John Minchillo/AP Photo
Protesters gather at the stage for the Women’s March on Washington during the first full day of Donald Trump’s presidency, January 21, 2017, in Washington.
The past decade saw more grassroots activism than at any time since the Great Depression, including the 1960s. We witnessed an unprecedented number of Americans engaged in protest, volunteering (phone banking, door-knocking) for issue campaigns and political races, and donating to progressive causes. The involvement was fragmented into separate movements, so the media didn’t notice the unmatched level of activism. Overall, 11 progressive movements that helped define the decade will also shape the future.
1. Occupy Wall Street. It began in Zuccotti Park on September 17, 2011, and quickly spread to hundreds of cities. Within a few weeks, police had pushed protesters out of local parks. The movement disappeared but the idea—widening wealth inequality, the one percent versus the 99 percent—has defined the decade and our politics. It put a target on the back of Wall Street, corporate America, and the super-rich. At kitchen tables, in coffee shops, in offices and factories, and in newsrooms, Americans are now talking about economic inequality, corporate greed, and how America’s super-rich have damaged our economy and our democracy. An overwhelming majority of Americans believe that Wall Street banks and big corporations wield too much political influence and that the super-rich don’t pay their fair share of taxes. No politician—Republican or Democrat—can now run for office without talking about the nation’s widening wealth and income gap. Occupy Wall Street is responsible for altering this national conversation.
2. The Fight for $15. The idea of a $15 minimum wage was a pipe dream in 2010 but now is mainstream. A Brookings Institution report released in November 2019 found that more than 53 million people, or 44 percent of all workers ages 18 to 64, earn low hourly wages. Many families need more than two jobs to make ends meet, including one-fifth of all schoolteachers. The new slogan for many unions is now “One job should be enough.” Congress hasn’t increased the federal minimum wage ($7.25) since 2009, so activists have pushed the issue in cities and states. The Fight for $15 burst forward, with wildcat strikes at fast-food and retail outlets morphing into successful legislative initiatives and ballot campaigns. According to the National Employment Law Project, 24 states and 48 cities and counties will raise their minimum wages sometime in 2020. In 32 of those jurisdictions, it will reach or surpass $15 per hour. Activists also pressured McDonald’s, Walmart, Disney, Bank of America, and other large employers into raising their pay scales. The fight for higher wages coincided with an upsurge of labor activism, including successful strikes by GM workers and teachers in red and blue states. According to a recent Gallup poll, public support for unions reached a two-decade peak of 64 percent.
3. Black Lives Matter. It started as a hashtag in 2013, led by three black women activists in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman. It soon became a movement, to campaign against violence and systemic racism toward black people. The movement expanded in 2014 after the street protests following the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in Staten Island at the hands of police. Polls show that Americans have become more aware of the reality of police abuse of African Americans. BLM pressured the 2016 presidential candidates to address racial disparities, including in the criminal justice system. Several progressive district attorneys were elected on such a platform. Even Michael Bloomberg, an advocate of stop-and-frisk policing in communities of color when he was New York City mayor, felt it necessary to apologize and renounce the policy once he decided to run for president.
4. Women’s March and #MeToo. The largest protest in U.S. history (four million-plus people in cities across the country) occurred the day after Trump’s inauguration (January 21, 2017), re-energizing the women’s movement. The pink pussy hats, first seen on that day, became an immediate and ongoing symbol of women’s empowerment. According to sociologist Dana Fisher (in her book American Resistance), 58 percent of Women’s March participants subsequently contacted a public official and 40 percent reported attending a congressional town hall. That energy was translated into the 2018 midterm elections, with a large increase in female voters, especially in the suburbs. The #MeToo movement grew following the exposure of sexual-abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein in October 2017. It spread virally to the streets, the courtroom, and the political world, forcing the firing or retirement of high-profile figures in politics, entertainment, universities, hospitals, and other fields. It then spread to the workplaces of ordinary women, challenging the predatory behavior of male supervisors and managers. The American workplace will never be the same.
5. Dreamers. Immigrant students brought to the U.S. as children and knowing America as their only home mobilized to demand they be treated as full-scale Americans. In December 2010, the DREAM Act, which would have given these immigrants a path to citizenship, passed the House, but it failed to reach the 60-vote threshold necessary to end debate in the Senate. Undaunted, the movement pushed California, in July 2011, to enact the California DREAM Act, giving undocumented immigrant students access to private college scholarships for state schools. Other states followed. The movement then successfully lobbied President Obama to announce, in June 2012, that his administration would stop deporting undocumented immigrants who match certain criteria included in the proposed DREAM Act, which became the new Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The Trump administration rolled back the program, but activists have taken the case to the Supreme Court. The movement escalated after Trump’s effort to expand deportations and restrict asylum seekers, creating a groundswell of opposition to his inhumane policies.
6. Tenants’ rights. Unable to afford to buy homes, more middle class families are renting, and competing with the poor for scarce apartments, so landlords are raising rents. More than half of all renters spend more than 30 percent of their incomes just to keep a roof over their heads. This has triggered a renters revolt across the country. Groups in Seattle, Chicago, Denver, Long Beach, Orlando, and other cities have waged rent strikes and mounted campaigns for rent control, protections against unfair evictions, and local funding for more affordable rental housing. Minneapolis became the first city to eliminate single-family zoning, and others may soon follow suit. Last year, Oregon became the first state in the nation to adopt a statewide rent cap. New York state enacted its most important strengthening of rent control laws in decades by giving New York City control over its tenant protection regulations. California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a groundbreaking law that limits annual rent increases and requires landlords to have a “just cause” in order to evict a tenant. Several Democratic presidential candidates have announced ambitious plans to protect renters’ rights, create more affordable housing, and restrict exclusionary zoning laws. Tenants may be the sleeping giant of American politics.
