- cross-posted to:
- usa@midwest.social
- cross-posted to:
- usa@midwest.social
We the people are speaking out at every capital in every state, today, now!
A growing movement opposing President Donald Trump’s early actions is organizing protests across all 50 states on Wednesday.
What to Know:
The movement uses the hashtags #buildtheresistance and #50501 (50 protests, 50 states, one day).
Many demonstrations are planned at state capitols, while others will take place in major cities.
Flyers circulating online denounce Project 2025 and call for action against fascism and deportations.
Organizers, like Kelsey Brianne in Michigan, are mobilizing communities with grassroots efforts.
Protests have already begun, with thousands marching against deportation policies in Los Angeles on Sunday.
The movement has a website at 50501movement.carrd.co and is active on Instagram, Reddit, Bluesky, Discord and Signal.
You must log in or register to comment.
I’ll pose this (revised) question here because I think it might have better visibility.
instead of protesting at the capitals of our states – why don’t we protest at the HQs of the departments Musk is attacking?
lots of benefits
- heightened on-site security
- lots of witnesses
- impenetrable wall of pissed-off Americans
- attacking the administrations goals
I mean…has nobody thought of this yet?
it would at least slow the destruction down, and it’s not like we don’t know what these people look like.
just 24 hour, round-the-clock, protests to keep the jackals at bay. only badged people get in or out. like white blood cells fighting off an infection.
The Founding Fathers would have you protest at the homes of the legislature
There have been protests at the buildings he’s illegally occupying, but there’s also so many tunnel systems in DC I’m sure they could get in there too. What we need is handcuffs of these rat fucks.
Next phase should probably be to protest at DC. Camp the fuck out there and strike as a nation until Dump is handled.
Take the 60s Civil Rights approach to this.
The left’s answer to the right’s 1950s is the 1960s approach.
Learn from the Civil Rights movement.
The protests didn’t make nearly any national news. Hope the next ones go better.
That’s because the news is controlled by the oligarchy. It’s up to us to spread the word. Share as much content as you can!
I mean my news gave it a fair shot, but ultimately it was just about 50 people waving signs in the middle of a city where 50 people are not even a noticable increase of people usually on that street. I’d say my news was even being generous, by zooming in to try to make the “crowd” fill the screen, but there just wasn’t enough to go on.
We have to face facts that this was a pretty poorly planned event. Someone thinks of going for it on January 25th and expects to organize a national protest in all 50 states with boots on the ground with less than two weeks total in the middle of a school/work day?
If this were, say, the first of a routine series of protests, ok, then over iterations it might have a chance to grow. If it was to be some overwhelming event, well you’ll need more actual planning to get there. As a disorganized blast of thought for a one and done… it was not a good idea.
I think in general the American protest movement is really behind on ideas for what to do when the government doesn’t want to listen. I’ve been to tons of “stand around and wave signs until change happens” protests, for BLM, migrants, LGBT people, healthcare, strike support, the only time the protest ever made any impact was when the march was in support of a strike.
Blocking up streets with protest works when it’s being done to amplify the impact of a work stoppage, but just waving signs around on their own doesn’t do anything, especially when the people you’re protesting don’t particularly want to placate the protestors.
And like, I get that “build a nationwide labor movement that can go on a general strike” as a step one for a protest is an impossible tall order, but we gotta face facts that just having a lot of people come out and wave signs around alone doesn’t do anything, especially when the target of the protest really doesn’t care that it’s being protested.
Share where? All the platforms that you’re implying people should share it on are either controlled by the oligarchs as well, or so sparsely populated you’re going to only reach some absurdly small percent of the population.
I’m not trying to be a downer, it’s better to be doing something than nothing, but if the oligarchs you’re protesting own Facebook, Twitter/X, Google, AWS, etc, it just seems clear to me that if you can’t rely on the news to report about it, you definitely can’t rely on sharing to spread the word about it.
Share where? All the platforms that you’re implying people should share it on are either controlled by the oligarchs
They can’t catch every post and comment from every user.
Flood the zone.
They can and do catch every post. That’s how centralized platforms work; their logging platforms literally do see every single thing that’s posted, have alerting set up to monitor for trends in case something illegal or offensive to billionaires is trending.
They use algorithms and language models to draw summaries about trending posts, what they’re about and why they’re trending, and can make realtime adjustments to their algorithms to deprioritize posts and accounts they don’t want to see trendIng anymore. They can analyze text, video, images, and audio in real time, and determine what the post is about, even if the title of the post is something intentionally misleading, and apply algorithms accordingly. That’s literally why they invested so much in AI moderation tools and image generation and analysis.
The revolution will not be televised
The crowds would be much larger if most of us heard about this earlier than 11:58 am today. Absolute garbage organization for this one. I’ve marched in D.C. on more than one occasion and knew about the event at least a month in advance every time.
I saw a bunch of posts on lemmy the past 24 hrs
Meta stifled posts about this.
