This [administration], no single day of protest has come anywhere close to that number. The biggest showing so far was on January 18, when the “People’s March” drew an estimated 50,000 people to Washington, D.C., with tens of thousands more at cities around the U.S.
Chenoweth, who is also co-director of the Crowd Counting Consortium at Harvard, has been keeping a tally of all the marches, protests, strikes, and demonstrations since Trump’s election. She wrote recently (along with coauthors Jeremy Pressman and Soha Hammam) that “resistance against Trump’s agenda in America is not only alive and well. It is savvy, diversifying and probably just getting started”:
Protests of Trump may not look like the mass marches of 2017, but research shows they are far more numerous and frequent…
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 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.
I should note that the 3.5 percent rule is not ironclad. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for instance, remains in power even after over six percent of his country’s population demonstrated against him in March 2023, and five percent in September 2024.
this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2025
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I'm brought to mind of the concept that any movement must have a peaceful branch for the system to acknowledge and meet demands for change as well as a "violent" branch to drive the opponents to the bargaining table. And within both of those is a need to take care of the community to enable them to continue to protest for change.
I think where these protests will succeed or fail is community coming together to take care of each other, with a safety net so many more people will be able to participate and make their voices heard.
Completely agreed with this concept. I've been a big fan of multiple voices advocating for different things. It helps others understand where the center is or where the most agreement is likely to be. You need some people asking for everything in order to push in the direction of change, otherwise the people in charge will think what they have given up is satisfactory (or perhaps even too much).
Yes I think general principles of anarchy apply here in that the more people you can get mobilized around a single issue and the more engagement you can get the more successful it will be. Entirely peaceful protests can drive huge change, but only when the government is a peaceful one who actively wishes to represent the people. The more corrupt and out of touch they get the less they will care about the constituency and the massive prevalence of voter disenfranchisement and a system of corruption which is increasingly run on money in the United States seems to suggest that it falls more closely in that latter bucket.