I want tonpreface that I use exclusively Lemmy for my source for all news. I have no real social media accounts, will never be caught dead watching network or local news on TV (idc if im 37 its cartoons of gtfo lol). I use duckduckgo, Firefox for search and browser ever since I was tasked at work to keep a pulse on seo rankings. Id give cancer permission take my testicles befor ingive any fuckin company’s ai permission to my data. If any of my hardware or software is using “AI” it is not at the front end or a configurable setting. What I’m building to is that I feel I put in more effort than most to not have the news I am fed influenced by anything more than what is happening in the world right now and the decisions news outlets make to report on.
Now we have that established, I can elaborate on my question. When I see reports of protesting in the US (live outside of Buffalo, NY obligatory Go Bills!), I see primarily protests in opposition to an event or thing. I get the literal definition of protest, I’m speaking of the mission people are protesting under. Protesting police brutality, protesting oil line, fuck the insurection that doesnt fall under this example but there have been other actual protests against election results (see Buffalo shithead I mean mayor, Byron Brown’s most recent election).
Why are the so few:
Protest for improved living conditions. Protesting for higher wages (ok I admit I forgot about this one till now. I do see unions protesting for this) Protesting for lower tuition costs. Not loan forgiveness but legitimate improvements to the corrupt financial structure allowing shit like Alabama’s highest paid public office position is Nick fuckin Sabin. Protest for better medical billing regulations.
Is it just the way news headlines and articles are written domestically vs globally? Is it a vernacular thing where US English grammatical structure dictates a protest must be against and never for? Or is it cultural thing where American laziness has evolved into something horrible needs to happen for action to happen (We don’t become known as one of the fattest countries thanks our love of working hard). On the same note different page, is it that protest I see for better living conditions don’t have the luxury to protest against something? Whether it be a question of freedom of speech, governing corruption or other similar issues.
ORRRRR do you think I am off base here and there actually isn’t a difference between domestic and other counties protests?
Individualist vs collectivist cultural differences? Lack of a good social safety net is likely another reason. When are you going to protest? People are crazy busy just working enough hours to feed and house themselves and their families. Maybe you can plan your protesting between in the 30 minutes before you need to pick up your kid from school/daycare before you take them home and start cooking dinner for them. Are you going to skip work to protest? You could lose your job and then you can’t feed and house your family.
I’d also say that here in the USA protest need massive involvement by the populace to even get noticed. Very rarely does a single issue resonate with a large enough group of people to get critical mass for outside attention.
I can’t name a single person in my area I’d consider a “community leader”.
The geography is also a huge contributor. To protest something on a national scale needs significantly greater buy-in from the country as a whole than protesting something on a national scale in a European country. We have a huge amount of land area over here and with the exception of major cities, we’re very spread out.
Spain is one of the larger European countries, and is about 500k sq. km, as an example. The US is about 9.1 million sq. km.
Protests happen on local scales but they don’t make national news, only the really massive ones do, and those require a lot of coordination and time investment from the participants just to show up.
Just to add to your point, as far as I can find, the entire European Union is only about 4.3 million sq. km.
If Spain were added as a 51st US State it would be the 3rd largest, between Texas and California. Same with France (largest in the EU), but it’s much closer to overtaking 2nd place. I had no idea those countries were so large.
Still, we have 50 of those country sized areas.