The Trump presidency featured a high volume of contentious mobilization. We describe the collection and aggregation of protest mobilization data from 2017 to 2021 and offer five observations. First, the protests were sustained at a high level throughout the Trump presidency, with the largest subset of protests positioned against Trump and the administration’s policies. Second, the grievances that drove the protests varied. Third, the National Student Walkout and the antiracism protests in 2020 had the broadest geographic spread of any reported protests in U.S. history. Fourth, the vast majority of protests did not have arrests or injuries; they were nonviolent protests. When there were arrests, most people who were arrested were committing nonviolent civil disobedience, not aggression or interpersonal violence. Fifth, in 2020, a sustained period of right-wing countermobilization began around the issues of COVID-19 lock-downs, policing and race, and Trump’s false claim about the presidential election.
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March 2022
ARTICLES|
March 30 2022
PROTESTS UNDER TRUMP, 2017–2021*
Jeremy Pressman;
Jeremy Pressman
† Jeremy Pressman is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut and author of The Sword is Not Enough: Arabs, Israelis, and the Limits of Military Force (Manchester UP, 2020). Erica Chenoweth is the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. At Harvard, Chenoweth directs the Nonviolent Action Lab, an innovation hub that provides empirical evidence in support of movement-led political transformation. Chenoweth’s most recent book is Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford, 2021). Tommy Leung, Ph.D., is a software engineer working on internet privacy and search and a co-founder of Count Love. L. Nathan Perkins, Ph.D., is a software engineer focusing on natural-language processing and a co-founder of Count Love, https://countlove.org/. Jay Ulfelder, Ph.D., is a Carr Center Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, where he serves as program director for the Nonviolent Action Lab. Please direct all correspondence to Jeremy Pressman at [email protected].
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Erica Chenoweth;
Erica Chenoweth
† Jeremy Pressman is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut and author of The Sword is Not Enough: Arabs, Israelis, and the Limits of Military Force (Manchester UP, 2020). Erica Chenoweth is the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. At Harvard, Chenoweth directs the Nonviolent Action Lab, an innovation hub that provides empirical evidence in support of movement-led political transformation. Chenoweth’s most recent book is Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford, 2021). Tommy Leung, Ph.D., is a software engineer working on internet privacy and search and a co-founder of Count Love. L. Nathan Perkins, Ph.D., is a software engineer focusing on natural-language processing and a co-founder of Count Love, https://countlove.org/. Jay Ulfelder, Ph.D., is a Carr Center Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, where he serves as program director for the Nonviolent Action Lab. Please direct all correspondence to Jeremy Pressman at [email protected].
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Tommy Leung;
Tommy Leung
† Jeremy Pressman is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut and author of The Sword is Not Enough: Arabs, Israelis, and the Limits of Military Force (Manchester UP, 2020). Erica Chenoweth is the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. At Harvard, Chenoweth directs the Nonviolent Action Lab, an innovation hub that provides empirical evidence in support of movement-led political transformation. Chenoweth’s most recent book is Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford, 2021). Tommy Leung, Ph.D., is a software engineer working on internet privacy and search and a co-founder of Count Love. L. Nathan Perkins, Ph.D., is a software engineer focusing on natural-language processing and a co-founder of Count Love, https://countlove.org/. Jay Ulfelder, Ph.D., is a Carr Center Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, where he serves as program director for the Nonviolent Action Lab. Please direct all correspondence to Jeremy Pressman at [email protected].
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L. Nathan Perkins;
L. Nathan Perkins
† Jeremy Pressman is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut and author of The Sword is Not Enough: Arabs, Israelis, and the Limits of Military Force (Manchester UP, 2020). Erica Chenoweth is the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. At Harvard, Chenoweth directs the Nonviolent Action Lab, an innovation hub that provides empirical evidence in support of movement-led political transformation. Chenoweth’s most recent book is Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford, 2021). Tommy Leung, Ph.D., is a software engineer working on internet privacy and search and a co-founder of Count Love. L. Nathan Perkins, Ph.D., is a software engineer focusing on natural-language processing and a co-founder of Count Love, https://countlove.org/. Jay Ulfelder, Ph.D., is a Carr Center Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, where he serves as program director for the Nonviolent Action Lab. Please direct all correspondence to Jeremy Pressman at [email protected].
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Jay Ulfelder
Jay Ulfelder
† Jeremy Pressman is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut and author of The Sword is Not Enough: Arabs, Israelis, and the Limits of Military Force (Manchester UP, 2020). Erica Chenoweth is the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. At Harvard, Chenoweth directs the Nonviolent Action Lab, an innovation hub that provides empirical evidence in support of movement-led political transformation. Chenoweth’s most recent book is Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford, 2021). Tommy Leung, Ph.D., is a software engineer working on internet privacy and search and a co-founder of Count Love. L. Nathan Perkins, Ph.D., is a software engineer focusing on natural-language processing and a co-founder of Count Love, https://countlove.org/. Jay Ulfelder, Ph.D., is a Carr Center Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, where he serves as program director for the Nonviolent Action Lab. Please direct all correspondence to Jeremy Pressman at [email protected].
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Mobilization: An International Quarterly (2022) 27 (1): 13–26.
Citation
Jeremy Pressman, Erica Chenoweth, Tommy Leung, L. Nathan Perkins, Jay Ulfelder; PROTESTS UNDER TRUMP, 2017–2021. Mobilization: An International Quarterly 1 March 2022; 27 (1): 13–26. doi: https://doi.org/10.17813/1086-671X-27-1-13
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