Anti-Trump demonstrations in the US - write a report if you're attending

If I see a pro-US pro-Chinese or pro whatever national interest spirit in those demonstrations, yes I will criticize them. And I never "quarantine" myself nor "hide behind" something. Finally my level of engagement is not a business of yours.

was going to say. a few outlets like WaPo were clearly cheerleading for clinton but most "MSM" ate up what trump offered and at most mewled a little..

do cdes overseas know about AM radio rightwingers? they've been around for decades: the atrocious Bob Grant here in NYC was at it already in the 70s. it's where limbaugh and many like him ply their poison, to tens of millions every day.

Really? So are you saying that the bulk of the mainstream media did not mock trump and did not support clinton?

And if they indeed supported Clinton, then my question is this: is the american media the strongest defender of anti-fascism or is it within the realm of possibilities to assume that they have other interests? And I don't mean the interests of the working class women or immigrants since no one can convince me that American state, media or bourgeoisie care even slightly about them.

yes

there's a list somewhere of endorsements that in aggregate favored clinton.

like selling content to stay in business? yet some media were ideologically motivated: the NYDN was furiously anti-trump, yet their readership is just the demographic that would vote for him, stereotypically speaking. but their owner has deep pockets.

you're thinking monolithically. from our point of view as libcoms, these organs are embedded in capital. from their point of view there are fundamental and irreconcilable differences. you can't talk about "the american media" as if they're part of a hive mind.

petey,

please help me understand: Who were those that supported Clinton/Trump and why did they supported her/him? I mean what are the factions you see, even broadly?

Who on Libcom cried for Obama or Clinton?

"Generally speaking" isn't good enough, Mikail, you have to deal with the substantive issues driving the protests.

Trump's election was part of an international wave of reaction, triggered in large part by the defeat of the possibilities for proletarian class struggle at the hands of Syriza in Greece; Chavez-Maduro in Venezuela; Rousseff in Brazil. None of that, that collaboration with "kettling" the prospects for proletarian action changes the fact that the attack on Rousseff, the attack on Maduro, the triumph of Trump are expressions of reaction, right wing reaction.

Nobody, to put it in a historical context that might make it clear, is supporting a popular front; is endorsing the bourgeoisie. We are advocating that we prevent a "popular front" from assuming hegemony over the erupting struggles by working for a class based program of opposition.

The US government has staffed itself with those opposed to healthcare insurance for the poor and/or sick; it has filled its executive positions with a collection of hedge-fund rip-off artists who have been supported by previous governments; the "leader" of this amalgam of bullies, goons, bankers, and vultures thinks women who have a medical procedure should be punished; the same leader wants to legalize torture; practice collective punishment; summarily deport immigrants (at a rate far exceeding anything possible without suspending judicial process) and people shouldn't protest, because......

Because the other section of the bourgeoisie opposes Russia?

Don't know how you are going to be effective in Turkey if you shun any movement or demonstration that in its embyonic stages allows those individuals opposed to the Erdogan-Putin "understanding" to participate

Artesian;

1- stop patronizing me and don't tell me how I may act in Turkey. You are not my teacher. I can do political activity wherever I want in the world. Being a turk is not in my genes, not my destiny, it is not what defines my political perspective. It is enforced on me by a counter-revolutionary nationalist republic.

2- I saw lots of leftists cry. Literally cry! That is enough for me to generalize. If you did not see those, well you go out and observe more.

3- Observe even more if you think torture started with Trump.
Read some American history if you think American government is independent of Bankers.
Go to some provincial rust belt town to see how actually working class women fared until now.
Do you think there was not any deportations until now? Look at Obama to learn how a state effectively deports millions - if you really care!
And stop lecturing me

What's your point Mikhail? Please elaborate otherwise the point of your posts seems.like point scoring.

based on the impression i get of the lefts in Turkey and the US, its not all that surprising that a Turkish communist would find protests in the US disappointing, while USian communists would be excited.

Nobody's patronizing you. You're being challenged to address substantive issues of protests involving millions of people that you call "demoralizing."

You saw lots of "leftists" cry. Swell. Except I asked you, who on Libcom was crying for Obama or Clinton? Details, details. Pay attention to the details.

