Gen Z goes global with revolution?

Posted on October 25, 2026 by David S. Meyer

It’s not just France. Big street protests are erupting everywhere all across Europe–and elsewhere–taken together, they’ve been tabbed as the Gen Z protests.

[I was interviewed about this on CNN last night; here’s the link.]

When teens first started mass demonstrations in France, complaining about tragic underinvestment in public education and their own anxieties about further education or employment, some critics were quick to point to a French culture of protest, where dissenters were always ready to take to the streets and police were eager to beat and/or arrest them.

But Albania, Argentina, Belgium, Chile, Greece, India, Israel, Italy, Pakistan, Portugal, Romania, and Spain all hosting large anti-government demonstrations in the last few weeks? [I typed the cases I know quickly and in alphabetical order, somewhat nervous about new protests elsewhere before I finish writing this post.] There is always plenty of political protest going on, but this cluster of disruption seems bigger and a tiny bit more unified.

Young people may not be at the center of everyone of these campaigns, but they are exceptionally visible in most of them, and some grievances and demands appear everywhere. Viewing adult life on the horizon, youth everywhere are worried about opportunities for education and employment, and they’re well-aware of the rising costs of fuel, food, housing–and just about everything else. Their governments seem unable or unwilling to help, and many of those governments, riddled by conspicuous corruption, don’t evince the slightest concern for “Gen Z” (typically, those born between 1997-2012.)

Of course, it’s not just younger people. It’s interesting to see just who is hopping on to support these demonstrations in different places. In France, the big trade union confederations have appeared, trying to discipline and define the discontent. In the US, there’s plenty of gray hair at the No Kings and anti-Tesla protests.

So, it’s always good to be skeptical of explanations that emphasize homogenous generational conduct and interests; in this case, there are always plenty of people outside the band of birth years who get involved, and plenty of dispute and dissension within a defined generation. Still, it’s not surprising that younger people are taking the lead in trying to combat growing economic and political equality–especially when so many of them are on the straitened side of that “K-shaped” economy, heading downward.

Why did all these efforts seem to emerge at once?

There’s an element of imitation. Frustrated people look for solutions, and when those that are apparent don’t seem like they’re working, frustrated people watch what others are doing. When high school students pour into the streets in Paris, young people everywhere else can see similar grievances and a strategy that might matter. Anyway, public protest is contagious because it’s something to do when nothing else appears possible. And in the current media environment, words and pictures spread quickly around the globe. These efforts are much less about transnational organization than transnational inspiration.

And there’s an element of mainstream media finding what they decide to look for. When disruptive protests scroll across the screens of editors and news producers, they look for trends that they might otherwise neglect or downplay. Students in Albania get more attention because of young people protesting in bigger media markets. There’s always plenty of protest news to cover when you’re willing to look for it.

Scroll back just a couple of years and you can add Bangladesh, Madagascar, Nepal, and Sri Lanka to the list of volatile demonstrations. And some of them clearly mattered–not always for the best. Public protesters helped topple governments in Madagascar and Nepal in bloody battles that engaged the military; while there is some reason for optimism about reform in Nepal, a military junta now rules in Madagascar. Turn back just a little further in time and you’ll remember that twice in the last decade candlelight street protests successfully encouraged the National Assembly to impeach and remove a president in South Korea.

Protest in the streets is an available strategy in much of the world–and it might matter when nothing else does.

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Reading different demos

Posted on October 19, 2026 by David S. Meyer

I was initially surprised that the large national effort by No Kings, staging some 3,000+ events on October 17, got relatively little attention in mainstream media. There are lots of good pictures of earnest people carrying funny signs in groups large and small, with all kinds of interesting backdrops. (The picture above of a Philadelphia demonstration is from NPR, which posts lots of other neat phots.)

But then there’s France, where the crowds have been larger and unruly, policing has been vigorous and violent, and politicians of the left and right are eagerly trying to get in front of the disruption and convert it to some electoral advantage.

Car fires, broken glass, and confrontation with police is always going to get more attention from an editor than a colorful slow walk through the streets of sober citizens carrying witty signs.

But both sets of actions are demonstrations intended to signal something to authorities and potential allies. Activists make a statement of who they are, what they want, and what else they might do.

No Kings is about “regular Americans,” angry about the Trump presidency. No Kings has also become a holder for all kinds of other specific grievances on issues, which vary around the United States. Organizers are deliberately trying to herd those marchers to the ballot box for this November’s elections: they might vote. At this moment, it’s a warning to a very unpopular president and the Republican Party, and a bit of encouragement to Democrats.

