[[link removed]]

RESISTANCE IS ALIVE AND WELL IN THE UNITED STATES  
[[link removed]]


 

Erica Chenoweth, Jeremy Pressman, Soha Hammam
March 19, 2025
Waging Nonviolence
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Protests of Trump may not look like the mass marches of 2017, but
research shows they are far more numerous and frequent — while also
shifting to more powerful forms of resistance. _

Screen shot from massive die-in in front of the New York Stock
Exchange to protest illegal cuts by DOGE and the Trump Administration,
luckytran/Thread

 

This article was originally published on Waging Nonviolence
[[link removed]].

“Where is the resistance?
[[link removed]]”
is a common refrain. Our research
[[link removed]] affirms
that resistance is alive and well
[[link removed]].

Many underestimate resistance to the current Republican administration
because they view resistance through a narrow lens. The 2017 Women’s
March in particular — immediate in its response, massive in its
scope and size — may inform collective imaginations about what the
beginning of a resistance movement should look like during Trump 2.0.

In fact, our research shows that street protests today are far more
numerous and frequent than skeptics might suggest. Although it is true
that the reconfigured Peoples’ March of 2025 — held on Jan. 18 —
saw lower turnout than the 2017 Women’s March, that date also saw
the most protests in a single day for over a year. And since Jan. 22,
we’ve seen more than twice as many street protests than took place
during the same period eight years ago.

In February 2025 alone, we have already tallied over 2,085 protests,
which included major protests in support of federal workers, LGBTQ
rights, immigrant rights, Palestinian self-determination, Ukraine,
and demonstrations against Tesla
[[link removed]] and
Trump’s agenda more generally. This is compared with 937 protests in
the United States in February 2017, which included major protests
against the so-called Muslim ban along with other pro-immigrant and
pro-choice protests. Coordinated days of protest such as March Fourth
for Democracy (March 4), Stand Up for Science (March 7), rallies in
recognition of International Women’s Day (March 8), and protests
demanding the release of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil suggest
little likelihood of these actions slowing down. These are all
occurring in the background of a tidal wave of lawsuits
[[link removed]] challenging
the Trump administration’s early moves.

Historically, street protest and legal challenges are common avenues
for popular opposition to governments, but economic noncooperation —
such as strikes, boycotts and buycotts — is what often gets the
goods. Individual participation is deliberately obscure, and targeted
companies may have little interest in releasing internal data. Only
the aggregate impacts are measurable — and in the case of Tesla
[[link removed]], Target
[[link removed]] and other
companies
[[link removed]],
the impacts so far have been measurable indeed
[[link removed]].

Consider the protests against Tesla in response to Elon Musk firing
federal workers and blocking federal funding. The
multifaceted campaign [[link removed]] has a quite
specific goal: punish Tesla, Musk’s signature company. In addition
to protests at Tesla showrooms and charging stations, people have also
sold their Teslas. Others have called on mutual funds to divest from
Tesla stock. The stock price has dropped significantly in the last
month, perhaps in part due to Musk’s DOGE work.

This shift toward noncooperation over large-scale protests may be
strategically wise. In 2017, many who attended Women’s Marches
remained deeply engaged in civic activity, funneling into groups and
coalitions like Indivisible, Swing Left, Run for Something, Fight Back
Table and the like. People who aligned with Indivisible and groups
like it were almost certainly responsible
[[link removed]] for
saving the Affordable Care Act in 2017, largely through pressure on
elected members of Congress. The MAGA faction had not yet consolidated
control of the GOP, and within a year the “blue wave” flipped the
House during the 2018 midterms. Under such conditions, protests and
political pressure made a lot of strategic sense.

Those groups and others still remain active, but today’s political
terrain may call for a more muscular movement strategy. The MAGA
faction controls the GOP and enforces strict discipline among its
members through fear
[[link removed]] and
the threat of a well-funded Republican primary opponent
[[link removed]] in
the next election. The Supreme Court majority is solidly on the right.
Elected GOP officials are abandoning
[[link removed]] town
halls and discouraging
[[link removed]] constituents
from calling their offices. Street protests endure but are
increasingly surveilled and high-risk, as the detention of Mahmoud
Khalil suggests. Uncertainty about whether the Trump administration
will ignore the First Amendment and weaponize the government to
persecute political oppositionists looms large.

In the face of such changes, the public’s most powerful options are
often withholding labor power and purchasing power. Calling in sick
from work or school, refusing to buy and stay-at-home demonstrations
are notoriously difficult to police. Last month, an inestimable number
of people participated in such actions to highlight a Day Without
Immigrants
[[link removed]].
The prominence of billionaires in the administration and populist
anger toward them make this type of approach even more viable in
today’s climate.