No I don't think torture started with Trump. No more than I think racism started with Trump. I think it is being "normalized" with Trump; justified, sanctioned as an official policy. Just because Trump didn't start it, doesn't mean it should not be opposed. Details, details...again.

Read some not American-- but US history? I've read quite a bit and I've lived through a lot, having been laid off in the railroad industry when the big downsizing started, so I know a bit more than you about "rust belt" conditions. Details, Details

And yes I know about deportations, I know that Obama deported about 2.5 million in 8 years, and that deporting that number has pretty much jammed the judicial process to the max. I also know Trump vows to deport that same number within 1 year. How do you think he's going to do that if not by suspending all judicial "guarantees" and "rights"? That's why those of us who have been working on behalf of protection for all immigrants, who argue that nobody is illegal, are eager to talk to greater numbers of people about the change in conditions that Trump represents. As I pointed out earlier, the difference is in the "pace"-- not the content. Read the post again. Details, details.

I said nothing about your genetic make-up and I couldn't care less. I care about your discounting of the importance of these protests because the protesters aren't fans of Putin, which seems to be the only issue of interest to you. That's the only detail you seem to recognize. .

I'm not lecturing you. I'm pointing out that you don't know what you pretend to talk about.

I made my point. Are you trying to score a point or do you have any specific questions?

mikail, again you seem to be spewing "alternative facts."

Are you basing your observations on talking to one professor (and in which country?), surfing social -- or mainstream -- media (which sites?), or did you actually attend rallies in the U.S.? You've been pretty vague about all this.

The U.S. is a country of over 325,000,000 people, with vast regional differences. Your concerns about rising nationalism are valid, but as I expressed above where I live it's the sectorian left preaching support for Assad/Russia in the name of anti-imperialism that I find a greater threat.

Could you give more details and less ideology? Thanks.

It would help to know if you actually encountered these anti-Russians in the U.S. or elsewhere. And if not in the U.S., where? Turkey?

Complete bystander here who didn't even follow the US elections very closely at all but I certainly saw a wave of high profile us media and personalities going against Trump in the months before the election. Including republican or otherwise right leaning media and personalities. I remember it quite clearly because from that point I was convinced Trump was going to win.

Can't miss work or your only day off, there's lack of transportation, funding, time, social connections. The list goes on. Then there's getting shot with projectiles and maced.

Perhaps you didn't vote, like half the US voting population, it's unlikely you'd waste effort protesting the outcome. Both these candidates are historically corrupt and the social democrat clearly would have won in an open electoral situation. The US bourgeoisie veers hard-right, beelines at the slightest sight of the US proletariat awakening from a hundred year long slumber in response to the Great Recession. Is anyone shocked?

I'm not sure who was on strike recently in America besides Portland wobblies. It's helpful to get to know people and debate the issues of the class with them, but usually this is most fruitful where you reside. In such a case you wouldn't have to take a road trip or day drive to attempt to network with strangers.

I don't think workers lack the intelligence to reach an anti-capitalist consciousness. A clear majority of unsophisticated people will concede that a classless society of "freely associated producers" (theManifesto) is a great idea, especially in the face of the modern problems of civilization. Even the polls done by the bourgeois media reflect this reality.

We need a social revolution to go with the political one. So long as we go along with production relations of the commodity economy, we'll get nowhere, stuck in an invent loops of trying to reproduce our means of subsistence on a near weekly basis because "that's how people live today". I don't see how we can overcome commodity relations while still participating in them and telling people, "steady now". Can't we just blow up the fucking system already?

OK, but that has nothing to do with the content of the demonstration, which was Mikail's point. He thought it was "demoralizing" to attend; not that he had to work, lacked transportation, time, funding, or was worried about police repression. The issue wasn't ability, but willingness.

Again not the issue. This candidate wants to jail women who have an abortion; this candidate welcomes physical assaults on women, immigrants, Muslims. (yes, such assaults have happened before, so what? No one said Trump "started it." You might as well be telling someone not to protest the KKK, because racism is and always has been integral to US capitalism).

Shock is not the issue. What this represents is the issue. Do you honestly think this election result is separate and apart from the general wave of reaction moving through Latin American, Europe, Asia?

