The “No Kings” protests in every state may have been the biggest day of demonstrations in American history, a data analyst has suggested.
“Based on hundreds of crowd-sourced records of No Kings Day event turnout, and extrapolating for the cities where we don’t have data yet, it looks like roughly 4-6m people protested Trump across the U.S. yesterday,” independent data journalist G Elliott posted to X Sunday.
For reference, that’d mean Saturday’s demonstrations featured 1-2% of the total population of 340 million taking to the streets in more than 2,000 cities to voice their opposition to the increasingly authoritarian, far-right policies the president has pursued since assuming office for the second time.
Think of it as a medieval army forming up. An army didn’t generally march straight into battle. They took the time to organise and prepare. It also acted as an opportunity to intimidate your opponents into backing down.
The protests are the army forming up. Connections are made, wills reinforced and tied to a more focused cause. In many cases, the powers that be recognise the danger this represents and back down. When they don’t, that’s when things escalate.
Protests like this are a necessary part of reaching the goal. They are a link in the chain. People don’t want violence. It will be accepted, if required, but not joyously.
Just remember, in a blunt head to head fight, the enemy would be the US military. You would need to either defeat them directly, or break their will. What would it take to cause large scale defections within the US army? Are people willing to pay that price?
Failing that, the slower, less drastic methods must be employed. It’s a war of psychological attrition, not a fist fight.