France is different. Although there’s an election coming there as well, the follow-on actions are more varied and certainly more threatening. President Emmanuel Macron is term-limited and even less popular than Donald Trump (<20% approval). Voting for any one of his would-be successors hardly seems enough to the masses of young people angry about their severely underfunded and dilapidated schools and their economic and educational prospects for the future. Many of them, too young or not citizens, can’t vote anyway. They are banging away at the pieces of the state they can reach, hoping for some kind of response. And those candidates are offering very different options: those on the left are promising some way to manage the cost of living and heal the beleaguered welfare state, while Marine Le Pen, from the far right, promises law and order.

Sometimes banging on a broken appliance gets it working again; sometimes, it just falls apart.

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Leadership and Legacy; on Gloria Steinem

Posted on September 13, 2026 by David S. Meyer

Gloria Steinem’s death on September 2 ended a long and eventful life, and gave concerned folks an opportunity to reflect on that life, and on the second wave feminist movement. Steinem was certainly one of many key leaders of the second wave, representing that movement to all sorts of audiences, and deeply engaged in ideological and tactical battles within contemporary feminism.

But how many names will appear in the textbook treatments of the second wave of feminist activism in the United States? Committed, sometimes heroic, individuals who do important work for their cause always get edited out. And with them, the differences and disputes within a movement can almost disappear from history.

So, who stands in for a movement?

Organizations often make deliberate choices about who they want to represent themselves and their cause. Leaders are elected and they can designate spokespeople who receive instruction on who to talk to and what to say. But movements are much broader and less disciplined than individual groups. Reporters, politicians, and pundits pick their own movement leaders to serve their own purposes. This can mean the most articulate and charming person circulating around a movement, particularly if that person returns phone calls quickly. But it can also mean the most disheveled and incoherent person willing to appear on camera—for a movement the reporter doesn’t like.

Visibility, longevity, persistence, energy, and charm all matter, but the historical process of defining a broad campaign in the context of just a few identifiable individuals is complicated and contested. Steinem proved to be long on the assets that bring mainstream attention. She was the kind of feminist who curious television hosts wanted to interview, and she took the offers and returned phone calls. She showed up to events on college campuses for decades, and was ready to appear with all sorts of campaigns in progress. (See Letty Cottin Pogrebin’s appreciation in The New York Times.)

Over time, energy and activity builds a kind of ubiquity. I was struck by how many academic friends recounted their own personal contacts with Gloria Steinem. The summary is always something like: pleasant, patient and unassuming, engaged and visibly committed to the cause, and optimistic. There must be a lesson there.

It’s important to remember that the feminist movement of the 1960s and 70s and 80s and onward was a site for contention about all sorts of issues, including abortion, capitalism, gay rights and visibility, police, pornography, race, rape, and war. Over time, some of those disputes have been mostly settled within the movement.

In the wake of Steinem’s death, mainstream media was quick to identify her as a critically important feminist leader. Some feminist writers responded with resistance, reminding readers of long standing, sometimes simmering, disputes within the movement. Jenny Brown’s review in Jacobin offers one excellent account. It starts…

Gloria Steinem died this week at age 92. The establishment’s favorite “radical” feminist, Steinem worked with the CIA to promote reactionary propaganda and helped direct the women’s liberation movement into a corporate-friendly, anti-socialist direction.

After graduating from college trying to get a start as a journalist, Steinem worked for several years (1958-1962?) for the Independent Research Service, a front for the CIA, charged with promoting American values to youth abroad. The CIA connection, no matter how long ago, is enough to earn cancellation in some circles, but likely more significant is that Steinem expressed no regret.

Within the feminist movement—already under way in campaigns for an Equal Rights Amendment and abortion rights—Steinem tacked toward more mainstream audiences. She was a co-founder and editor of Ms., which was intended to be a mass market glossy magazine, supported largely by advertising. (In 1971, this didn’t seem impossible.) But more radical feminists didn’t find a space for themselves and their ideas in Ms. which, critics charged, skewed toward self-esteem, consciousness raising, Democratic Party politics, and away from radical confrontation. In 2016, she endorsed Hillary Clinton, rather than Bernie Sanders, for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

Was this the result of a focused chase for a mainstream audience or a deliberate and ideological move away from more confrontational politics?

Steinem offered a slightly different explanation—the need for advertising revenue.

Ms. operated within the initial mass market model for nearly twenty years. By 1990, however, the editors found the advertising financial model was becoming even less viable. Steinem explained that chasing advertising dollars meant featuring topics like entertaining, cooking, and fashion, and avoiding topics that were potentially controversial, like abortion, gun control, or disparaging remarks about religion. It became another outlet for culture and consumption, rather than a more vigorous political project. Steinem’s “Sex, Lies, and Advertising,” which announced Ms.’s shift to a quarterly without advertising support, is still worth reading.