Don't understand your point. There was a big demonstration, and it was walking distance from where I live. I knew some people attending. I didn't know many more who were attending. What does that have to do with attending or not attending. Or.......refusing to attend as Mikail would have it because somebody or somebodies don't like Russia and/or Putin? Unless of course one is a part of the Global Research/RT consortium. Then I understand the objection.

"So long as we go along with production relations of the commodity economy, we'll get nowhere"?

Exactly what does that mean? If you work, sell your labor power, are you "going along" with production relations of the commodity economy, and therefore incapable of building the overthrow of those relations. And exactly how do you not "go along" with "production relations"? Move to a mountain shack and hunt? Communes?

You can do whatever you want, right? Let us know how that works out for you. My understanding of capitalism seems to indicate that your "method" can't, won't work.

We need to overthrow and abolish the system. That's just a bit different.

To be honest I've just been ignoring that, my comments were not aimed at the ongoing argument between you and mikail.

Thanks for writing that, it's exactly what I'm wondering. Is it possible? Or should I just not ask such pesky questions and get a job at McDonald's and join the IWW?

When we're young our parents and teachers say, "get a job". How can we survive without a job? But capitalist production relations don't come from simple "habits", they come from the internal structure of the commodity economy.

These marches and struggles concerned with issues partial to the greater problem, the lack of communism, and attempts to "raise consciousness", instead of defeat ideology, by participating in these actions aren't working. Can demands even be effective anymore? It's just one "demand": communism or death for, no exaggeration, most of the life on the planet (it's already happened/happening).

Agreed.

Ask Camatte.

Just kidding, I'm not sure at all. But clearly that's what I'd like to discuss if anyone wants.

Well, Marx's analysis is that capitalism is not overthrown by those outside the production relations of the "commodity economy," but by those exactly at the heart of those production relations, whose own labor-power is compelled to be expressed as a commodity for exchange.

That sounds about right to me.

Precisely because there are so many real things to protest, each Russia-sign is all the more wrong. That Russia-angle even permeated into popular tv-shows like South Park. So it's necessary to speak out against this, just as when Greek protests rely on anti-German sentiment, or when Egypt protestors wrap themselves in Egyptian flag.

No, I am genuinely asking. I really don't understand what your critique is or what the point you are trying to make. Is it: don't bother with these folks? counter anti-Russian sentiments/warmongering? the crowd is not class conscious, so it's a waste of time? That because a few liberals cried over Obama leaving/Clinton loosing, there is no point? Or are you arguing that people going out to these protests should "engage" with protesters in a specific way?

Artesian and others, I would propose we continue on these points here, if that's ok?

And these protests were overwhelmingly about those real things. The "Russia-signs" were mostly jokes, at least the ones I saw in the sections I observed. The focus of the march was the protection of women and immigrants from repression and abuse.

I don't find that demoralizing in the least.

Revisiting this, it's a straight-up Kellyanne Conway "alternative fact."

Comrade, you either observed selectively or are just simply wrong. Probably both.

For most of the latter half of the 20th century the U.S. broadcast media was dominated by the big 3: ABC, CBS and NBC. Ted Turner brought in CNN in 1980, targeting cable and satellite TV; it was acquired by Times Warner in 1996. Rupert Murdoch hired Republican Party media consultant Roger Ailes to start Fox News in 1996. Comcast, current owner of NBC, is the world's biggest telecom conglomerate and has broadcast news outlets like CNBC, MSNBC, Telemundo (in Spanish), etc.

But an alternative to all this, that has been growing for decades and becoming mainstream, is the Christian right media that has had a increasing national influence. This goes back to the Reagan era (perhaps sooner, please correct me with more background details if I'm wrong), with syndicated programs like the 700 Club, created by Pat Robertson who had started broadcasting in 1961. Paleoconservative Pat Buchanan also started in 1961, but in print media, later being a commentator on various broadcast channels like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News today. Also in this milieu was Jerry Falwell, a televangelist who was a bridge between the Christian right and Republicans, as well as creating the Moral Majority in 1979 that effectively helped push Reagan into the presidency the next year.

The media in the U.S. is not monolithic, but is an global industry that reaps massive profits. The only real alternatives are the few, low wattage and local -- and disappearing -- community-based radio stations (often found in college towns). And with the rise of Fox News over the last 20 years, they have built a significant viewership in various categories. For the last 10 years, it has been the most watched cable news channel in the U.S. But even the mainstream media outlets have been used for subversive purposes.

