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Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

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  • Maybe the point of the protest is to bring awareness to the public?

    Maybe. How useful is “awareness”?

    When I look at the biggest protests in the US there’s plenty of awareness about around all the biggest protests. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_protests_and_demonstrations_in_the_United_States_by_size

    Going down that list, it’s hard to find evidence that the awareness got us anywhere.

    1. George Floyd - We keep saying his name. Has there been any change in police violence or accountability?
    2. Earth day - We’ve been talking about this forever and we keep breaking records on extreme weather events.
    3. 2017 Women’s March - We just elected the chief pussy grabber.
    4. March for Our Lives - Guns are still everywhere.
    5. 2018 Women’s March - See number 3.
    6. RickyRenunicia - I have to pass on this one. I have no idea what the state of corruption in PR is.
    7. Great American Boycott - Democrats switched to agreeing with Republicans on immigration.
    8. LGB - You can reasonably argue that sexuality related rights have improved. It’s not clear that this protest was a particular catalyst for that. If we want to pin things on a single event, Stonewall probably had a bigger impact.
    9. Anti Nuclear - More countries than ever believe they need nukes to survive. We’re now unironically talking about the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
    10. Million Man March - See number 1

    I could go on, but the track record for the 10 biggest protests isn’t great.