Some people are asking an important question after millions of people came out to participate in No Kings protests.
After the joy and sense of community born out of coming together to say no to Trump had passed, the question was asked, are these protests making a difference?
A better question is can these protests make a difference?
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History and research movements tells us that successful protest movements DO make a difference.
Earlier this year, Brookings weighed the possibility of the success of the Trump protests and wrote about Professor Michael Lipsky’s research, “In 1968, Professor Michael Lipsky wrote an influential article titled “Protest as a Political Resource,” in which he compared effective and ineffective movements. He argued that successful movements have clear strategic goals, use protest to broaden coalitions, seek to enlist more powerful individuals in their cause, and connect expressions of discontent to broader political and electoral mobilization. Lipsky cited the civil rights movement as a classic example of political activism that met all of those conditions and achieved landmark political and policy successes.”
Lipsky’s research was done decades before No Kings, and it focused on the civil rights movement, poor people’s protests, and other movements of the 1960s.
Our world has changed since the 1960s. We are both less of physical community, but more bonded via technology that we as a nation ever have been before.
I have questioned whether or not No Kings is a political movement, or a protest movement.
The No Kings movement has currently reached only one of Lipsky’s criteria for a successful movement, but that one is a big one, maybe the biggest of all in 2025.
