Feb. 1st Protests
My question for debate is, will Feb 1st protests have any effect on the minds of American citizens?

I don't see this as having any real effect at all.

As the story points out, they are inviting anyone and everyone with some grievance to come out and protest. To what point? How do you get your particular grievance heard (or seen) when there are 10,000 other people there all trying to get their particular grievenace heard?

Granted most of those 10,000 will fall into groups who have something to protest, and band together for their issue, but even so, who is really going to get anything out of 10 different groups of 1,000 people all protesting for their cause, all marching and shouting at the same time, at any given location? Seems like a pointless excercise to me, in terms of getting their message out.

I agree with NiteGuy. Just take a look at the last line from the announcement:

This just gives credence to those like myself who believe there is a subculture in our country of career protestors who are activists just so they can call themselves activists.
I do like their rather inflated crowd size predictions. We'll see on Feb 1.
This will have absolutly no effect whatsoever on mainstream America.

I think I'll wait until this is a real story before commenting. There is no sponsoring organization mentioned, no contact info, no web site, nothing. This is one individual posting to one discussion board without identifying who the "we" is that's supposed to be mounting this "omniprotest". Sounds like fiction to me.

I checked back and the announcer (John) has responded telling who the "we" are.
He writes "Yesterday I had a busy schedule so I barely had enough time to type that message - I had to leave for work. So I couldn't (not didn't want to) tell you all who we were.
All of us are various people, Greens, Democrats, school teachers, Natural Laws, veterans tired of war and its horrors, Independents, civil Libertarians, anti-Bush activists, peace-activists, hippies, civil rights activists, etc. Basically we are an alliance of people who want to win back the USA. These protests will do more than merely get our message across of the issues that's happening in our country - they'll also show Americans that many people are uniting to win the USA back and will take it back. We're trying our omniprotesting to get more and more people involved. This way no one feels left out and we're sure to attract more media attention by taking the protesting to city halls. All the people we're trying to help feel included. I was thinking that you Indymedia people might be cops but I have a feeling you're not. We're also protesting the PATRIOT Act, unequal rights for homosexuals, computerized voting machines not having a paper trail, and more. All protests will take place just outside of city halls. We'll have protests going on in many other cities besides the ones listed too on Feb 1st. All protests will proceed like this:

increasing gap between rich and the poor
FTAA
War on Drugs
pResident Bush
PATRIOT Act
unequal rights for homosexuals
computerized voting machines not having a paper trail
miscellaneous"

It sounds like their protests will actually be one big protest comprised of a sequence of smaller protests.

Uh...no he hasn't. The only people he left out were disgruntled former widget salesmen.
I agree with some of the posters on the Indymedia site. This seems to be disinformation. If it's not, it's the lamest, most amateurish attempt to organize anything.

on edit: If they were an 'alliance of people', they would have a webite, newsletter, or a clue.

Yeah, I had already read the second posting by "John" when I made my first posting here. People who organize hundreds of thousands of protestors outside city halls spanning the entire continent tend not to be totally anonymous. They occasionally have at least a mailing address or maybe a phone number - or at least a bit more than "All of us are various people". Being able to communicate kinda comes in handy when attempting to coordinate an "omiprotest" of everything imaginable by everyone possible.

Not to worry about February 1st even if it ends up being better organized than this John person's response!

I personally don't object to protesters and am glad that we finally have some new film/pictures of the Iraqi war protesters all decked out in their pink outfits to replace the worn out film of the 60's and 70's! Protesting is a form of expression and IMO is soon forgotten until the media rolls the film again and then we say, "Oh, yeah, I remember that!"

February 1st is on a Sunday. If this protest is in fact legitimate, don't you find it odd to be having a protest in front of City Hall on a day they aren't even open?

Beladonna, it seems as though they want to attract as much media attention as possible. They probably chose Sunday because that's the day many people would be off from work.

First let’s remember that the numbers quoted are estimates. I will guess that less than 25% show up. I will say categorically it will have no effect.

Do we know what groups are behind the protests? Is it the usual very far left orgs such as the Socialist Workers Party etc.? I am sure it is.