For example, check out this article: "Adiós, El Cucuy: Immigration and laughter on the airwaves," by Dolores Inés Casillas (Boom: A Journal of California Vol. 1, No. 3, Fall 2011), about how Honduran radio personality Renán Almendárez Coello was able to use syndicated Spanish-language radio to rally for the May Day 2006 events across the U.S. El Cucuy broadcast, in Spanish, for a drive-time (5:00-11:00 a.m.) audience in Los Angeles, but was syndicated nationally. He had around 3,000,000 listeners, making him the most listened to radio DJ in L.A. in any language. On KLAX-FM (97.9) he reached Spanish-speaking working class commuters, driving on their way to their jobs, and help build for the unprecedented rally and march of 500,000 on March 25, 2006 against the anti-immigrant Sensenbrener Act (H.R. 4437), which in turn led to the nationwide May Day general strike where over 5 million Spanish-speaking worker did a stoppage for the day -- and forced congress to back down on the law.

I don't know the world of Spanish media very well, but I imagine there are right-leaning and left-leaning media networks and broadcasters. Their listenership in the U.S. is huge, so it would simply be disingenuous to assume that they were "all totally anti-Trump from the beginning." Given the number of Latina/o voters for Trump, we can be sure that a significant portion of the Spanish-speaking media was pro-Trump -- particularly evangelical Christian broadcasters.

Here's my challenge: as you're walking down the street and see a UPS driver get out the truck for a delivery, lean your ear in and see what radio station they're listening to. If they're white and male, I bet (with about 90% accuracy) that if they aren't listening to country music they're listening to Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or Michael Savage. I'm not entirely certain about all those guys, but nearly all of their shock jock ilk were strident supporters of Donald Trump. And those AM (and sometimes FM) talkshows are among the most popular in the U.S., with a listenership in the tens of millions.

Which gives the lie to "the American media was totally anti-Trump from the beginning."

And in the last post I strongly emphasized El Cucuy's pro-working class mainstream Spanish-language radio broadcasts because of the lasting legacy of May Day 2006 (ironically, his employer was Spanish Broadcasting System, one of the largest owners and operators of radio stations in the U.S.). I'll come back to the legacy of May Day 2006 later.

Back to today. When I returned to work this morning, after several weeks off, I was greeted by one of my co-workers who I've worked together with the longest. She was beaming with excitement, hugged me right after I walked in the door, and was overflowing with enthusiasm. I knew it wasn't me, so asked her what was up. And I should give some background: she's thirtysomething, mixed-race but the one she's clear about is being part Chicana, and grew up in one of the suburbs directly on the border with Los Angeles to the northeast. And she lives in Oakland.

She went on to explain that, like me, she went to both the Oakland and San Francisco Women's Marches last Saturday. Her politics are leftist, but she's not ideological, is anti-cop, anti-racist (she was passionate supporter of Black Lives Matter), and listened sincerely when I was critical of Bernie Sanders and explained why I don't advocate voting. She's one of the few at work who I know will have my back if something goes down. So she has latent class politics.

She was moved by the marches because, paraphrasing her words, women stood up in "sisterhood" and showed they had each others' backs and everyone showed they have immigrants' backs. Those are damn good reasons to go to marches like these. We discussed some of the best signs, and there were plenty, but it got us talking about Trump's "Make America great again" and what that means in 2017. For my co-worker, who's parents got harassed for being in a mixed-race marriage, it means going back to Jim Crow and a return to segregation of society. That's what inspired her to participate, which again is a pretty good reason. As a woman, Trump and future Supreme Court appointments means the possibility of overturning Roe v. Wade and making abortion illegal and denying her reproductive freedom.

Three other co-workers went to the marches; one of those was in a small bedroom-community suburb that drew over 10,000 participants (in a city of 65,000), where normally they would have gone to the larger demo in San Francisco, making it the largest protest to ever have occurred in that town. Another co-worker said his parents, who live on the east coast, went to the massive march in New York City. So protests against Trumps inauguration gave rise to lively discussions in our staff lunchroom.