So, Gloria Steinem consistently offered a vision of feminism that critics within the movement found unduly modest and moderate. I think you will be hard-pressed to find any long-tenured leader of a campaign with some influence who doesn’t face similar criticisms from committed visionaries who want to put forward a stronger line. Steinem, like Ms., targeted a mass market, and took heat for it.

I was particularly curious about how those critics wanted to remember Gloria Steinem. Alice Echols, an activist and historian who had been critical of Steinem, wrote a long social media post, repeating her differences with Steinem, but extolling her persistence and her commitment. She also praised Steinem’s continued engagement with her more radical critics. Similarly, Angela Davis, recalled that Steinem served as national treasurer of Davis’s defense fund. (Davis, then a member of the Communist Party, spent a year in prison awaiting trial for three felonies including conspiracy to commit murder; guns she owned were used in an assault in a courtroom which resulted in four deaths.)

So Steinem maintained ties with more radical colleagues, and made space for them as well, calling attention to often neglected Black and Latino women activists, and insisting that groups and schools that booked her for a talk also included another feminist speaker of color.

I am certainly not the person to adjudicate the value of Steinem’s approach to building and feeding an important movement. From the outside, it looks like Steinem targeted the mainstream, but tried to create openings for more radical activists to reach that same audience.

Would a more radical Gloria Steinem with a more radical Ms. have been more influential?

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A day for Labor (reposted)

Posted on September 7, 2026 by David S. Meyer

Successful politicians exploit, buy off, and sell out the movements that sometimes buoy their campaigns. This American story is an old one, and it’s one that leaves activists disappointed, wary, and cynical, often especially about the politicians who do the most for them.

So, why is the American day to commemorate Labor held at the end of the summer, months after May Day, the workers’ celebration day virtually everywhere else in the world? How do you respond to a movement by creating an occasion for a cook-out?

crwy

President Grover Cleveland, a hard-money Democrat, and generally no friend to organized labor, signed a bill making Labor Day a national holiday at the end of June in 1894, at the height of the Populist movement, and just after the American Railway Union, led by Eugene Debs, had launched a boycott and strike, starting in Pullman, Illinois. Protesting the Pullman Palace Car Company’s treatment of its workers, including harsh wage cuts, railway workers across the country refused to handle any train hauling a Pullman car.

The Federal government used an injunction, then troops, to battle the union and get the trains moving.  In July, just after announcing a national day to celebrate the contributions of American workers, President Cleveland ordered federal marshals–along with 12,000 Army troops, into Chicago to break up the strike. Workers fought back, and 13 workers were killed, and at least several dozen injured. Debs was tried for violating an injunction, and went to prison, where he discovered the writings of Karl Marx. Clarence Darrow provided a vigorous, but unsuccessful, defense.

Debs would go to prison again, for his opposition to US entry into World War I, and would run for president five times as a Socialist.

But I digress. President Cleveland created a distinctly American Labor Day, emphatically not on May 1, which had already been the occasion for vigorous and disruptive workers’ activism.  (Read about the Haymarket affair.)

May Day remains the day for international workers mobilization.  Instead, our Labor Day is a time to mark the end of summer by cooking outdoors and shopping for school supplies.

The  US Department of Labor’s website gives credit for Labor Day to the American worker, but makes no mention of the Pullman Strike or the Haymarket demonstrations.

So, commemoration can actually be a way to neuter the historical memory.  See our discussions of commemorative days for Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, and Fred Korematsu, all significantly more difficult characters than what they’ve come to represent.

P.S. Organized labor’s cumulative difficulties and declines have begun to lead to new strategies. One involves organizing workers that unions in the past had largely overlooked. Established unions have tried to expand their reach by organizing in retail stores and in fast food outlets, working to unite less skilled workers. Most recently, as example, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that graduate teaching assistants at private colleges could organize unions and bargain collectively. But I’m not quite convinced that graduate students are the new vanguard for the working class.

Members of the Wisconsin Jobs Now group, representing Fight For 15, which favors a $15 an hour minimum wage, march down E. Chicago St. shortly before entering the Summerfest grounds for Labor Fest in 2015.

Likely more promising are efforts to use politics to improve the fortunes of American workers. Collective bargaining is one way to raise wages. Another is to mandate higher minimum wages for everyone. The Fight for $15 has had claimed some important successes in new ordinances in generally liberal cities, and has shifted the debate elsewhere. Bernie Sanders campaigned for the Democratic nomination by endorsing the proposal for a new minimum wage, and Hillary Clinton, competing for his voters, essentially endorsed the effort.