Maybe we should find out if these protests even exist before we start applying conspiracy theories to them!

Has anyone seen anything else about this "omniprotest" anywhere? Or does it only exist in the two postings by "john" at Indymedia (and a couple of postings by FlutePlayer here)? I've checked out the web sites of the Democratic Party, the Green Party, and the Natural Law Party (all of whom "john" implies are participating) and none of them so much as mention it in passing...

The website gives numbers for how many will show up. I see no reason to believe that less will show up. I personally think these omniprotests are going to have an impact.

Could you give any sort of explanation for Wertz's questions? It's fine that you believe these protests will have a great impact. Some of us are just curious as to how you arrive at this conclusion, given the sceptism noted by myself and others.
EVERY other major protest in the last few years that touted numbers similar to what 'John' posted has had a grand publicity campaign behind it, to get the word out. Also, 'John' seemed skeptical in his post as to the legitimacy of Indymedia posters. Indymedia being a fairly outspoken voice and forum for those on the left.
Seems pretty fishy to me.

I personally believe there is a giant pink bunny, invisible to all others, sitting beside me. Please give reasons why this totally unpublicized protest will draw thousands. The pink bunny tells me it will not.

Ever see that movie PCU? Remember the 'Causeheads'? Well, take those people, add lots of free-time, and you come up with some lame brain (horse manure, for lack of a more colorful word) like this. Hey, maybe we can go there and protest the protest! Oh, wait, thats right, Im doing something that day, I have A LIFE!

No, I bet more people will watch the first night of survivor than realize what the protests are about-let alone that they are even occuring in the first place. The American public at large is comatose, much as it was in say....1963 and 1964. Some big things have to happen before the anti-war movement gets bonafide attention.

Wow this is interesting. I better mark my calender and be there. I want to protest my cat taking up my entire bed. What a hoax.. Why hasn't John posted any updates? I need to know so I can make my sign.

My personal favorite quote from the Indy site is:

gee I would help too, anything to get my cat off my bed!

800,000 people ready to protest?? A confident man John is?

I wish I had seen this thread earlier this week, I could have used a good laugh then....

I've done a quick scan of various leftist websites (Green Party, Pacifica Radio, NORML, Moveon.org, etc.) and have found no reference to a February 1st protest planned in the US. If this is happening, its WAY underground.

Before we go predicting the effect of the protests, maybe we should see if theire are any first? Especially since the planners seem to be keeping these secret...

I didn't see any of these protests reported on CNN. Does anyone know any information about them? Were police deployed to stop protesters?

Are you serious?

These protests have been a virtual non-event for about 98% of the American public. I'm against the war(in Iraq) and my sympathies are no where near the administration's. The problem is this--the vast majority of Americans have yet to be affected by this war. Whether it is having a relative die, watching bodies come home in large numbers, or have troops interviewed in the fields who are openly disrespectful of the president's foreign policy. Don't worry fluteplayer, this movement is still young. Remember-not very many people gave a darn about the Vietnam war in 1965.

Of course one must remember the difficulty of the struggle in Iraq is dwarfed (more like micro-sized) when compared to Vietnam. The war in Iraq will always go over well with the public because of distrust of Saddam Hussein and humanitarian concerns. The fact that military deaths have yet to reach one-half of a percent of US troops means Americans aren't worried about losing the battle as they were in Vietnam.

No "quagmire", no popular movement...

For what it's worth, I don't think I would schedule my protest for the same day as the Super Bowl, unless I felt the football Bubbas wouldn't care about it anyway!

This sort of stunt trivializes the serious reasons many of us have to protest. This smelled fishy from the get-go.

It is sad that the media is fixated upon what Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake did during half-time, as opposed to covering a serious "news" issue.

Um, are people still trying to pretend that this "protest announcement" was somehow remotely connected to reality as we know it? This was a hoax, people. There were no February 1 protests - "omni" or otherwise. These protests only existed in the mind of the anonymous "John" - and a few people who decided to give credence to his fantasy. CNN can hardly cover something which never happened.

98%, more like 99.99999%. Are we debating a mythological event here? Where were these protests? Who protested?

Edited to add: Looks like Wertz beat me to the punch.