Any protest or standoff at the neighborhood level would, at best, end like the Branch Davidians in Waco. It was all over the news, and people cheered for the government.
All protests need to be on federal turf. That is where the ruling class is. It will take millions of protesters in the same camera shot to get the ball rolling.
I do believe that you specified that "government forces can go one block at a time with crushing force", which seems to me to be beyond the appropriate reaction to a mere protest. Do you agree?
In the case of the Branch Davidians, yes, the fedgov and their media cheerers-on did indeed spend a lot of time and effort in their propaganda campaign, marginalizing them and painting them as "weirdos", and they were successful. In the beginning. For the most part. However, I do recall (and there should be plenty in the FR archives and elsewhere to support this) that not everyone was cheering, and that fewer and fewer people agreed with the actions of the fedgov as time went on.
(Of course, the media didn't report much or any of that, did they?)
So, yes, the fedgov and the media would likely be successful with a similar propaganda campaign. In the beginning. For a while. However, I believe that the further they carried their campaign of "crushing force ... block by block", the more the tide of public support would turn against them. Do you not agree? Ask yourself how you would react should your daughter's block be one of the blocks in the path of the crushing force.
All protests need to be on federal turf. That is where the ruling class is.
It all depends on just where things are at in the process, does it not? Millions showed up for the various Tea Party protests, and the fedgov and the media either ignored, under-counted or marginalized and misrepresented them. Why do you believe that similar mass protests would not receive the same treatment?
However, my response was aimed more at the "what happens when fedgov begins their 'block by block, crushing force'" campaign of terror that you hypothesized, not whether mass protests were or were not an appropriate starting place and first (or second, or third) attempt at getting the attention of our servants and employees.
In that light, it appears that you did not ponder the points that I offered up. I suggest that, while the offices and trappings of power are indeed mostly on fedgov land, not all of individual or collective fedgov apparatchiks are so restricted, and not all of the time. They have homes and families and places that they frequent and so on, just like those people in the blocks you believe will be so effectively and easily crushed, one by one.
What I'm suggesting is that I do not believe that such a campaign of terror, even if initially and seemingly supported by the American public (if one would believe the drive-by media reports) would be able to maintain its support or ongoing success. I believe that it would ultimately fail, for a variety of reasons.
Just so. But there'll be a day, very soon, I believe, that the federal death squad members will return to their homes after their victory celebrations and filing of their per diem payment paperwork, to find some of those homes burned to the ground, and their own family members inside the burned-out husks, or hanging from utility poles outside.
I'm certainly not in favor of it- nor particularly against it. But we'll either go the way of Finland in 1918 or that of Rhodesia in 1979.