But, unfortunately, I didn’t see any on Mastodon or Bluesky (granted my circle there is smaller).
This is a response to the rapid escalation of events since the inauguration which only occurred just over two weeks ago. Things are moving fast. The past week has been dizzying, by design.
There will likely be a lot of protests by many organizations that may be organized at the national level or locally until things change for the better, people give up, or people are stopped by the forces we need to protest against. Try to find protests and participate in the ones that you can.
edit: I’m not going to tell you what groups to organize with, but look into groups that organize locally and nationally.
This is the way these things work though. This will get attention. The next one will be even bigger.
This needs to be every week.
We don’t have a month. Look at how much has already happened in the last two weeks. People need to see what’s going on Now.
Things are moving very quickly right now.
I saw it on the first or second of February. Definitely was short notice.
Yeah I heard about it like 2 hours ago. How tf am I supposed to prepare for that?
I heard about it yesterday, but had no time to arrange to take off work.
Annapolis
Uh, probably should have done this before the election.
What an incredibly helpful comment.
As is yours.
I agree kinda. However, I’m not discouraging them as to their protesting potentially being useless now. I’m trying to stop you from doing that negative thing/showing others it’s fine to do it now.
There are valid reasons why not to protest/revolt before the election. No one knew how it would turn out, Rs could have been crushed. Even with Trump, it wasn’t incredibly likely that he would let Musk completely dismantle everything. Of course it was a possibility, but it’s a bit different to protest a possibility and to protest something actually happening, so I think it’s fine if you would protest in the one case but not the other.
Was that more helpful?
Yes thanks for the thoughtful background.
nobody believed us before the election. me and my partner tried talking to people we know about it and they either never heard of it or told us it was a conspiracy theory
I was at the Boston event. At several points people started loud trans right chants which I think is a strategic mistake. This makes it too easy to reframe this as a trans protest rather than anti facism/anti 2025 since a huge portion of the population just dismiss trans rights protests out of hand.
People dismissing trans right: fuck yeah this is a good time
The same people when their own rights are dismissed: wait what the fuck why can you get away with this, this is bullshit
The huge portion of the population better wake the fuck up because as long as the powers can oppress trans people, they can and will oppress you too.
With allies like these
No. It is time to stop being complicit in trans erasure. No more of this “wait your turn” shit. I will not leave my queer brothers, sisters, and everything between/beyond behind for some vague notion of “optics.” We bring them with us. They deserve justice and support.
Stop sacrificing marginalized groups for broader appeal it doesn’t even grant. Hell be brutally practical: We sacrificed Palestinians and LGBT folks for the election, what did we gain from it?
I don’t think that having an effective strategy with a small set of demands focused on American’s top concerns right now, immigration, cost of living, & inflation, doesn’t mean we leave anyone behind. we still bring them with us.
We champion nationally on broadly popular pain points. We mobilize locally on protecting our friends. Use the protests and activism to identify, young, future political leaders. Bring them up through the city council. Bring them up to the Mayorship. Governorship.
I can’t fathom a world where Republican politicians will ever say “yeah okay were wrong trans people have rights - our bad”. Ever. We have to force them, but we don’t have that power. We don’t have the power for a segregation-like showdown. What supreme Court is going to uphold trans rights? Who’s going to call in the national guard? What do you propose we do in places that red senators live and breathe that makes them reconsider?
We have to get the red states involved - broadly. We need to need a general strike. We need unionization. We need to take back our power with collective action. We need to be an unstoppable phalanx of pain that will burn all the wealth and value they steal from us to the ground until we get what we want.
We need to have momentum and energy and excitement and a slate of candidates in 2026 that will stand up and FUCKING FIGHT. We need to replace the impotent, geriatric representatives we have with someone whose spine isn’t already bent.
The most impactful thing we can do to protect and help our brethren is to get power and give them their rightful seat. That starts locally. So fight with them. Fight for them. But have it be separate from the opposition to what is going on in D.C.
But what do I know. I’m not an organizer or an activist or a strategist. I’m as good as a 5 yr old. It just seems to me that true salvation will only come from running head first into states rights. Long term building of future leaders. National holiday election day, mandatory voting, and strong pushes to remove the cap on the house of representatives so that the voice of the people is just a little less distorted by money and land. That’s my victory.
The comment above said that people need to stop even vocalizing support for our trans friends and and family at a protest because it will (allegedly) alienate people. That is literally the definition of leaving people behind. They are calling for them to be explicitly excluded. My reaction is very justified and my description is accurate.
I get where you’re coming from but your interpretation is way too generous and permissive of that behavior. We didn’t win gay marriage by telling queer people to stay in the closet and hold secret relationships so as to not offend people. People who transition/change their names are being politically hemmed in. They can’t use pronouns, they can’t use preferred names, they’re being removed from discrimination policies, their passports are now entirely in question. We are past the theoretical, this is happening right now and it has to be addressed immediately. A sitting congresswoman isn’t even allowed to use the correct bathroom for her.
