It connects people with like minded people who also decided to show up so from a networking and community building perspective it's not worthless. Lots of people meet the contacts that will later recruit them to knock on doors or phone bank or run for office in the future who would never show up to a town meeting or city council meeting.

I hate to say it, but yeah. Look @ France. They fuck shit up whenever the government tries to fuck with them, and have a higher standard of living as a result.

Sure it does. People build networks at these events. One of the tactics of fascism is to make dissenters feel they are alone and maybe crazy for feeling the way they do. These events tell people that they are not alone, and it is actually the authoritarians that are crazy, not them.

For a non-violent resistance campaign to succeed, you need to build up the numbers and reach a threshold of people working together to impede the actions of the authoritarians. You don't accomplish this by engaging in violent actions, that just scares people away and gives justification for the authoritarians to do violent reprisals. Violent acts actually help the authoritarians gain more power, non-violent resistance drains their power.

Check the website: www.nokings.org