Out-party voters are energized, active and loud. In-power voters are often frustrated that their teams’ promises prove harder to accomplish, take too long or require compromises they don’t like.
Protests in 2025 have reached a wider swath of the United States than at any other point on record. And the geographic reach of protest activity—the share of U.S. counties hosting at least one event—has remained remarkably high throughout the year.
Figure 1 displays the proportion of US counties that hosted at least one protest in each month of Trump’s first and second terms (depicted by the green x and blue triangle marks, respectively). The green trend line shows the moving average during Trump’s first term, and the blue line shows the moving average so far during Trump’s second term.
Figure 1: Proportion of US Counties with at Least One Protest, by Month
The largest monthly jumps of protest counties occurred in spring 2018, with the Enough Walkouts and the March for Our Lives in the month of March and the Walkout for Gun Control in April, and then again in June 2020, during the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests near the end of Trump’s first term. During the summer of 2020, demonstrations took place in just under 40 percent of all counties, during what was probably the broadest mobilization in US history up to that point.
But June 2025 came close to matching those historic levels, largely due to the No Kings mobilizations on June 14, with protests in nearly 38 percent of counties nationwide. Moreover, in 2025 protests have also expanded the movement’s footprint into new areas, even after the No Kings events of June. The cumulative number of counties that have ever hosted a protest has been climbing steadily since 2017, with noticeable surges in 2018 and 2020. A similar surge appears to be underway in 2025, pushing the cumulative share of protest-hosting counties well above 60 percent by June.
What’s most striking and novel, however, is the persistence of activity in 2025. The first eight months of the year have seen more sustained and geographically widespread protest than any comparable stretch in Trump’s first term—including the early waves of resistance in 2017 and the mass mobilizations of 2020. Protests occurred in at least 20% of US counties for four consecutive months in 2025–something we never observed during Trump’s first term. In short, the movement is not just continuing to spread into previously unrepresented parts of the country, but also maintaining its geographic reach.
Ten months after pro-Palestinian encampments sprang up across U.S. college campuses, sparking backlash from politicians, university leaders and pro-Israel students and faculty, the public is still extremely critical of student protests, according to new research conducted by the Center for Applied Research in Education at the University of Southern California.
Conducted from October to December 2024, the survey asked 1,857 adults whether they thought certain student “free speech actions,” including criticizing their universities online, protesting world events by walking out of class or occupying campus buildings, were always, sometimes or never appropriate. More than half of respondents said several of the examples were never appropriate: leaving protest messages on property, shouting down speakers, occupying buildings in protest and disrupting graduation, which was the least popular protest action, with about eight in 10 people saying it was never appropriate.
Even actions like criticizing their university on social media were relatively unpopular, with only 13 percent of respondents saying it’s always appropriate to do so and 38 percent saying it’s never appropriate.
Respondents were far more likely to approve of universities’ steps to stop protests, with 86 percent saying it was sometimes or always OK for police to arrest students who were breaking the law. Only slightly fewer, 79 percent, said it would be OK for police to break up a student protest—and the question didn’t even specify whether or not laws were broken.
Over all, every example of an institution’s response to protests received a higher approval rating than any example of a protest action.
A number of posts have discussed the politics of protest. The anti-Israel protests flopped with the general public in part because they were an elite activity.
Johanna Alonso at Inside Higher Ed:
After an unprecedented spring of pro-Palestinian protests on campuses across the United States, the fall semester has been comparatively quiet. The total number of protest actions declined by more than 64 percent, from 3,220 to 1,151, according to data from the Crowd Counting Consortium, a project by Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and the University of Connecticut that collects data on protests.
The number of students arrested for protesting dropped even more precipitously. Last spring, 3,572 students were arrested in connection with their involvement in protests as pro-Palestinian encampments proliferated on campus quads, starting with the one launched at Columbia University on April 17. But in the fall, only 88 student protesters were arrested. (For the purposes of this article, numbers for the spring were calculated using data from Jan. 1 to July 1 and from July 1 to Dec. 17 for the fall.)