Over lunch, my Chicana co-worker got even more excited talking about her parents in southern California. They went to the Women's March in downtown L.A. They took the Metro, but had to wait 1 1/2 hours just to buy a ticket and get on a train for what normally is a 25-minute 20-mile ride. She said her parents were as excited about the L.A. march as she was about the Bay Area ones -- and for almost exactly the same reasons. Thinking about it myself, the slogans of women that I heard in those marches were demands for control over their bodies, against rape culture, and for better, more universal health care. Sure, some people had silly messages about saving Obamacare, but there were so many more that simply about the fight against the oppression of women. It's pretty easy to get behind those.

I got in touch with one of my L.A. comrades, who set the story straight and said that with all the massive transportation chaos throughout southern California because of the march -- especially on public transit -- the crowd was easily more than a million people. I was born and raised in L.A. and know very well that until 2006 there were rarely protests that attracted more than ten thousand participants. That was until the immigrant working class rose up and forced congress to back down on their racist law.

My co-workers' parents were there, in downtown L.A., for the May Day general strike in 2006 when the city for the first time ever had a demo with more than a million people. And this is in the city where the LAPD's "red squad" was once perhaps the most violent and brutal force of political repression in the U.S., where they routinely crushed any kind of public political expression. And her parents returned in 2017 for almost the exact same reasons. And how many of the Latina/os -- and others -- there last Saturday had also come out on Monday, May 1, 2006? And even if 2, or 5, or 15 of those 1,000,000+ demonstrators in L.A. had reactionary, anti-Russian signs, wouldn't being with that many working class women, immigrants, queers, people of all colors (in the 2010 census L.A. was 48.5% Latina/o), and everyone else thrown in make it all extremely worthwhile? And wouldn't it be an excellent opportunity to discuss class struggle, communism and the possibilities of building better world? And do that with a million people?

Short account posted on our Facebook page:

And in Antarctica too, no less!

FWIW, I don't think there were many Leftists crying unless we consider Democrats or liberals to be Leftists.

Engagement with the protest movements against the Trump election whether on a personal level or by way of collective interventions need to be very critical of it's weaker aspects and especially critical of the leftist and liberal influences on such movements. Whilst the more obvious retrograde social policies of Trump and European equivalents need generate less contention between anarchists/communists and others more work is needed to address common fallacies surrounding national identity and economic policies within such protest movements - bare in mind how rapidly the radical left/green/anarchist anti-globalisation (anti NAFTA/TTIP etc) movement of recent years has been seeded to right-wing nationalism in both the USA and Europe.

I'm not sure lamenting on the protests is the most healthy thing to dwell on here.....the protests are a reflection of what type of organizing is going on, so since the Bernie Bros and Pantsuit nation are still riding their liberal high horse well then of course we can expect J20 and the women's march to have these primary elements. Similarly, (especially here in the Twin Cities) tankies/FRSO still has an obnoxious line on Assad and Russia, insurrecto/anti-organizational types are still glorifying goofy shit, and non-profits reign supreme. At the same time, our IWW and GDC are really picking up steam so I see these protests, as frustrating as they are, like a little road map of where/how to proceed. We just gotta find the places where to insert good politics but that's gonna happen on the day-to-day organizing not these big events.

P.S. nobody I knew even wanted to fuck with the women's march after it was rumored to be pro-cop and anti-trans and there was no militant queer bloc. Yet another road map of what is to be done for gender equity....

Rumored? Did anyone bother to find out? Rumors determine whether or not individuals or groups participate in mass demonstrations? That's pretty lame.

Helluva road map for gender equity. Participation depends on the type of rumors circulating. In NYC there were signs and banners for LGBT (sorry if I'm not up to date on the latest labels).

Maybe Kellyanne Conway or Sean Spicer floated the rumor. Or the cops. Or some Christian zealot homophobes/transphobes.

Where did you see the rumor? Facebook? Maybe Mark Zuckerberg floated it.

If you didn't go, how do you know that the march was pro-cop, anti-trans or devoid of a militant queer bloc? Rumors? (for the the possible origins of those rumors, read the lines above)

Like Artesian's experience, all the marches I went to were heavily pro-trans, with significantly massive militant queer blocs, and there were so few cops present to know exactly how other people felt about their absence (but with all the Black Lives Matter signs and slogans, it was crystal clear to me and my comrades how we all felt).