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.

  • limer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    13 days ago

    The numbers only count if it’s constantly repeated, otherwise it’s just a sort of a national holiday.

    “Here in the USA, we are so progressive that we actually protest 4 times a year”

    • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      You see masked people with guns don’t engage with them or ask for ID. That’s dangerous for you, and it’s not your job.

      Instead, immediately call 911 and report a group of masked individuals with guns at your location.

      • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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        11 days ago

        i wonder, what do you, personally, think of slashing ice’s car’s tires? Do you think it’s too violent, or is it just right?

        the idea behind it is to “not let them get away with it”.

        I.e., when ice shows up in a place to disappear citizens, instead of driving away with these people, they get stuck because they can’t drive away. This way, they don’t get away with it.

  • leadore@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    I keep seeing estimates of everything from that 4-6 million up to 11 million or even 13 million.

    I also saw estimates of 5 million for the Hands Off protests and these were definitely a lot bigger than that (certainly at least twice as big at my location), so either the Hands Off one was over-estimated or the 4-5 million for No Kings is underestimated.

  • Deceptichum@quokk.au
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    13 days ago

    And it’s achieved nothing at all, so can shitlibs finally stop pretending that protesting does something and start campaigning for violence?

    Because while you were feeling good about yourself for standing on the street, they tried to kill the two democrats they needed to flip the state to them. Only one side was going to achieve something and it only took 1 person not millions.

    • Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de
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      12 days ago

      Silly liberals, your strategy of standing on the streets pales in comparison with my strategy of sitting at home.

    • cynar@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      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.

        • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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          12 days ago

          Hi.

          I went to the protest. I’ve been continuously employed for the last 15 years.

          Your perception of the typical protestor could not be more wrong.

      • barkingspiders@infosec.pub
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        13 days ago

        These rallies/protests/whatever are exactly how you build momentum for a general strike.

        A general strike is useless without a significant percentage of the population joining. As these protests keep happening the attendees trust that the networks that are drawing them together will step with them into more drastic action, like a general strike. We are building a small amount of trust and cooperation between literally millions of people. It’s not going to happen overnight.

      • sunbrrnslapper@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        I can show up to a protest, but I cannot afford to participate in a general strike. 🤷 I think you would see dramatically different numbers with a general strike.

  • Mister_Feeny@fedia.io
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    13 days ago

    The other day I was seeing 13.1 million people, now I’m seeing 4-6 million, these are some big gaps.

    A ton of people either way, but anyone know why the discrepancies are so big?

    I can’t even imagine how people are counted for things like this. The one I went to was in a town of about 100k total people so I’m sure it was on the smaller side of things, but if asked how many people were there I’d guess around 2000, but that would still just be a completely wild guess essentially. Is that how they count attendance for these things, wild guesswork?

    • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      I’m also confused because even the high estimates pale in comparison to the George Floyd protests, do those not count for some reason?

    • frezik@midwest.social
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      12 days ago

      It’s tricky to estimate things. If you take footage from drones or helicopters, how many people will be hidden behind trees? There are ways to guess, but those come with assumptions that can give you very different numbers. Local organizers, police, and the media can all come to different numbers with perfectly reasonable differences in assumptions or techniques.

      This should be kept in mind for any big outdoor event where there’s no specific entry points to count people going by. Affects Trump’s parade, too.

    • elucubra@sopuli.xyz
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      12 days ago

      I dont know in the US, but in my country, in Europe, where we have a tradition of taking to the streets, the police have developed some pretty good methods for counting, based on helicopter photos, video, and physical references.

      I imagine that with drones, lidar, machine learning, and other technologies, you can probably now tally attendance to ridiculous accuracy

      • Tinidril@midwest.social
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        12 days ago

        After lawsuits from Trump and friends against government and media for “underestimating” his crowds, both tend to stay out of that game. Just another case of dysfunction in the US.

    • barkingspiders@infosec.pub
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      13 days ago

      The 13M type numbers came out early and captured a lot of attention but didn’t have much legitimacy, but they anchored people’s expectations. The smaller numbers are coming out now and have much more legitimacy. They may be smaller but in the big picture this is all still impressive, the movement is big and growing

      • cenzorrll@lemmy.ca
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        12 days ago

        I saw 13.1 million come out from the alt national parks Facebook several days after seeing 5-11 million estimate. From that post it seems like they had people at each protest doing the work, whereas the others are back of the napkin estimates. So I’ll go ahead and accept the absolute minimum conservative estimate being 4 million, while probably actually 10+ million.

        • sunbytes@lemmy.world
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          11 days ago

          Apparently that alt parks account is super weird and q-like.

          They had “140k” members counting protesters (they claim). Seems made up.

          For now I’m sticking with the low-but-verifiable numbers. Otherwise we leave ourselves open to being ignored the next time (on numbers/data).

    • leadore@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      Unfortunately change requires repeated and/or sustained protests over time, so we’ll have to see. But this was a good sign that it may be possible. If we go to war with Iran, a whole new cohort will be added to the numbers.

  • insomniac@sh.itjust.works
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    12 days ago

    Isn’t it still significantly smaller than Earth day 1970? I’d also like to see how it compares to percentage of population since the US has more people now than when other big protests took place. But still, good job America.