No, I will not leave them behind. I will loudly proclaim them to be my friends and I will fight for them every day along with other important issues. The strategy is “we support all marginalized groups.” We don’t leave some behind because we believe it to be politically expedient. Leaving people behind is not a strategy.
Maybe I am being too generous, but from everything I see now people are not generous enough. It’s a random person on the internet for crying out loud. Who knows if they’re even real. Maybe they are. Maybe they do want to erase trans people. I’ll never know. And honestly. Who cares? Their opinion only really matters if they’re in your advocacy group.
I guess my point ultimately is Americans (as a whole) don’t fucking care about marginalized people. Democracy’s security wasn’t even in the top 5! So if they can’t be arsed to care about the dissolution of a representative government what makes you think you’ll get the support you need on a national level?
That’s why I love capitalizing on state’s rights. We did it in 2004 with same sex marriage in California. It forced every state to recognize the unions. Things were set back with prop 8. Yes. But change comes from the states.
So to me it’s a sound strategy - when going for national level attention focus on things that have broad national appeal. God. I crave a DNC leader with some actual fucking vision for a change. Someone that will take the billions in national fundraising money and shove it down to the local level and build activist groups.
But you’re also very, very right. Research into understanding how to even help them and how effective it is being mothballed. Scrutinized. Censored. I can’t fathom their terror as they’re being scapegoated and erased. I guess that’s our beliefs diverge. Sectioning fights between local and national stages isn’t leaving people behind to me - it’s how to support them, but that’s why I talk. To think. So, thank you.💖
maybe they do want to erase trans people
Look I get that you’re very well meaning and I appreciate that spirit, but I do not understand how you can look at what’s going on and use the word “maybe”
Wasn’t gonna reply again, but I want to clarify. By they I meant OP because I wanted to be gender neutral. I have no way of knowing OPs mind.
They (Republicans and others), as I assume you’re referring to, want to erase trans people - 100%. I don’t extend that assumption to specific people.
I’m loath to commit the ecological fallacy by using population data to infer something about an individual.
Fair enough. Either way I’m done leaving people behind. I have to live the rest of my life knowing that I was complicit in throwing Palestinians under the bus for electoral strategy. And it didn’t even work!
I am all for promoting positivity and accessibility and such, but we need to think very critically about what our values are and actually commit to them. Otherwise why do we have them in the first place?
-
Fuck off with this. Trans people are our brothers and sisters and they deserve our vocal and unabashed support just like anyone else. These policies are going to kill many of them. Our love for them may save lives because it shows them that people have their backs. And it is simply the right thing to do. Triangulating is not working as a political strategy. Stand on some fucking morals for once.
-
Fascism is all about finding a minority and shitting on them. This version is leveraging trans people and immigrants to shit on. Being vocally pro trans is about as anti fascist as you can be right now.
Fascism seeks to divide people. We fight that by fighting for the people who are most marginalized and who they wish to separate from our communities.
You are missing the point. If the protests arent taken seriously it doesnt matter whats chanted. Its not about criticizing every thing thats wrong with Trump because many people agree with large parts of it. Its about getting the main message across, that hes a fascist that needs to be stopped.
And you’re missing the point that if you’re willing to ignore trans people “in order to be taken seriously”, then you’re siding with the fascists on how to treat trans people. They will take advantage of that.
The existence of trans people is being erased from our government’s documents right now. If both sides are ignoring trans people, what the fuck do you think is going to happen? I’ll give you a hint:
“First they came for trans people, and I did not speak out- because I was not trans…”
Now that I think about it some more, youre actually right. Every problem should be adressed and voiced as often as possible. No matter how you do it, theyre always gonna try to invalidate it somehow. But as soon as millions walk the streets every day they wont be able to anymore.
I was about to respond to your original comment but saw you changed your mind, respect.
-
Completely agreed.
Austin
Hartford
Madison
DC
Boston
Trenton
It may not seem like much, but news does travel the world. They have to realize we’re not all idiots over here.
Yeah, a few hundred did actually protest. Like… 0.1 % or something.
Plant a seed, given chance, it will grow. This one, having grassroots, will endure.
Youre expecting 100 million people to walk up to the capitol together?
Given the dire situation, I’d hope to see thousands in each protest.
Given the reality, for this to work, it really needed to be presented as a recurring protest if they want to at least have something on short notice with chance for it to grow in subsequent events. Hopefully by the 3rd or 4th protest it actually seems compelling.
As it stands, it seems exceedingly underwhelming. To those that followed nuance, they know that someone sprung this idea on the internet and this is the result of less than a week and a half of planning and the modest attendance is unsurprising. To those that just see what the protests looked like without context, it doesn’t seem particularly engaging. When those same people that saw the underwhelming attendance also see people saying that the news didn’t make this out to be the biggest thing ever was just because the news is suppressing dissent, they are disinclined to take it seriously.
