Experts see an America that’s ripe for protest

The Associated Press

She was the face of mass protest, but long ago lost her faith in protesting.

Then, last year, thousands of women set out to march on Washington, and Jan Rose Kasmir knew she had to join them.

“When Trump was elected president, I couldn’t not participate. … It seemed like the only way to get my voice out there,” said Ms. Kasmir, 68, who was 17 when a photographer snapped a now-iconic image of her offering a chrysanthemum to National Guardsmen during a 1967 protest against the Vietnam War.

Ms. Kasmir gave up protesting when it failed to stop the Iraq War in 2003. But after the 2017 Women’s March, she rallied for gun control near her home in Hilton Head, S.C., joining millions of Americans demanding change.

“I think we’ve reached a tipping point,” Ms. Kasmir said.

There’s something happening here. But what is it, exactly, and why now?

More than five decades after Americans poured into the streets to demand civil rights and the end to a deeply unpopular war, thousands are embracing a culture of resistance unlike anything since.

NFL players have taken a knee during the national anthem. Teachers have packed statehouses to demand raises. Activists proclaiming “#MeToo,” have called out those who have abused them.

“We’re in a moment where people are frustrated with institutional politics and where people see urgent issues that need addressing and for a moment they believe that taking action can make a difference,” said David S. Meyer, a professor at the University of California, Irvine and author of “The Politics of Protest: Social Movements in America.”

Opposition to Mr. Trump clearly has been a catalyst, he and others said.

For many activists on the left, “there’s a great deal of fear that we may be living in the last days of this experiment in democratic self-rule, that Donald Trump’s election may mark a fatal turning point,” said Maurice Isserman, a professor of history at Hamilton College.

But many protesters speak for causes beyond electoral politics, including concerns like shooting deaths or racial discrimination predating Mr. Trump’s political rise.

Much the same can be said of the turnout by white supremacists, likely reflecting views held before Mr. Trump’s election.

Such protests “didn’t spontaneously combust,” said Todd Gitlin, who in the 1960s was president of the activist group Students for a Democratic Society and has studied protest movements as a professor at Columbia University. “There are deep cleavages that are in play and they will manifest themselves in a variety of ways.”

Recent protests have drawn together broad coalitions. In Charlotte, N.C., Rachel Hewitt returned to protesting for the first time since the early 1980s, when she marched in support of the Equal Rights Amendment.

The catalyst this time was Mr. Trump, whose election left Ms. Hewitt deeply depressed.

So Ms. Hewitt, who is 65, white and works as a freelance graphic artist, boarded a bus, alone, to join the Women’s March. The shared sense of purpose she found was “life-altering,” she said. When students from south Florida’s Parkland High School organized the “March for Our Lives” last month in Washington, Ms. Hewitt chartered a bus.

“It’s just thrilling to see that they very well could do what we weren’t able to do,” Ms. Hewitt said. She points to 16-year-old Amya Burse, who organized a safety task force and a rally at her Charlotte high school after the Parkland killings.

Amya said she has been jarred to action by a lockdown last fall when a student brought a gun to school. But social media have alerted her to protests against other causes.

“When we started seeing one group getting enough success, we started realizing, well, maybe we can do something for myself,” said Amya, who is a junior.

The dexterity, particularly of young people, in using video and social media to shape their message have enabled them to organize quickly and effectively, Mr. Meyer said.

The burst of activism has germinated for years, said Christopher Schmidt, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law who has written about 1960s activism.

Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011 and the rise of Black Lives Matter two years later pointed to deep restlessness on the political left, raising awareness about issues that continue to resonate, he said.

Most recently, their message for tougher gun control was strong, but their numbers were much sparser than at more recent demonstrations.

Students around South Florida left classrooms last week as part of a national protest against gun violence.

It was their second walkout in two months, with calls for universal background checks and more regulation of semiautomatic weapons.

Nationally, more than 2,700 walkouts took place, according to the National School Walkout website.

At Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 students and staffers were shot to death on Feb. 14, a crowd estimated at 50 walked to a nearby park. That was in stark contrast to the thousands in Parkland who left one month after the massacre, and the millions who attended the March for Our Lives in Washington.

But political science professors say it’s hard for any movement to sustain such levels of participation.

“You can’t measure success in terms of the number of people who show up,” said Susan MacManus, a political science professor at the University of South Florida, Tampa.

Primary election votes, and whether they mobilized young voters, will be a better gauge of the movement’s effects, she said.

Kevin Wagner, a political science professor at Florida Atlantic University, said young voters have historically participated at lower levels than older ones, with the exception of 2008 when President Barack Obama was elected for his first term.

“Throughout history, that’s how it’s been,” he said. “The other question is this: Are people going to vote on this issue?”

Recent protests mark the first time since the 1960s that so many Americans have ventured into the streets.

But there are at least as many differences as similarities.

The Parkland students, like black college students who organized sit-ins at white-owned lunch counters during the Civil Rights Era, embrace the message of older activists while rejecting their slowness in delivering results, Mr. Schmidt said.

Johanna Goldfarb was a medical student in 1970 when she joined a rally against America’s war in Southeast Asia.

She recalls feeling proud to take a stand.

Perhaps, Ms. Goldfarb says, the strength of protesters’ numbers can yield lasting results.

“I’m not sure that this is a movement,” she said. “But I’m hopeful.”