The decline can certainly be attributed in part to a natural loss of momentum following the fever pitch the movement reached in the spring. But some free speech advocates believe that the restrictive expressive-activity policies some institutions introduced over the summer and early fall may have discouraged students from protesting.
A number of posts have discussed antisemitism and the Israel-Hamas war.
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld teaches pro-Ham hecklers/protesters who paid money to heckle at his show the DOs and DON'TS of their craft.
— 🚨 Katherine Brodsky (@mysteriouskat) June 23, 2024
"You need to go back and tell whoever is running your organization: We just gave more money to a Jew.'"
pic.twitter.com/ff9biqrSCH
A number of posts have discussed the politics of protest. The anti-Israel protests have flopped with the general public, and the data below suggest a reason.
and at The Washington Monthly;
We at the Washington Monthly tried to get to the bottom of this question: Have pro-Palestinian protests taken place disproportionately at elite colleges, where few students come from lower-income families?
The answer is a resounding yes.
Using data from Harvard’s Crowd Counting Consortium and news reports of encampments, we matched information on every institution of higher education that has had pro-Palestinian protest activity (starting when the war broke out in October until early May) to the colleges in our 2023 college rankings. Of the 1,421 public and private nonprofit colleges that we ranked, 318 have had protests and 123 have had encampments.
By matching that data to percentages of students at each campus who receive Pell Grants (which are awarded to students from moderate- and low-income families), we came to an unsurprising conclusion: Pro-Palestinian protests have been rare at colleges with high percentages of Pell students. Encampments at such colleges have been rarer still. A few outliers exist, such as Cal State Los Angeles, the City College of New York, and Rutgers University–Newark. But in the vast majority of cases, campuses that educate students mostly from working-class backgrounds have not had any protest activity. For example, at the 78 historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) on the Monthly’s list, 64 percent of the students, on average, receive Pell Grants. Yet according to our data, none of those institutions have had encampments and only nine have had protests, a significantly lower rate than non-HBCU schools.
...
At private colleges, protests have been rare, encampments have been rarer, and both have taken place almost exclusively at schools where poorer students are scarce and the listed tuition and fees are exorbitantly high.
Americans are more likely to strongly or somewhat oppose (47%) than support (28%) pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses throughout the country in recent weeks, according to a YouGov poll this week of 9,012 U.S. adults.
...
A growing number of students have been arrested, leading some to question whether administrators who allowed these arrests have overstepped. Others argue that even more force should be used. Our survey shows that twice as many Americans believe college administrators have not responded to the protests harshly enough (33%) as say administrators' response has been too harsh (16%). 20% say it has been about right and 31% are not sure. Half of Americans 45 and older believe administrators haven't been harsh enough (48%); a much smaller share of adults under 44 think this (16%).
Encampments are being established by pro-Palestinian protesters at college campuses across the country.
— YouGov America (@YouGovAmerica) April 26, 2024
Last year, 25% of Americans said that encampments are usually or always acceptable as a form of protest. More Americans view it as acceptable to……
Create a petition: 61%… pic.twitter.com/rbOsdNC4vT
The political consequences of the upheaval became clear. While the doomed liberal campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy draw most of the focus in retrospectives of the era, the fact is that in November of 1968, Nixon and Wallace combined for 57 percent of the vote, close to the levels of historic landslide wins of LBJ in 1964 and Reagan in 1984.
Even after the Vietnam War faded as an issue with the end of the draft and the withdrawal of most American troops, the impact of those campus protests retained political heft — and gave a boost to the right.
In November of 1968, a professor of semantics named S.I. Hayakawa became interim president of San Francisco State University, a campus beset by protests and strikes. Two weeks later he climbed onto a sound truck used by the demonstrators and ripped the wires. That image, and his subsequent efforts to break student and faculty strikes and restore normal classes, made him something of a folk hero — so much so that years later, in 1976, he won a seat in the U.S. Senate as a Republican.
