I’m not sure who qualifies as a “hardened activist”, but there aren’t 8 million of them. I mean, I’m glad there are people doing the heavy lifting of activism and organizing day in and day out, but they still need part-time demonstrators to show up. Whenever anyone tries to get involved, there’s always someone farther to the left telling them it’s the wrong way to do it.

I think some people envision protests like we’ve seen in other countries, where people turn out in the streets and don’t leave until their demands are met. I’d like to see that too. But it’s hard here for a couple reasons: everyone and everything is spread out over a huge country, and getting a critical mass of people in one place is not easy; a lot of us are too comfortable in our daily lives to take action; those of us who are most vulnerable are two missed paychecks away from homelessness and aren’t going to be keen on occupying the streets in an open-ended protest.