In recent years, protests have been gaining popularity in the United States as people have tried to express their frustration with current events. On Oct. 18, an estimated 5.5 million people protested against President Donald Trump in nationwide No Kings protests.
While this was the largest single-day protest since 1970’s Earth Day protests, according to a Newsweek article, relatively few young people showed up. This lack of youth participation in recent protests is apparent at Urban. According to a survey of 66 students conducted by The Urban Legend, only 36.3% of respondents have attended one of the thousands of American protests held in the past year.
According to a Tufts study, just 18% of US citizens aged 18 to 34 have attended a protest. Twenty-nine percent want to attend one in the future.
The trend of shrinking youth participation in protests is dangerous — and we must curb it now or risk suffering grave consequences. “If young people become myopic, … public discourse will be less effective,” said Katina Papson-Rigby, director of service learning. “I definitely wonder if folks stop showing up, how that will affect getting our needs met as a society. … The voices of the marginalized will get quieter if we’re not all standing up for each other.”
The history and service learning curriculums teach students about social movements and their profound impacts on our lives today. “My hope is that education [will] mobilize young people and get them into more of a mindset of solidarity and protests,” Papson-Rigby said.
Despite this, the number of youth involved in protests remains low, partially because of recent violence at protests. According to the Urban survey, more than one third of respondents said violence was a barrier in their attending a protest.
Aside from the fear of violence, schoolwork and extracurricular activities are often large obstacles for students wanting to protest. “It’s generally easier to lose momentum as a high schooler, because we’re [not] constantly in spaces that are reaffirming our momentum,” Ella Braverman ’27 said. “We’re in spaces that are actually requiring us to focus on other things, which makes it harder to really stay with it.”
While other commitments take time, we must put in the extra effort to go to protests and help orchestrate change. Once we do so, we will find validation and a strong community.
At the protests she has attended, Braverman has found community and acceptance. “I’m very angry, and [protests feel] like one of the only places where rage is not looked down upon,” Braverman said. “Other [protesters] are equally angry and understand that that rage is a reasonable reaction to witnessing the types of atrocities that we’re witnessing.”
The previously mentioned survey found that students tended to feel better after attending a protest. “Protesting gives me peace of mind when times are tumultuous. I need hope to survive,” Jessie Kaplan-Maier ’27 said.
Furthermore, protests are generally positive experiences for people, and many say they would do it again. When asked if they would attend another protest, 72.9% of respondents said yes and 25% said maybe.
Beyond providing community and hope, protests have given us many of the liberties we enjoy today. “We benefit from all of these rights that we have now because people fought for them,” Papson-Rigby said. “We have to keep fighting … to keep them, especially when we’re under threat to lose them.”
It is critical that we protest now in order to maintain our rights and show our beliefs. “When I protest, I’ve done it to try to … show my frustration,” Cole Ambrocente ’26 said. “[But] if no one goes out to protest, it’s going to be ineffective as a whole.”
Once we create a culture of protesting, it will thrive. “When it’s a tradition to stand up and speak for exactly what you feel … [and] once it’s embedded in the city’s DNA, it’s hard to get out,” Kaplan-Maier said. “It’s hard to stop [it from] passing from generation to generation. And now more than ever, I think a lot of people have a lot of things to protest about.”