It would be folly to draw exact parallels between today’s unrest and those of 60 years ago. But some do resonate. Peaceful and lawful protests are out there, but they don’t have the same visual impact as police tangling with demonstrators; seeing protesters replacing American flags with Palestinian flags does bring back images of Americans waving the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese flags; and the sight of students attending an $80,000 a year university making it impossible for anyone to teach or study gives a very different meaning to the word “privilege.”
You've seen the crowds and heard the rhetoric. But what impact is all the campus turmoil over the war in Gaza having on public opinion?
Not much, according to Dritan Nesho, co-director of the nationwide Harvard Center for American Political Studies (CAPS)/Harris poll, where monthly surveys have found "support for Israel has been fairly consistent." Among the striking findings of their April survey:
- While 59% think Muslim students face Islamophobia on campus, the 69% who see antisemitism there has come on strong. "That number wouldn't have been stratospherically high, and it is very high, even as recently as one year ago," said Nesho.
- Two-thirds of voters today believe that it's not safe to be openly Jewish on university campuses, and a huge majority favor suspension for students or teachers who call for violence against Jews, which is what many onlookers hear in common protestor chants. "The majority of the public, and the majority of voters, are not with the protestors," Nesho said.
- Among the 64% who believe there's a "problem" with what higher ed institutions are teaching students these days, 40 percent identified racially divisive theories, 34 percent cited a lack of political diversity, 33 percent deplored the promotion of anti-Americanism, and 27% cited teachings that promote antisemitism.
Even if they're isolated incidents, says Nesho, every time a protestor praises or excuses Hamas, it's a public relations disaster.
"Public opinion is pro-Israel, and public opinion is pro-Palestinian, but public opinion is anti-Hamas," he noted.
Remember the old Beatles song "Revolution"? There was a line in it: "If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao/You ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow."
In 1970, the Ohio National Guard killed several protesters at Kent State.
A poll conducted after the shootings found that about a third of Americans didn’t know who bore more blame for the students’ deaths. About 1 in 10 blamed the National Guard.
A majority of respondents blamed the students.
It’s interesting to consider that response at this moment, given the protests at Columbia University in New York — also the site of large protests during the Vietnam War — and on other college campuses. Views of the protests on campuses and elsewhere vary widely, often depending on opinions of the Israeli military operations in Gaza that triggered the demonstrations.
If we look back at the demonstrations during the Vietnam War, though — protests focused on opposition to a military engagement now broadly regarded as a mistake — we see widespread hostility to the protesters, particularly college students.
Confrontations at Columbia, Yale, and other campuses around the country have highlighted the importance of “time, place, and manner” regulations to universities’ academic and educational missions. Because the enforcement of these rules is essential to our community as well, I wanted to offer some observations about their role at Princeton and their relationship to other free speech principles.
Princeton’s free expression policy, like the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, protects a strikingly broad range of speech. It “guarantees all members of the University community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn.” It specifically protects even speech that “most members of the University community [deem] to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed.”
Over the course of this academic year, we have seen again just how broad these rights are. In August and September, for example, I resisted calls to censor or condemn a controversial book that criticized Israel in harsh terms. In subsequent months, the University repeatedly protected the right to protest even when those protests included chants offensive to many members of the University — including to me personally.
Despite its breadth, Princeton’s free speech policy — again, like the First Amendment to the Constitution — contains exceptions. For example, it prohibits genuine threats and harassment. It also explicitly recognizes that “the University may reasonably regulate the time, place, and manner of expression to ensure that it does not disrupt the ordinary activities of the University.”
The University thus may, and indeed does, limit the times and places where protests can occur. It may, and indeed does, prohibit tactics, such as encampments or the occupation of buildings, that interfere with the scholarly and educational mission of the University or that increase safety risks to members of the University community.
These time, place, and manner regulations are viewpoint-neutral and content-neutral. They apply to any protest or event, regardless of which side they take or what issues they raise.
Time, place, and manner regulations are fully consistent with — indeed, they are necessary to — Princeton’s commitment to free speech. The purpose of our policy is “to promote a lively and fearless freedom of debate and deliberation,” not simply to maximize expression in all its forms, no matter how disruptive.