Indeed, the diversification of resistance methods puts the United
States on a similar trajectory to many democracy movements of the
past. In anti-authoritarian movements of the 20th century, economic
noncooperation — more so than protest alone — was the coordinated
activity that split elites and made way for democratic breakthroughs.
In apartheid South Africa
[[link removed]], it was the enormous
economic pressure — through boycotts of white-owned businesses,
general strikes, divestments and capital flight — that brought the
white supremacist National Party to heel and elevated reformers who
were willing to do business with Nelson Mandela and the ANC. In
communist Poland [[link removed]], it
was the ability of trade unionists to credibly call for general
strikes (and credibly call off such strikes) that gave the Solidarity
movement the leverage to negotiate a peaceful democratic transition.
Gandhi’s noncooperation campaigns in India
[[link removed]] made
the colony ungovernable by British colonial authorities.

And when the Nazis invaded and occupied Denmark
[[link removed]] in the 1940s,
noncooperation was near-total. No one remembered how to run the
railroad. Teachers had to leave school early to tend to their gardens.
Factory workers slowed down or stopped production altogether. Danes
obscured the identities of their Jewish neighbors, gave them temporary
haven, and secured their passage through fishing boats to neutral
territory, saving thousands of lives.

Similarly, in Czechoslovakia, six days after the Soviet invasion in
1968, the newspaper _Vecerni Prah_ published “10 commandments,”
writing: “When a Soviet soldier comes to you, YOU: 1. Don’t know
2. Don’t care 3. Don’t tell 4. Don’t have 5. Don’t know how to
6. Don’t give 7. Can’t do 8. Don’t sell 9. Don’t show 10. Do
nothing.” These oppositional habits of thinking and practice,
nurtured over two decades through underground popular schools, art,
literature and outlawed news sources, ultimately paved the way for the
Velvet Revolution.

Indeed, the United States has its own storied history
[[link removed]] of
resisting authoritarianism through noncooperation. Pro-independence
colonists living under the British crown organized campaigns to refuse
to buy or consume British goods; refuse to abide by laws requiring
colonists to export raw materials to Britain; refuse to serve on
juries under crown-appointed judges; and develop alternative
institutions including the Continental Congress itself. The Boston Tea
Party was a defiant act
[[link removed]] of
noncooperation — a refusal to import, consume or pay taxes on the
crown’s tea. In 1815, John Adams wrote
[[link removed]] to
Thomas Jefferson of his hope that historians would recall those acts
of noncooperation — and _not_ the war of independence — as
“the revolution,” that “was in the minds of the people.”

Much later, during the civil rights movement, desegregation was first
tangibly achieved in large part through noncooperation campaigns like
the courageous school attendance by the Little Rock Nine, the
Montgomery bus boycotts, the lunch counter sit-ins and boycotts of
businesses in Nashville
[[link removed]] and elsewhere, strikes
among sanitation workers in Memphis, and other acts of refusal to
abide by the Jim Crow system of racial segregation. These took place
in combination with marches and demonstrations that were powerful and
dramatic displays of the moral power of the movement, and legal action
that demanded the government abide by its own Constitution.

That Americans seem to be rediscovering
[[link removed]] the
art, science and potency of noncooperation — combined with a robust
protest capacity and legal action — shows that resistance against
Trump’s agenda in America is not only alive and well. It is savvy,
diversifying and probably just getting started.

_ERICA CHENOWETH is a political scientist at Harvard Kennedy School
and co-director of the Crowd Counting Consortium. Chenoweth is the
author of "Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know" and
co-author of "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of
Nonviolent Conflict."_

_JEREMY PRESSMAN is a professor of political science at the University
of Connecticut and co-director of the Crowd Counting Consortium. His
most recent book is "The Sword is Not Enough: Arabs, Israelis, and the
Limits of Military Force."_

_SOHA HAMMAM is a postdoctoral research associate at Harvard Kennedy
School’s Nonviolent Action Lab, where she researches political
mobilization and law enforcement responses across the U.S. She was
previously a Democracy Visiting Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and a
Peace Scholar Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace._

_WAGING NONVIOLENCE is a nonprofit media organization dedicated to
providing original reporting and expert analysis of social movements
around the world. With a commitment to accuracy, transparency and
editorial independence, we examine today’s most crucial issues by
shining a light on those who are organizing for just and peaceful
solutions._

_Through on-the-ground movement coverage and commentary that draws on
both history and the latest research, Waging Nonviolence works to
advance the public’s understanding of movements and their key role
in shaping politics. Our stories inspire readers to realize the
powerful agency they possess._

_Since our founding in 2009, we have put a special focus on overlooked
movements in the Global South, facilitating cross-cultural knowledge
and skill-sharing in the process. Our Community platform
[[link removed]] furthers
these efforts by giving grassroots organizations and social
movement-focused university programs their own individually-branded
page, where they can publish stories about their work with editorial
support from WNV editors. This service, which is supported by
annual membership dues
[[link removed]], adds
diverse perspectives to our movement coverage and helps strengthen
movement media more broadly._

_Donate to Waging Nonviolence
[[link removed]]_

* Donald Trump
[[link removed]]
* resistance
[[link removed]]
* marches
[[link removed]]
* demonstrations
[[link removed]]
* History
[[link removed]]
* protests
[[link removed]]
* democracy
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]