7. Voting rights. Under the leadership of the Reverend William Barber II, activists in North Carolina began weekly “Moral Mondays” protests and civil disobedience at the State Capitol building in Raleigh in 2012. They were reacting to Republicans taking control of both houses of the North Carolina legislature and the governor’s office for the first time since 1870, and adopting a series of laws restricting voting rights, unemployment benefits, Medicaid, education spending, abortion, LGBT rights, and environmental regulations. The movement protests, including multiple arrests of Barber and other leaders, spread to other states, and eventually became part of a national movement to restore voting rights and increase voter turnout, especially among African Americans. In 2018, Florida voters adopted a ballot measure restoring voting rights to former felons. In Georgia, the defeat of state Senator Stacey Abrams for governor, largely due to the suppression of black voters, shined a spotlight on the GOP’s ongoing crusade to restrict voting rights, and catalyzed a nationwide campaign to expand the franchise and increase voter turnout among people of color.
8. Environmental activism/Green New Deal. Taking a cue from the 1980s anti-apartheid movement, in 2012 student activists on college campuses began demanding that their institutions divest stock in corporations that profit from the use and abuse of fossil fuels, the major cause of the global climate crisis. Since its inception, more than 1,150 institutions with more than $11 trillion in assets committed to divest from fossil fuels, including local governments, pension funds, religious institutions, and universities, most recently the mammoth University of California system’s $13.4 billion endowment and $80 billion pension fund. The 350 movement’s campaign to stop the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline drew public attention to the need to address the twin problems of climate change and jobs. This led to the Green New Deal, a transformative idea to re-invest public and private resources in energy-efficient, job-creating “green” industries and public facilities. The movement mushroomed in 2018, catalyzed by the youth-led Sunrise Movement and promoted in Congress by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Ed Markey (D-MA).
9. The March for Our Lives. On February 14, 2018, a gunman opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people and injuring 17 others. Since the murder of 27 children and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012, there have been at least 2,178 mass shootings resulting in at least 2,458 people killed and 9,119 wounded. The students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas responded to their personal tragedy by building a movement to stop gun violence. It began with a March for Our Lives demonstration in Washington, D.C., a month after the murders, and close to a thousand associated events across the country, with a turnout estimated between 1.2 million and 2 million protesters. The Parkland students formed Never Again MSD and spent the summer and fall traveling the country for the “Road to Change’’ tour urging people, especially young people, to register to vote for the November 2018 midterm elections. Voting by young people spiked significantly that year, particularly in Florida, where 37 percent of the state’s 18- to 29-year-olds went to the polls, compared to the 22 percent in the 2014 midterms. One surprise winner was Lucy McBath, whose 17-year-old son Jordan was shot dead at a Florida gas station by a white man who complained about loud music. McBath won a congressional seat in Georgia’s Sixth District in the Atlanta suburbs that was once represented by Newt Gingrich. She decided to run for Congress after the mass shooting at the Parkland high school in February.
10. Indivisible. After the 2016 election, a few former congressional staffers posted a 23-page handbook, Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda, online. The authors hoped to teach progressives how to take action against Trump’s “bigoted and anti-democratic agenda,” similar to how the Tea Party challenged Obama. The document soon went viral. Within two months, more than 3,800 local Indivisible chapters had formed, mushrooming to more than 6,000 by the end of the year, in every congressional district in the county. The movement trained and mobilized many first-time activists and new leaders in the skills of issue organizing and campaign work. Other new groups, like Swing Left and Sister District, also recruited activists into key battleground races for Congress and other offices. In the 2018 midterm elections, more than 116 million voters went to the polls—49 percent of eligible voters—the highest turnout rate for a midterm election since 1914. This led to an upsurge of women, LGBT people, African Americans, and Latinos elected to office, including record numbers in Congress. Despite the Republicans’ success over the past two decades at gerrymandering House districts, Democrats gained 40 seats in the House, clear evidence of backlash against Trump. Meanwhile, Indivisible chapters have continued to expand, gearing up for the 2020 elections, focusing on increasing the number of progressives in office.
11. Democratic Socialism. In 2016, Senator Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist, captured the nation’s attention—and more than 13 million votes—in his campaign for the Democratic nomination for president. Two years later, voters elected democratic socialists Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Detroit to Congress, while dozens of their counterparts won races for city council, state legislative, school board, and other seats around the country, including six members of the Chicago City Council. Sanders remains a strong contender for the Democratic nomination in 2020. According to a 2019 Gallup poll, 43 percent of all Americans, and 58 percent of those between 18 and 34, believe that socialism would be a “good thing” for the country. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)—which long languished with just a few thousand members—now counts more than 60,000 people among its ranks, with over 200 chapters in red and blue states alike. Iowa has the highest density of DSA members per capita. Almost all those new members are millennials or younger, without the Cold War–era hang-ups of their baby boomer and Gen X parents. Thanks in part to this socialist uprising, ideas considered radical only a few years ago—universal health care, tuition-free college, a $15 federal minimum wage, requiring big corporations to put workers and union members on their boards, green jobs, and many others—are now widely accepted by the general public and by candidates running for office.
