One rally is extremely unlikely to make anything happen. It takes a movement with its own internal momentum to make people in power concede anything at all. The organizer's job is to persuade people to start with demonstrations which at first accomplish nothing other than letting other people know that there is opposition to whatever it is you are fighting.

An unavoidable first step. Plant your flag and give people a chance to rally behind it.

Getting simultaneous participation in a multinational event is the pivotal step for the resistance in the current struggle over how we make collective decisions about life and death matters -- such as public health. The push for unprecedented state power in many different countries is co-ordinated and disciplined to a degree that has shocked many C99 voices, including me. Darkness indeed.

You win a fight over an issue when you convince the jerks running the money machine as of now that you are not going to stop raising hell, ever. The most successful campaigns develop an upward trajectory of intensity, as more and more people realize that they do not HAVE TO OBEY, and you form bigger and bigger crowds doing nastier and nastier things.

Ironically, the current power structure strikes its pose while standing on the foundation built with blood, pain, and stubborn resistance to power by wave after wave of activism -- emancipation, suffrage, labor rights, civil rights for everybody. All that any of the current wave of people like Gavin Newsom had to do was Wake Up to be on the winning side of that centuries long struggle over whether justice rather than power is in control of our society.

Now they are all the enemy of justice and exercisers of power on behalf of irrational crap.

Times change.

Successful organizers realize that the same body can be inhabited by multiple personalities, depending upon things like fear, hunger and resentment. Sad, but proven a zillion times over and documented by lots of anecdotes related on this board recently.

I am trying to psyche myself up to attend the LA demonstration on December 4. My own fears are real and my own well earned cynicism tells me that we are pissing in the wind. But so was every other fight won by other people. Just like the Governor of California, I did nothing more than waking up to enjoy the fruits of victories won by people who were just as queasy as I am now.

Short version. Do what you can when you can and never worry about whether it will work. It won't, at first. Only if you keep doing it over and over again, your enemies have a reason to start worrying about you.

right now,

Even vaccinated me is not going into crowds or inhaling others breath.. close proximity with anybody but my own family.. is a big no no.

Just saying.. I am even giving children a wide berth.. I wouldn't like to be a parent of a school age child. No knowing how many carry the virus. I am being as careful as I can be. NO I DON'T WANT THE US TO JOIN THEIR CANZUC! Fuck monarchy. They are not democracies, not free countries.

I clicked on this story because of Australia's censorship. Actually, all the British countries have been really disappointing me these days, they are all so shamelessly controlled by the neoliberal Bad Guys..

Plus, reading history, turns out the UK was a lot worse in the past than most Americans realize. (they invented the evil concentration camp) They were responsible for a lot of very dark sinister things.. while trying to dominate the world.

Their policy with press suppression is for a reason. They have a lot to hide.

Did you know the one good thing about the UK, its NHS, is not long for this world?