{"id":36389,"date":"2025-03-22T12:34:57","date_gmt":"2025-03-22T11:34:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/?p=36389"},"modified":"2025-03-22T12:35:35","modified_gmt":"2025-03-22T11:35:35","slug":"resistance-is-alive-and-well-in-the-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/?p=36389","title":{"rendered":"Resistance is alive and well in the United States"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

. HUMAN RIGHTS .<\/p>\n

An article by Erica Chenoweth,\u00a0Jeremy Pressman, and\u00a0Soha Hammam\u00a0in Waging Nonviolence<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhere is the resistance?\u201d is a common refrain. Our\u00a0research\u00a0affirms that\u00a0resistance is alive and well.<\/p>\n

Many underestimate resistance to the current Republican administration because they view resistance through a narrow lens. The 2017 Women\u2019s March in particular \u2014 immediate in its response, massive in its scope and size \u2014 may inform collective imaginations about what the beginning of a resistance movement should look like during Trump 2.0.<\/p>\n

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\u2019 March of 2025 \u2014 held on Jan. 18 \u2014 saw lower turnout than the 2017 Women\u2019s March, that date also saw the most protests in a single day for over a year. And since Jan. 22, we\u2019ve seen more than twice as many street protests than took place during the same period eight years ago.<\/p>\n

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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\u00a0demonstrations against Tesla\u00a0and Trump\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u00a0tidal wave of lawsuits\u00a0challenging the Trump administration\u2019s early moves.<\/p>\n

Historically, street protest and legal challenges are common avenues for popular opposition to governments, but economic noncooperation \u2014 such as strikes, boycotts and buycotts \u2014 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 \u2014 and in the case of\u00a0Tesla,\u00a0Target\u00a0and\u00a0other companies, the impacts so far have been\u00a0measurable indeed.<\/p>\n

Consider the protests against Tesla in response to Elon Musk firing federal workers and blocking federal funding. The multifaceted\u00a0campaign\u00a0has a quite specific goal: punish Tesla, Musk\u2019s 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\u2019s DOGE work.<\/p>\n

This shift toward noncooperation over large-scale protests may be strategically wise. In 2017, many who attended Women\u2019s 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\u00a0responsible\u00a0for 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 \u201cblue wave\u201d flipped the House during the 2018 midterms. Under such conditions, protests and political pressure made a lot of strategic sense.<\/p>\n

Those groups and others still remain active, but today\u2019s political terrain may call for a more muscular movement strategy. The MAGA faction controls the GOP and enforces strict discipline among its members through\u00a0fear\u00a0and the threat of a well-funded Republican primary\u00a0opponent\u00a0in the next election. The Supreme Court majority is solidly on the right. Elected GOP officials are\u00a0abandoning\u00a0town halls and\u00a0discouraging\u00a0constituents 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.<\/p>\n

In the face of such changes, the public\u2019s 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\u00a0Day Without Immigrants. The prominence of billionaires in the administration and populist anger toward them make this type of approach even more viable in today\u2019s climate.<\/p>\n

(Article continued in the right column)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Questions related to this article:\n<\/div>\n
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The struggle for human rights, is it gathering force in the USA?<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

(Article continued from the left column)<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 more so than protest alone \u2014 was the coordinated activity that split elites and made way for democratic breakthroughs. In apartheid\u00a0South Africa, it was the enormous economic pressure \u2014 through boycotts of white-owned businesses, general strikes, divestments and capital flight \u2014 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\u00a0Poland, 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\u2019s noncooperation campaigns in\u00a0India\u00a0made the colony ungovernable by British colonial authorities.<\/p>\n

And when the Nazis invaded and occupied\u00a0Denmark\u00a0in 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.<\/p>\n

Similarly, in Czechoslovakia, six days after the Soviet invasion in 1968, the newspaper\u00a0Vecerni Prah\u00a0published \u201c10 commandments,\u201d writing: \u201cWhen a Soviet soldier comes to you, YOU: 1. Don\u2019t know 2. Don\u2019t care 3. Don\u2019t tell 4. Don\u2019t have 5. Don\u2019t know how to 6. Don\u2019t give 7. Can\u2019t do 8. Don\u2019t sell 9. Don\u2019t show 10. Do nothing.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the United States has its own\u00a0storied history\u00a0of 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\u00a0a defiant act\u00a0of noncooperation \u2014 a refusal to import, consume or pay taxes on the crown\u2019s tea. In 1815, John Adams\u00a0wrote\u00a0to Thomas Jefferson of his hope that historians would recall those acts of noncooperation \u2014 and\u00a0not\u00a0the war of independence \u2014 as \u201cthe revolution,\u201d that \u201cwas in the minds of the people.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u00a0Nashville\u00a0and 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.<\/p>\n

That Americans\u00a0seem to be rediscovering\u00a0the art, science and potency of noncooperation \u2014 combined with a robust protest capacity and legal action \u2014 shows that resistance against Trump\u2019s agenda in America is not only alive and well. It is savvy, diversifying and probably just getting started.<\/p>\n

– – –<\/center><\/p>\n

Erica Chenoweth<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

Jeremy Pressman<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

Soha Hammam<\/strong><\/p>\n

Soha Hammam is a postdoctoral research associate at Harvard Kennedy School\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

– – – – – –<\/p>\n

If you wish to make a comment on this article, you may write to coordinator@cpnn-world.org with the title “Comment on (name of article)” and we will put your comment on line. Because of the flood of spam, we have discontinued the direct application of comments.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

. HUMAN RIGHTS . An article by Erica Chenoweth,\u00a0Jeremy Pressman, and\u00a0Soha Hammam\u00a0in Waging Nonviolence \u201cWhere is the resistance?\u201d is a common refrain. Our\u00a0research\u00a0affirms that\u00a0resistance is alive and well. Many underestimate resistance to the current Republican administration because they view resistance through a narrow lens. The 2017 Women\u2019s March in particular \u2014 immediate in its response, … Continue reading Resistance is alive and well in the United States<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,91],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-36389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights","category-north-america","tag-north-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36389\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}