With legislative elections two weeks away, massive demonstrations took place across Germany under the slogan 'democracy needs you,' warning against any party working together with the far-right AfD.

Summary

Over 200,000 people marched in Munich against the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, with organizers claiming 320,000 participants.

The protests, held under the slogan “democracy needs you,” warned against any party collaborating with the AfD, particularly the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), ahead of legislative elections.

  • yetAnotherUserEnglish
    131·
    1 day ago

    You can’t take days off for protests in Germany either.

    Which is why protests are almost always held on the weekend to allow as many people as possible to join them, since significantly fewer people are working.

    • Dadd Volante@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      6·
      1 day ago

      There’s also public transport, healthcare, literally weeks of paid days off. They simply have better social resources than we do.

      • yetAnotherUserEnglish
        61·
        1 day ago

        Sure, but I’d argue the largest aspect is cultural.

        There’s a reason France’s protests are significantly more disruptive than those of other European nations, despite similar social resources and significantly worse police brutality.

        I mean, the US has denser cities than most of Europe. It’s not impossible to have large-scale demonstrations with hundreds of thousands of protestors in them.

        I suspect it’s just that most Americans aren’t all that interested in changing the status quo for the better. The amount of apathy is perhaps only topped by Russia.

        • Gammelfisch@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          3 hours ago

          Public transportation is pathetic in the USA. I guarantee most of the 200,000 German protestors used the U-Bahn and S-Bahn.

          • yetAnotherUserEnglish
            6·
            23 hours ago

            Ah, turns out I’m somewhat wrong. From what I can tell, the city centers in the US are denser but if you include the entire city Europe has generally denser cities.

            Most US cities are significantly taller in the center due to skyscrapers and highrises. Most European cities are more “horizontal” in that regard by having many multi-story apartment blocks instead of a handful of highrises.

            • chiliedogg@lemmy.worldEnglish
              6·
              14 hours ago

              Most American cities aren’t New York.

              We have no real public transit, and many of our cities were urbanization following the invention of the automobile and are spread out to accommodate the automobile infrastructure and longer commutes.

              Houston is our third most-populous city and has a metroplex with a Combined Statistical Area of over 12,000 square miles. That makes it roughly the size of the Netherlands, with around 40% the population of the Netherlands. Soon, Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio are going to form one giant metroplex that’s 60,000 square miles.