Why We March: The Role of Grievances, Threats, and Movement Organizational Resources in the 2017 Women's Marches

Abstract

We use Metropolitan Statistical Area-level data to investigate the emergence and size of the 2017 Women's Marches. Our findings indicate that the protests can be understood through both grievances and threats felt in the aftermath of Trump's election and movement organizational resources. While the impact of movement resources is as expected (more protest in MSAs with greater resources), the effect of grievances and threats is complex. Cautions concerning the marches in both African American and Hispanic communities result in negative influences on protest in MSAs with larger black and Latino populations. Also, heightened grievances/threats generally do not increase the occurrence of the Women's Marches, but some grievances/threats, specifically among feminists and those voting for Clinton, increase the size of protests. We also do not find significant interactions between grievances and movement resources. Our findings suggest that because post-election grievances/threats were strongly felt, protesters did not need movement organizational leaders to help them define their grievance. They simply needed movement groups to provide venues for protest, that is, a coordinated set of sister marches. We conclude that researchers should consider both the type of grievances and threats and how grievances/threats and organizational resources work alongside one another to promote protest.

News and Geolocated Social Media Accurately Measure Protest Size Variation

“…CCC: News and Twitter: Text Accounts feature the highest correlations and best model fit regardless of the subset of data or operationalization of protest size. Wealthier, more Democratic, and more populous areas generated larger protests, matching others' results (McKane and McCammon 2018).…”

Tracking the Resistance

“…The legacy of prior mobilizations included experienced activists, well-developed repertoires of tactics, politicized understandings of particular issues, and organizational infrastructures-as well as alliances, rivalries, and resentments. McKane and McCammon (2018) consider how prior experiences may have discouraged participation in the Resistance. They find that areas with larger percentages of African Americans were less likely to have Women's March protests in 2017, and that areas with larger percentages of Latinx residents tended to have smaller protests.…”

“…Andrews, Caren, and Browne (2018) observed that Resistance protests encompassed an unusually wide range of issues, noting over a hundred protests in its first year held for eleven major issues; marches for science, followed by race and immigration, attracted the largest crowds. Some scholars have analyzed these Resistance protests for evidence of the Marchers' goals, for instance, by studying the demographics of areas where protests took place (McKane & McCammon, 2018), or asking protest participants to identify their priority issues (Fisher, 2019;Fisher, Dow, & Ray, 2017 Others, however, question the centrality of specific policy positions to the Resistance. Putnam and Skocpol (2018) report that most Indivisible members they met did not emphasize a progressive political orientation, so much as the 6 of 13 -MARESCA AND MEYER electoral gains that would make a more responsive government possible (Putnam & Skocpol, 2018).…”

“…It is only recently, with the resurgence of BLM activism, that this may be changing. The long history of tensions between white feminists and feminists of color has undoubtedly played a role (Heaney, 2019;McKane & McCammon, 2018).…”

After the March: Using Instagram to Perform and Sustain the Women's March

“…By all accounts, the 2017 Women's March mobilized an impressive number of participants. Undoubtedly, part of the reason for this mass mobilization was the activists’ use of digital and social media (McKane and McCammon ). Like many contemporary social movements, the Women's March mobilized through the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs); in fact, it began originally as a Facebook event (Fisher et al.…”