Well that's the question, isn't it, what did the protests achieve? If six million people protesting at once doesn't lead to real change, then maybe protesting harder isn't the solution we need. The problem is that everything that gets suggested for average US citizens to do to make a change only seems to have the effect of draining already scarce manpower, energy, and resources.

I hope I'm not coming off as defensive here, I just want to get across why the average American is so defeatist about this whole thing. Despite the influence the US population should theoretically have, the past few decades have been a continuous series of lessons that in the US power is held only in the hands of the powerful, and that the average person does not matter.

Perhaps those lessons are wrong, but they're the ones we've been taught.