
The Women's Marches maybe the largest in US history - BDGC
http://www.vox.com/2017/1/22/14350808/womens-marches-largest-demonstration-us-history-map
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michaelchisari
This is truly unprecedented. For perspective, the largest march on DC during
the Vietnam War was 500,000. Adjusted for population, that would be 784,411
people.

Estimated crowd in DC on Saturday was 1.2 million. Nationwide, it was 3
million. Just one of the six Los Angeles area protests had 750,000 people.

Even Witchita, Kansas had thousands.

I've never seen anything like this, and it's just the beginning.

~~~
Mao_Zedang
Honestly I am going to say its the end not the beginning, in four years, Trump
will run again and maybe we will see another tantrum protest but at least for
the next four years do not expect any great resistance or movement, the time
for that is over.

~~~
revx
I think this time, there's enough of a threat to general persons' livelihoods
(repeal of ACA, threat of international embarrassment or incident, etc) that
we will start to see organized resistance. But only time will tell...

~~~
michaelchisari
A normal presidency would see these protests and exercise caution. This is not
a normal presidency, so I feel as though we're going to see a continuous
escalation in response.

~~~
geowwy
His tweets seems to suggest the opposite

"Peaceful protests are a hallmark of our democracy. Even if I don't always
agree, I recognize the rights of people to express their views."
[https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/82317419903654298...](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/823174199036542980)

~~~
michaelchisari
Was it posted with an iphone or an android phone?

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tsomctl
Earth Day 1970 was the largest protest across the whole world, at 20 million.
([http://www.earthday.org/about/the-history-of-earth-
day/](http://www.earthday.org/about/the-history-of-earth-day/)) I can't find
how many protested in Earth Day 1970 just in the US.

This one will definitely be in the history books, though.

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ufo
The thing that is really confusing for me is how Trump managed to get elected
despite all this opposition to him.

~~~
xenadu02
The tl;dr is voter apathy in key midwest states. IIRC Trump underperformed but
Clinton underperformed even more. It is difficult to say with certainty but
the FBI letter probably cost her the election by slightly depressing turnout.

It also looks like the Republican effort to disenfranchise people by reducing
early voting, voting hours, closing polling stations, enacting voter ID laws,
purging voter rolls, etc has worked in the sense that it slightly reduced Dem
turnout which was enough in this election. Their efforts to steal elections by
gerrymandering themselves into power has also given them outsized control of
the House and various state governments.

It is really embarrassing that the majority of the country votes D and the Rs
have control over the government. It's pure subversion of democracy.

Russia certainly tried to influence the election but if it had been Obama
running (or anyone charismatic) instead of Clinton it wouldn't have mattered;
Trump would have lost by a huge EC margin.

I'm far more worried about the long-term damage to the country now that the
FBI has once again become an open political weapon, and that Rs are
unapologetically disenfranchising people in an attempt to maintain power
permanently.

~~~
LyndsySimon
> Russia certainly tried to influence the election but if it had been Obama
> running (or anyone charismatic) instead of Clinton it wouldn't have
> mattered; Trump would have lost by a huge EC margin.

While I don't agree with a great deal of the rest of your assertions, this
stands out to me as the important one. If the Democrats had run almost anyone
other than Hillary Clinton, they would have likely won.

They ran Hillary Clinton.

~~~
losteric
The DNC definitely backed the wrong horse in the Clinton vs Sanders primaries.

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kiliancs
I was curious and checked
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_peaceful_gathe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_peaceful_gatherings_in_history).
It includes all gatherings of people, not just marches or demonstrations.

I was impressed by the numbers of some of the top gatherings. The shared
record is for two religious events at ~30 million people in India and Iraq.

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aplomb
Well so long as Soros keeps footing the bill in the shadows for all these
"grassroots" organizations...

~~~
michaelchisari
Just how much per head do you think Soros paid for the largest protests in
modern American history?

~~~
aplomb
Slightly more than pocket change

~~~
snowwrestler
Well, shoot, do you have an address or phone number for the Soros protest
fund? My friends and I all paid out of our own pockets to go to the march and
it would be nice to get reimbursement or something.

~~~
gspetr
If I may ask, what exactly were you and your friends hoping to accomplish by
participating? What were your goals?

~~~
snowwrestler
Making it easy for young women to get good sex education and contraceptives is
easily one of the best investments the U.S. government could make. Every time
a society has tried it, it has produced good results across the board:
reductions in teen pregnancies, abortions, and venereal disease, and improved
educational outcomes and economic growth.

And best of all, it is moral to permit human beings to make their own choices
about their own bodies.

Unfortunately, the incoming administration and Congress have collectively said
some pretty dumb things, and tried to pass some pretty dumb laws, against
these ideas.

There are also potentially government issues related to race and ethnicity and
sexual orientation and gender, and I think a lot of people marched with those
in mind too.

The fundamental question of the Trump presidency is: who is going to own the
narrative? Who gets to decide what is true, what is real, what matters, and
what the government should do or not do?

The purpose of a mass protest is to seize the narrative, or at least to
demonstrate that Trump does not own it. The larger the gathering, the greater
its demonstrative power. Each person who decides to go knows that they are
individually only a tiny little drop, metaphorically. But they hope to help
make a big flood.

Most of Congress is up for re-election in 2018. The President is up for re-
election in 2020. Contrary to popular belief, politicians (including Trump) do
care a lot about what people think, and they will change, moderate, or slow
their efforts if they get the sense that they'll lose an election over it.

This strategy is not new or unique. Republicans used it to great effect in
2009-2010, killing the public option out of Obamacare, and blocking the cap-
and-trade global warming bill--even though the Democrats held the White House
and Congress.

