31.1 - Good News: protest and resistance continue

Good News: protest and resistance continue

There was a lot of concern in the wake of the enormous protests related to the Women's March in January, which brought by conservative estimate 4 million people into the streets, that the resistance would sort of peter out. I even recall counseling folks that it was unwise and in fact unrealistic to expect that level of intensity to continue unabated, that what we should aim for instead is a constant undercurrent of opposition, the sort of resistance that doesn't seek to flood the streets on a weekly basis but still is constantly flowing - the sort, that is, that is geared to on-going, long-term resistance.

Apparently we needn't have worried. According to an on-going series in the Washington Post based on data from the Crowd Counting Consortium, there have been protests every single month in numerous places around the country, with totals of tens of thousands to well over 100,000 turning out in public protests in each of those months.

And June was the biggest yet. The Post counted 818 protests, demonstrations, strikes, marches, sit-ins, and rallies in the US in June, with at least one in every state and the District of Columbia, involving somewhere between 950,000 and 1.2 million people.

And as the Post notes and as I can verify from personal experience, mainstream media often neglect to report nonviolent actions, especially small ones, so it's quite probable the list of actions isn't complete. Add the fact that in some cases no one reports the size of the crowd, and the figure of about a million protesting is clearly an undercount.

Now, it's true that the level of protest has to a fair extent been driven by the abnormally outrageous destructive policies of the administration of Donald TheRump, but he is merely a focus - or, to put it another way, he is the spark, but he is not the fire. As has been well-noted by one writer,

resistance isn't something invented November 9. America's history bristles with resistance. Every great reform was begun by resisters to the established order. Resistance has been a bit more prevalent recently than during some other periods. Occupy, Black Lives Matter, the fight for LGBTQ equality and dignity, the reproductive rights struggle, climate hawks, and the rising up of indigenous people in Canada, the US, and Mexico against the relentless plunder of their land all have resisters at work who didn't start yesterday.

Again, there is no good reason to expect that level of protest seen in June to be maintained indefinitely - but that constant undercurrent, that constant flow of tens of thousands engaging in local actions every month, that can be maintained and it has been maintained.

And that is most definitely Good News.