Hi, I am from a country also undergoing protests right now, but a person very close to me is visiting the US. They joined the No Kings protest yesterday in NYC. And they told me there was no young people at all. The contrast with my country is kind of weird, young people mobilise all the time.

I’m ofc not pretending that yesterday’s NYC protest is an accurate characterisation of mobilisation in the entire country. But from photos I see it does seem a trend that the no kings mainly has middle aged and older people in it. I’m curious. Why?

I went to the first one. I'm in a Republican leaning county, and I was really surprised with the turnout in general. Ours had a pretty diverse range of ages, and I was more surprised by the number of seniors, as they're the ones I think of as being more conservative. Plenty were there with their teens or adult children and a good number of veterans too.

Our town has been in the national news for teens getting in a fight with the (out of uniform) police chief after the chief tackled and choked (allegedly) one of the teens, so at least a noticeable portion of our young people are willing to get involved.

I think it's because No Kings has little to offer young people.

Young people want economic mobility, quality public education, and a sane foreign policy including ending the genocide. No Kings protests tend to shy away from these subjects.

In fact, the No Kings protest is somewhat unique in that it does not have any specific demands at all. It has a focus on defending democracy and criticism of Trump, which are valid, but the main thrust is that older liberals want to go back to the pre-Trump era.

The pre-Trump era was great for these older liberals- it was their golden era- but younger generations do not look back so fondly. Millennials remember this era as a time of economic hardship; Gen Z are too young to remember the positivity of the late 90s/early 2000s.

The youthful political energy is with the DSA at the current moment. "No Kings" and DSA agree on many things, but there is also deep disagreement on many serious issues.

Younger people are squeezed by the system in terms of poverty & needing to work. They are disillusioned that anything systemic works, because, well, look around.

Boomers & many of Gen X are retired or have free time. They grew up when these social movements had more power in America. I think it gives a lot of them something to do & some amount of hope.

I work in a very red area. At one point there was a no kings protest every Saturday morning for about 4 months, those did tend to be older people. Yesterday, the crowd that came was a much more diverse, much more lively crowd. Plenty of older people still, but skewed younger than usual.

Because the youth are busy on social media 'doing their bit'.

i see young people , most are still going through schooling, and people that graduated literally have no jobs, and because of layoffs they are constant stressed thinking about finding a career, or lack of, and htier own friend and families constantly pressuring them(if you look at posts on many a platform about this from a search online you will see most of it happen within 3-6 years, these people arnt protesting). you literally have to have free time on your hands to protest,

Also the apathetic people too, YOUTUBE, meta, amazon, streaming servies is enough of distraction for them or they dont see this problem is affecting them, so they dont care.

check my most recent long comment if you would like a snapshot of what we're going through.

speaking to the old people here:

your generation did a good job at creating good people, and now we have a different red line than you do. yours was hit a few years ago, ours was hit before that. it's less about the 2004 leftist genius aesthetic now, and more and more about not being the reason ethnic groups are eliminated. you told us to practice what we preached and we listened to you because we love you

i am eating delicious waffle house

There are no overt monarchists in America, but a large portion of them are king-curious.