Tiny Las Vegas Ukraine Protest

One of those YouTubers who make videos of walking the Strip filmed Las Vegas's demonstration against Putin's Ukraine invasion. It took place last Saturday by the Linq walkway to the High Roller Wheel thing.

Only about 50 demonstrators showed-up. They unfurled a big banner, and a couple of people made speeches while tourists strolled by without stopping. This contrasted with the huge demonstrations of hundreds or thousands who came out to protest in other U.S. cities. Vegas now has a million people or more, so it is no longer a small city.

Why were there so few people? Is it because Las Vegans have little concern for matters that don't directly affect them, and have less social or political consciousness compared to those in most other American and foreign cities?

Or is it that there's no appropriate place for the community to come together in Vegas for a cause like Ukraine? The Strip with its tourists looking for fun is not an ideal place for a serious meet-up of socially concerned citizens, but where else could they go? Fremont Street would obviously be worse. Everything else in Vegas is just shopping centers and housing developments. Other than the Strip and Fremont St., there's no there there as Gertrude Stein said about Oakland, CA.

Las Vegas is less of a community than any other large city in the US. Fewer than 25% of its residents were born there. When I lived there, the constant refrain I heard was "I'm just here until I make my stash, then I'm getting out."

There are shockingly few parks, community centers, cultural centers, or entertainment venues outside of the casinos, with some minor exceptions in the wealthier enclaves of Summerlin and Green Valley. It's a company town through and through, and it's only recently and grudgingly that city officials have allowed any infrastructure improvements that didn't directly benefit the casinos.

It wasn't all that long ago that major thoroughfares, such as East Sahara, had unpaved sidewalks. Many neighborhoods have only recently gotten stores, gas stations, etc.--for a decade or more, they were just collections of cookie-cutter tract houses. And Las Vegas's school system is the worst in the country by far.

So yeah, there ain't no there there. That hasn't stopped housing prices from skyrocketing, though. If a friend told me he was planning on moving to Vegas right now, I'd knock him unconscious and chain him to a tree.