Protest During the Trump Presidency: Threat, Movement Organization, and Electoral Mobilization

• In Event: 3270 - Revisiting Threats and Grievances in the Trump Era

Abstract

Trump’s election has sparked a major upsurge in protest in the U.S. Bringing together a diverse set of issues and constituencies, activists have organized over five thousand protests with over six million participants between the inauguration and the end of September. We take stock of the movement using protest event data. Our analysis has two main components. First, we present a descriptive profile tracking the main issues and claims at the forefront of the movement. Second, we examine local variation in mobilization motivated by central expectations in social movement theory. Our analyses focus on the role of threat, prior movement activity, and partisan political dynamics as major drivers of movement mobilization. We find greater mobilization in communities with higher levels of education and non-evangelicals, while the percent African-American and foreign born (in some models) has a negative relationship. Our findings indicate that movement activity is an outgrowth of local Democratic support and the Sanders wing of the party, specifically. Finally, we show that prior Occupy mobilization spurs mobilization as does the Tea Party movement indicating an important movement-countermovement dynamic. We conclude by drawing implications for social movement scholarship and possible implications for the future of activism during the Trump presidency.

Authors

• Neal Caren, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

• Alyssa Browne, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

• Kenneth (Andy) Andrews, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill