this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2026
499 points (99.4% liked)

Progressive Politics

4678 readers
943 users here now

Welcome to Progressive Politics! A place for news updates and political discussion from a left perspective. Conservatives and centrists are welcome just try and keep it civil :)

(Sidebar still a work in progress post recommendations if you have them such as reading lists)

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

alternative video upload: https://streamable.com/e/g1k7it

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] parricc@lemmy.world 21 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You realize we've been having large protests, right? For example, the city I live in is not even one of the top 10 largest cities in the US, but it has had multiple anti-Trump protests within the last year with a turnout of over 50k people. There were also other cities within 130 km of mine that had crowds with over 10k people.

The turnout in Tirana is similar in scale, but when you account for how small of a country Albania is and the fact that the entire country can easily travel to the capital to protest, the Albanian turnout is actually far less. The farthest anyone has to travel in Albania to reach the capital is 300 km. You don't even need a car. You can take an 8 hour bus ride.

In comparison, if I wanted to go to the US capital to protest, it is over 2500km away. That's like traveling from Tirana to Estonia, but without the option of easy public transportation. Not only that, but US politicians live in highly secure areas far away from where the public can reach. They never have to face us if they don't want to. No politicians even go to the building of my state capital except for a single 5 month period every two years. So the last several protests in my state capital have been people protesting at an empty building. Look dude, just because the media doesn't report stuff doesn't mean people aren't protesting. But a protest is going to be a lot more effective when you live in a tiny country with an easy way to travel.

Can the average person in your country afford to potentially lose their job while simultaneously being disqualified from unemployment benefits? My current job has 0 days PTO, and yes, I would be fired and disqualified from unemployment benefits. Can the average person in your country spend over $620 per person to fly to Washington DC? Yes, it costs that much for me. And going by bus would be even more expensive and take me over a week in travel time round trip. Can the average person in your country afford to spend over $500 in hotel costs even when splitting a room? If not, please kindly shut the fuck up. Me and many other people have been protesting regularly. But it's not possible for most of us, me included, to protest where the politicians are. Not to mention, the politicians don't care in the least. They mock us regularly. It's difficult to coordinate anything across a country that is as massive as the US, but we're at least trying.