This past Saturday, many Americans once again took to the streets to oppose a range of actions and policies of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, including denial of due process rights to U.S. residents deported to Salvadoran mega-prisons, crackdowns on academic freedom, crippling tariffs and arrests of student activists, to name a few.
The protests, organized by the 50501 movement, varied across the country. In Boston, where Paul Revere’s ride to warn fellow colonists that British troops were coming to arrest revolutionaries took place 250 years ago, bells tolled in the evening and a slogan was lit on Old North Church, where lanterns once signaled British troop movements: “Let the warning ride forth once more: Tyranny is at our door.” At the White House, protesters chanted “Shame! Shame!”; citizens came out nationwide for smaller protests in communities in parks, streets and town halls.
What do political scientists know about the effects of such protests? If Americans continue to take to the streets to demonstrate that they oppose Trump’s policies, it could be politically significant not only in pressuring the administration but in signaling to audiences abroad, where his policies have cratered global public opinion of the U.S., that Trump does not represent many Americans in his approach to trade, international law, or world order. Popular pressure can also hold authoritarianism at bay: According to research studies, it takes 3.5 percent of a population persistently mobilized to do so.