Some people are asking an important question after millions of people came out to participate in the No Kings protests.
After the joy and sense of community that came from coming together to say no to Trump passed, the question was asked: are these protests making a difference?
A better question is: can these protests make a difference?
History and research tell us that successful protest movements DO make a difference.
Earlier this yearBrookings about 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 entitled ‘Protest as a Political Tool’ in which he compared effective and ineffective movements. He argued that successful movements have clear strategic goals, use protest to broaden coalitions, seek to win over more powerful individuals mobilize their cause and connect expressions of discontent with broader political and electoral mobilization. Lipsky called the civil rights movement a classic example of political activism that met all these conditions and achieved historic political and policy successes.”
Lipsky’s research was done decades before No Kings and 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 a physical community and more connected through technology than we have ever been as a nation before.
I’ve wondered if No Kings is a political movement or a protest movement.
The No Kings movement has currently achieved only one of Lipsky’s criteria for a successful movement, but that is a big one, perhaps the biggest of them all in 2025.
