If you're American, go on strike. Nobody gives a shit about people holding signs and protesting peacefully. If you can't do anything to make the opposition care about you, don't expect them to do anything other than ignore you.
There are no easy answers here. If you want change, expect to fight for it.
peacefully expressing opposition is enormously powerful.
there is still hope that it will be the path out of this worsening nightmare.
It doesn't matter how many of you there are if none of you are willing to actually do anything. If I just ignore you, how does it change anything in my life? The only thing you're achieving is making yourselves feel better about accomplishing nothing.
at a minimum, it makes it clear to others that they are not alone in thinking this regime is beyond the pale.
people who are able to take other actions like engaging via the judicial system, or peacefully refusing to continue working, are also encouraged by seeing peaceful masses of people agreeing with them.
it actually harms the cause to be dismissive of people who can contribute by simply making their peaceful objection visible.
I think it harms the cause to feel better about accomplishing nothing. You've created a morale booster, but you haven't actually achieved anything or put forth any sort of plan to enact any sort of change. Assuming your goal is to make the government function according to written laws, why would the current president give a shit about anything you say when he can just continue to ignore you? If he ignored you before, you holding up a sign isn't going to do anything.
Protests work when there is some sort of threat behind it. Most protests you read about in history aren't a few hours on the weekend, they're ongoing where everybody is already participating in a strike. And many of them have the obvious threat of violence behind them. This "protest on the weekend" shit is pathetic. I'm not going to congratulate you for wasting time while everything continues to get worse. From my perspective you are part of the problem.
This is not true. There are trivially many historical examples.
For what it's worth, I don't think this is a new phenomenon. I remember quite clearly the way the press treated Occupy Wall Street, pretending that it was just a bunch of random loiterers who didn't have clear demands and goals.
In that case, the media simply made the editorial choice not to go out of their way to engage with the protesters, metaphorically covering their ears and then asking why they couldn't hear anything. Things have only gotten worse in the decades since.
Do both. The person in this story clearly was not ignore.
They do in fact care otherwise they wouldn't be so beligerent about it. It takes 3% of the country protesting to get undeniable attention and last weekend was getting close to that threshold. 330m Americans or so, the threshold is around 10m. And this weekend was counted with 7m.
Your voice does matter, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.