Dialogue, debate, and deliberation depend upon maintaining a campus that is free from intimidation, obstruction, risks to physical safety, or other impediments to the University’s scholarship, research, and teaching missions.
Princeton’s time, place, and manner regulations include a clear and explicit prohibition upon encampments. They provide that “camping in vehicles, tents, or other structures is not permitted on campus. Sleeping in outdoor space of any kind is prohibited.”
Encampments can obstruct others from moving freely or conducting University business. They can create health and safety risks. They require significant staff time to keep occupants and bystanders safe, thereby diverting people and resources from fulfilling their primary purpose. They can intimidate community members who must walk past them. There is no practical way to bar outsiders from joining the encampments.
As recent events vividly illustrate, encampments are also prone to become sites of confrontation. Columbia University moved classes online because of concerns about the safety of its students. At Yale University, a student reportedly had to seek medical attention after an altercation at an encampment.
At ordinary protests, our Free Expression Facilitators, in partnership with the Department of Public Safety, work assiduously to minimize or de-escalate confrontations before they become harmful; the 24-7 nature of encampments makes that assignment nearly impossible.
Our ability to discuss difficult, sensitive topics depends partly on the culture of our community. I am grateful to everyone who has helped Princeton to talk constructively about hard questions during this very challenging year.
Our success also depends on the consistent application of our policies protecting free speech. Princeton will continue to enforce those policies resolutely, including both this University’s expansive protections for the expression of controversial ideas and the time, place, and manner regulations that enable us to engage in thoughtful dialogue, debate, and deliberation about those ideas.
Juliana Menasce Horowitz at Pew:
For this report, we surveyed 5,073 U.S. adults from April 10 to April 16, 2023, using Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel.1...
These survey findings often differ by race, ethnicity and partisanship – and in some cases also by age and education.
Nearly four in 10 Americans, 39%, say they have felt the urge to organize or join a public demonstration. This is statistically similar to the previous 36% reading in 2018 but much higher than the 10% who said the same in 1965. The reasons behind Americans' desire to protest today are markedly different than four years ago.
In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision eliminating abortion as a constitutional right and returning abortion policy decisions to individual state governments, 31% of those who have expressed a desire to protest name the abortion issue as their greatest motivation to do so.
Beyond abortion, the issues now mentioned most as reasons to demonstrate are law enforcement or Black Lives Matter (22%), women's rights (19%), civil or equal rights (11%), and government or political issues (10%).
In 2018, no single issue dominated Americans' protest motivations, although the women's movement led with 17% amid the "Me too" movement, similar to the percentage this year, while 6% cited abortion. Immigration, another high-ranking issue four years ago during the Trump administration's controversial policy changes, is barely on protestors' radar this year. Gun control, which was tied with immigration in 2018, is currently mentioned by 8% of U.S. adults.
Now, with the rise of the Black Likes Matter movement and civil disturbances popping up around the country in protest of police action, my students want to know if these latest demonstrations have changed public opinion. Thanks to new data from a poll by the Los Angeles Times and Reality Check Insights, I tell them that the reaction from the nation to these protests vary widely by demographics and may not have had the impact that they had hoped; the BLM related protests did not shift the majority of Americans’ views on race in the nation.
A national sample of over 1,400 Americans were asked after the election if the protests in many cities across the U.S. over the killing of George Floyd and others by police changed the way you think about racial justice in America. The answer may not be as encouraging to my students as they would have hoped: just a third (32 percent) of Americans said that the protest helped them think “a lot” about racial justice in America, and 41 percent said the protests did not change their views whatsoever.
The protests had very different levels of impact along racial lines. Among Blacks, 52 percent believed that the protests changed their thinking on race and this was appreciably higher than the quarter of Whites (27 percent) who felt the same way. About a third of Blacks (32 percent) stated that the protests did not change their thinking about race compared to 45 percent of Whites.
Among Hispanics, about a third believed that the protests changed their views and another third found that the protests did nothing at all. The reactions here are remarkably inconsistent across the nation and it is clear that Americans did not overwhelmingly or uniformly accept the ideas behind the various protests, calling into serious question the efficacy of the actions themselves.
