effort to take a chainsaw to the federal bureaucracy that people were protesting. And those protest did have the effect of making Elon unpopular enough that the administration didn't want to keep him around.

[ChromaticPanic]

A completely meaningless number that would crater if he dumped his stock to materialize it.

[philk10]

yes, there's a group still goes once a week on Monday and I go when I can. There's also one on Wednesday at the main Social Security office Totally normal people there, not being paid a dime

[dahinds]

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?

[cowsandmilk]

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

[throw0101a]

> No normal person […]

A form of:

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

?

[adrianmonk]

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.

[goatlover]

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?

[pousada]

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…

[coryrc]

> Where are all the new organic No Kings protests?

I see them regularly just driving around.

[datsci_est_2015]

Incredible bait job lol. Lots of engagement.