“Each in its own way hints at a yearning for collective action — a desire to come together on the thinnest of pretexts and commune with one another in a shared experience.”

There are lots of ways of communing with other people and sharing an experience. There are concerts, games, festivals, hobby gatherings, lectures, book signings, cook-offs, tastings, playing sports, church or temple, community garden, charity walk/run/bike events, political campaigns, and there are even some civic organizations still kicking. You could even volunteer to do any number of useful things for your community.

Oh shoot, you want people to actually do something specific, like fight climate change. The climate strike is all about not doing something, like not going to a school which will open and send a bus anyway. But if you can get a manageable number of people in a room together for a meeting, introduce yourselves, talk about what you want to accomplish in what time frame and where the money is coming from, and then make a list with everyone’s name and cell number and what they are each willing to take responsibility for, then you might actually do something. You can’t do this online by the way, because people’s word doesn’t count online. Oh, and everyone has to work too, for free, while you commune with each other.

A big crowd at a day long protest is getting zilch done except for that feel good communing, which you could get a Dawes concert. People that live in DC roll their eyes at protests. Joe Blow in Toledo is not going to see coverage of the rally on Fox News and change his mind about AGW. Officials in China are worried about the protesters in Hong Kong because the crowds are freakin’ huge, they’re organized, and they are not going away. Getting something like that going here would take thousands and thousands of meetings like the one I talked about above. Good luck.