Can Resistance Be Copied?

From 2010 to 2020, more people crowded onto the streets around the world to protest than at any other time in known history. Starting with what is often called the Arab Spring and ending with the Black Lives Matter protests that followed George Floyd’s murder in 2020, the demonstrations—dense, synchronized, and persistent—dwarfed older, briefer moments of global protest. More people participated in demonstrations than in 2003 (against the invasion of Iraq) or 1999 (against globalization) or 1968 (against the Vietnam War, for civil rights, and so on). There were, of course, more people protesting than in 1848, the first modern wave of uprisings, known as the Springtime of the Peoples.During what the journalist Vincent Bevins calls “the protest decade,” what was at issue varied considerably but converged on several widely held grievances: income inequality, which made even food and public transit too expensive for many people; the corruption and self-dealing of oligarchs; the overreach and violence of the police. Relatively small protests often ballooned to enormous size after televised or streamed police attacks brought out people who didn’t normally join marches. Images and videos ...