The protests also failed to shift attitudes outside of the youngest generations of Americans. While 85 percent of Gen Z and 69 percent of Millennials report that the movement impacted their thinking on race to some degree, less than a quarter of “Boomers” said the protests made them think “a lot” about the issues at hand. Younger Americans connected with the movement but older Americans did not
AUTOCRATIZATION SURGES
• For the first time since 2001, autocracies are in the majority: 92 countries – home to 54% of the global population.• Almost 35% of the world’s population live in autocratizing nations – 2.6 billion people.• The EU has its first non-democracy as a member: Hungary is now classified as an electoral authoritarian regime.
Major G20 nations and all regions of the world are part of the “third wave of autocratization”:
• Autocratization is affecting Brazil, India, the United States of America, and Turkey, which are major economies with sizeable populations, exercising substantial global military, economic, and political influence.• Latin America is back to a level last recorded in the early 1990s while Eastern Europe and Central Asia are at post-Soviet Union lows.• India is on the verge of losing its status as a democracy due to the severely shrinking of space for the media, civil society, and the opposition under Prime Minister Modi’s government.
Attacks on freedom of expression and the media intensify across the world, and the quality of elections begins to deteriorate:
• Attacks on freedom of expression and media freedom are now affecting 31 countries, compared to 19 two years ago.• The Clean Elections Index fell significantly in 16 nations while improving in only twelve.• Media censorship and the repression of civil society have intensified in a record 37 countries – eleven more than the 26 states currently affected by severe autocratization. Since these indicators are typically the first to move in a gradual process of autocratization, this development is an early warning signal for what might be yet to come.
New V-Dem indicators on Civic and Academic Space show that autocratization taints the whole society:• Academic freedom has registered a conspicuous average decline of 13% in autocratizing countries over the last 10 years.• The right to peaceful assembly and protest has declined by 14% on average in autocratizing countries.• Toxic polarization, pro-autocracy mass protests, and political violence rise in many autocratizing countries, such as in Brazil and Poland.
New V-Dem data on pro-democracy mass mobilization reveals all-time highs in 2019:
• The share of countries with substantial pro-democracy mass protests rose from 27% in 2009 to 44% in 2019.• Citizens are taking to the streets in order to defend civil liberties and the rule of law, and to fight for clean elections and political freedom.• The unprecedented degree of mobilization for democracy in light of deepening autocratization is a sign of hope. While pro-autocracy rulers attempt to curtail the space for civil society, millions of citizens have demonstrated their commitment to democracy.
Protesters in democracies resist the dismantling of democracy while their counterparts inautocracies are demanding more democracy:
• During 2019, citizens in 29 democracies mobilized against autocratization, such as in Bolivia, Poland, and Malawi.• Citizens staged mass protests in 34 autocracies, among them Algeria, Hong Kong, and Sudan.• In several cases such as in Sudan, citizens successfully achieved breakthroughs for freedom and democracy.
Democratization continues to progress around the world:
• In 22 countries, pro-democracy mass protests have been followed by substantial democratization during the last ten years.• Armenia, The Gambia, Sri Lanka, and Tunisia are the four countries achieving the greatest democratic gains.• Ecuador shows that while autocratization can be turned around, it is difficult to return to a stable democracy
In assessing the state of U.S. democracy, Americans continue to give their country negative ratings for living up to several key democratic ideals and principles. And in some cases, these assessments have turned less positive since 2018
.Notably, the share of Americans who say the phrase “people are free to peacefully protest” describes the United States very or somewhat well has fallen from 73% t0 60%, with the decline coming almost entirely among Democrats.
As was the case in Pew Research Center’s 2018 study of U.S. democracy, large majorities of Americans agree on the importance of a number of democratic principles – including that the rights and freedoms of all people are respected, that elected officials face serious consequences for misconduct and that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed.
However, there continue to be sizable gaps between the shares of Americans who say these principles are very important and the shares saying the U.S. is doing well in living up to them. And fewer Americans see some principles as very important – notably, including the freedom to peaceful protest – than did so two years ago.
Four years after Russian operatives used social media in a bid to exacerbate racial divisions in the United States and suppress Black voter turnout, such tactics have spread across a wide range of deceptive online campaigns operated from numerous nations — including from within the United States itself.On June 18, Jeff Seldin reported at VOA:
The potency and persistence of the racial playbook was highlighted this week when Twitter deleted an account featuring a profile photo of a young Black man claiming to be a former Black Lives Matter protester who switched his allegiance to the Republican Party.
The account, @WentDemtoRep, offered an online testimonial Sunday — the eve of a Republican convention featuring prominent African Americans challenging allegations of racism against President Trump — and was retweeted 22,000 times. Disinformation researcher Marc Owen Jones, of Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, found the tweet had 39,000 likes just 19 hours after it was posted.
Russia appears to be intensifying its focus on police enforcement issues in the United States, using popular reactions to protests that have gripped the nation as part of a larger propaganda campaign to divide Americans ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November.
The death of African American George Floyd in police custody and the ensuing U.S. protests have for weeks dominated media coverage from Russian state-sponsored outlets like RT and Sputnik.
Only now, it seems that Russia, through the English-language RT in particular, is reaching out to U.S. police officers and union officials, in what some U.S. officials and lawmakers say is an effort to further inflame tensions.
...
Law enforcement officers and organizations who spoke with VOA about their interactions with RT described being caught off guard.
“We had no idea about the ties they have,” a representative for lawofficer.com, a website catering to law enforcement officers, told VOA about being approached by the Russian television news channel. “They actually told us they were out of Britain.”
RT contacted lawofficer.com seeking permission to republish an essay by Tulsa, Oklahoma Police Major Travis Yates about the frustration he and many of his police colleagues have been feeling as a result of the protests of police practices, titled, “America, We Are Leaving.”
RT also booked Yates for an on-air interview through its London bureau.
“If I had any idea whatsoever, I obviously never would have done it,” Yates told VOA when asked if he knew about RT’s Russian connection.
Since Yates’ essay was first published, it has been shared thousands of times on social media and even helped get him an appearance on Fox News’
"Tucker Carlson Tonight."
U.S. adults are more likely today than three decades ago to view several forms of protest as potentially helpful for improving the situation of Black Americans. Since Gallup last polled on this subject in 1988, there have been meaningful increases in the percentages of Americans saying that nonviolent protest, violent protest and economic boycotts, in particular, can help. Opinions on the effectiveness of legal action are little changed.
Americans are still most likely to see nonviolent protest and legal action as being helpful, and least likely to say violent protest is.
...
Whereas Americans in 1988 were split on the effectiveness of economic action such as boycotts, they are now much more inclined to say it would help (50%) rather than hurt (22%) Black Americans' situation. Many companies publicly affirmed their support of the Black community after Floyd's death, but advocates for the Black Lives Matter movement called for boycotts of companies that do not support BLM efforts.
...
Black adults tend to be more optimistic than White adults that the various citizen actions tested in the poll would help improve the situation for Black Americans.
The two racial groups differ most in their opinions about the effectiveness of boycotts -- 69% of Black adults and 48% of White adults say boycotts would help. But White respondents are twice as likely to say boycotts are helpful rather than harmful.
Black Americans are modestly more likely than White Americans to believe legal action (74% vs. 65%, respectively) and violent protest (21% vs. 9%) can help. But majorities of both groups view violent protest as hurting the cause.
In 1965, at the height of the modern civil rights movement, activists organized a march for voting rights, from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery, the state capital. On March 7, some 600 people assembled at a downtown church, knelt briefly in prayer, and began walking silently, two-by-two through the city streets.
With Hosea Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) leading the demonstration, and John Lewis, Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), at his side, the marchers were stopped as they were leaving Selma, at the end of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, by some 150 Alabama state troopers, sheriff ’s deputies, and possemen, who ordered the demonstrators to disperse.
