Until the citizens of the US are willing to shut things down, expect nothing to change. Look to other countries for examples of effective protest and understand that effective protest requires sacrifice, not just an afternoon walking around with a sign.
The people "spending an afternoon walking around with a sign" are doing a lot more than the people shitting on them for it. Mass movements have to start somewhere, they don't come out of thin air.
Why not criticize all the people sitting at home, rather than calling the ones actually trying "pathetic"?
This is quite the whataboutism. Just because I criticize the protestors doesn't mean I'm defending people that don't protest.
You're right, it's a start. But pragmatically it's still not meaningful. Until the protests are strong enough that the government actually feels fear there is no reason to expect anything to happen. That's just reality.
Yes, everything has to start somewhere. But that doesn't mean every start is meaningful if it goes nowhere.
protests aren't meaningful unless they get results but protests also have to start somewhere but these starts have no results so better not to start
Do you really expect a singular protest which will change the world order over night? It might give us some personal satisfaction to claim others are ineffective and weak, but in the annals of history, that amounts to even less than a sign bearing march. If you really want to make an impact put forward some positive prescriptions, like the strikes you mentioned, I agree that actual strikes would be a good step. I hope you are actively sharing these recommendations to people who can organize and not just putting forward diffuse ineffectual critique to strangers on hacker news
Maybe you should read my actual comments instead of jumping to conclusions. In my first comment I made it clear that protests are useless until the government fears you. If I can ignore you easily, so can the government. Nobody gives a shit about you holding a sign. Until you can make the government scared of you as far as I'm concerned you may as well sit your ass at home.
I'm not here to validate your feelings or cheer you on. I'm pointing out why you're failing and you're snapping back like I give a shit. You're welcome to ignore me just as easily as it is for me to ignore the current protests.
Now protests can be demonstrative and the more you protest the likelier you are at protesting again, and if the climate is right some organizations might join and call for others to participate. But what usually happens though is police violence suppressing them as soon as they look like they are gaining any steam (see e.g. Occupy Wall Street or BLM).
That said, as long as the opposition and the large unions are lame, any direct action will remain pretty restricted.
They do a few things, but actually causing change is not one of them. They show how many people support something; they group those people together enabling the spread of ideas; they group those people together enabling the state apparatus to take them all down in one go.