We have witnessed a resurgence of mass demonstrations and other public forms of political protest in the Trump era, but are protests becoming less effective and delegitimated—counterproductive, even—precisely because of their frequency, as Richard Ford maintains in “Protest Fatigue”? Granted, more and more of us may be, in the immortal words of Fannie Lou Hamer, “sick and tired of being sick and tired” and, at marches against ever more virulent manifestations of sexism and racism, signs like “I Can’t Believe I Still Have to Protest This Shit” evince a certain weariness and frustration among the dissenting masses. But, in this chapter, I argue that more, not less, protesting—by more people, in more places, on more occasions—is what we need now, since it can have a galvanizing, reinvigorating effect and be no less legitimate than past protests such as demonstrations for women’s suffrage and the March on Washington. Especially in the digital age, mass protests, far from sapping our energy and yielding diminishing returns, have the potential to tap and replenish the ever-renewable resources of hope and solidarity.
The March on Washington, 1963