One minute and five seconds after a two-minute warning was announced, the troops advanced, wielding clubs, bullwhips, and tear gas. John Lewis, who suffered a skull fracture, was one of fifty-eight people treated for injuries at the local hospital. The day is remembered in history as “Bloody Sunday.” Less than one week later, Lewis recounted the attack on the marchers during a Federal hearing at which the demonstrators sought protection for a full-scale march to Montgomery. A transcript of his testimony is presented in the following pages.
Lewis: . . . a State Trooper made announcement on a bullhorn or megaphone, and he said, “This march will not continue.”
[Attorney Peter] Hall: What happened then; did the line stop?
Lewis: The line stopped at that time.
Hall: You stopped still?
Lewis: Yes, sir.
Hall: You didn’t advance any further?
Lewis: We stopped right then.
Hall: Then what happened?
Lewis: He said, “I am Major Cloud, and this is an unlawful assembly. This demonstration will not continue. You have been banned by the Governor. I am going to order you to disperse.”
Hall: What did you then do?
Lewis: Mr. Williams said, “Mr. Major, I would like to have a word, can we have a word?” And he said, “No, I will give you two minutes to leave.” And again Mr. Williams said, “Can I have a word?” He said, “There will be no word.” And about a minute or more Major Cloud ordered the Troopers to advance, and at that time the State Troopers took their position, I guess, and they moved forward with their clubs up over their—near their shoulder, the top part of the body; they came rushing in, knocking us down and pushing us.
Hall: And were you hit at that time?
Lewis: At that time I was hit and knocked down.
Hall: Where were you hit?
Lewis: I was hit on my head right here.
Hall: What were you hit with?
Lewis: I was hit with a billy club, and I saw the State Trooper that hit me.
Hall: How many times were you hit?
Lewis: I was hit twice, once when I was lying down and was attempting to get up.
Hall: Do we understand you to say were hit . . . and then attempted to get up
and were hit—and was hit again.
Lewis: Right.
At the end of the hearing, on March 17, Judge Frank Johnson, Jr., ruled that the demonstrators had a constitutional right to march; on March 21, under the protection of a Federalized National Guard, 3,200 demonstrators set out from Selma in a mass demonstration that became a turning point in the civil rights movement.
Brooke Auxier at Pew:About a third of U.S. social media users say they have recently used these platforms to post a picture to support a cause, look up information about rallies happening in their area or encourage others to take action on issues they see as important. https://t.co/u3jXX6nEXU pic.twitter.com/yupHkmg6MT— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) July 15, 2020
From global protests against racial injustice to the 2020 election, some Americans who use social media are taking to these platforms to mobilize others and show their support for causes or issues. But experiences and attitudes related to political activities on social media vary by race and ethnicity, age, and party, according to a Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults conducted June 16-22, 2020.
People can be politically active on social media in many ways. This survey asked Americans about four different types of activities that they may have engaged in on these platforms. Overall, about one-third of social media users (36%) say they have used sites like Facebook, Twitter and others in the past month to post a picture to show their support for a cause, look up information about rallies or protests happening in their area (35%) or encourage others to take action on issues they regard as important (32%). A smaller share (18%) reports using a hashtag related to a political or social issue on social media during this time.
Hispanic and Black social media users (46% and 45%, respectively) are more likely than white users (29%) to say they have looked up information about protests and rallies in their area on social media in the past month.
But in certain activities, Black users stand out: 48% of Black social media users say they have posted a picture on social media to show their support for a cause in the past month, compared with 37% of Hispanic users and 33% of white users. Black adults who use social media (45%) are also more likely than their Hispanic (33%) or white (30%) counterparts to say that in the past month they’ve taken to social media to encourage others to take action on issues that are important to them.
...
The share of 18- to 29-year-old social media users who say that these platforms are at least somewhat important to them for finding other people who share their views about important topics has risen from 47% in 2018 to 59% today. There have also been double-digit increases among younger users when it comes to getting involved with political or social issues and having a venue to express their opinions. By comparison, there has been little to no change on these questions for social media users ages 30 or older.