This past year, all of the Democratic hopefuls endorsed dramatically increasing wages. One future for labor is through Democratic Party politics.

2019: Reading over something I initially posted in 2011, I fear that the big story is basically the same: 1. Economic and political equality has generally increased, with the fate of less educated workers substantially worse; 2. government has done more to slant the slope of the political battlefield against workers generally and organized labor in particular…esp. see Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees; 3. the current political battle pits conservative politicians against government workers.

But,

When well-honed routines of organizing are no longer working, organizers have to innovate. The Fight for $15 has made substantial inroads, particularly in the Democratic Party, and organizers now see immigrants as allies rather than competition, mostly. Family Leave campaigns provide a route to build bridges between different classes of workers which, ultimately, could have large payoff. Most generally, the campaign for workers welfare is transforming to a larger concern with political and economic inequality: it’s what’s left as viable strategy.

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Jeanine Pirro told the truth, after exhausting other options

Posted on August 3, 2026 by David S. Meyer

US Attorney Jeanine Pirro angered her benefactor, Donald Trump, by asking a federal judge to dismiss felony charges she’d filed against Olympian Davey Hearn,* a member of the International Whitewater Hall of Fame. (You can read her motion and the judge’s response here–it’s about 20 pages, and well-illustrated.)

You’ll recall that it’s just about a month ago when police arrested Hearn, who had interrupted a long bike ride to check out the damage at the reflecting pool in the middle of the day. Wearing a loud biking outfit and a helmet–hardly standard attire for a vandal–Hearn spent about 5 hours in police custody. The Trump Administration drained the pool for repairs, and Trump explained that the conspicuous erosion of the custom American flag blue liner was the result of vandalism. No surprise, Trump embellished the story, describing a slash in the pool liner that grew in successive tellings from 100-300 feet. Pirro, a longtime Trumpo loyalist, had announced that she was committed to the case against Hearn, and promised “tremendous evidence” to submit to court.

Prosecutors must demonstrate means, motive, and opportunity to secure a conviction, as we’ve all learned from police procedurals on television. But there was never a show of motive, and there was plenty of video online undermining any hint of opportunity or means: Hearn had bike shoes and a helmet–no sabre. Trump has said that he’s less concerned with securing convictions than making his enemies suffer. And I’m sure Davey Hearn had an awful–and probably costly–month.

Pirro’s motion to dismiss reports that the Interior Department misled her investigators and the Department of Justice. In investigation, she found that the liner had been visibly deteriorating long before Hearn got off his bike, the result of substandard work by an inexperienced contractor that won a generous no-bid contract based on prior work for Citizen Trump. The Justice Department, she explained, isn’t supposed to prosecute cases unless attorneys are confident of sufficient evidence to secure a conviction–and it just wasn’t there. Officers of the court aren’t supposed to lie and can be punished for doing so in court filings. Anyway, US Attorney Pirro opted to do her job and tell the truth.

At some point, the story of what happened inside the Office of the US Attorney for DC will come out. We’ll learn if Pirro was motivated by a sense of duty and/or a fear of punishment. We’ll find out whether she couldn’t find an Assistant US Attorney willing to conduct the prosecution and whether there were threats of resignation. The indictment was inexcusable, but truth and justice late is better than never. At this point, we should applaud Pirro’s truthful filing, and call for more, starting with an apology and a commitment to the law….at least.

Without citing evidence, Trump, the president of the United States, and his Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burghum, criticized Pirro for getting it wrong and “chickening out.” They’re not working as attorneys and are, apparently, free to lie without restraint save damage to their credibility. You’ll have a hard time finding evidence that Trump worries much about his reputation for integrity. He does worry–and stew–about defiance from his subordinates. In the next few days, there will doubtless be some show of discipline against Pirro; maybe she’ll leave office or maybe refile charges. Or maybe the erosion of trust within the Administration will continue just like the pool lining.

(Do you want to believe the Administration’s reports from Iran, knowing they will lie to you about peeling paint?)

*Full disclosure: I was glad to know Davey Hearn when I was a student at Hampshire College. I learned, shortly after arriving, that it hosted an extraordinarily high concentration of whitewater stars. I met Davey’s sister, Cathy, also a repeat Olympian and Whitewater Hall of Famer at a new student event. I tried to impress her with the story of my one-time participation in an open canoe race; it is astonishing that she became a friend anyway. Both Davey and Cathy displayed the drive and discipline of world-class athletes, along with the resilience, humility, and ingenuity that comes with continued excellence in a sport that operated without much money or visibility. They built boats and gear and, upon request, helped others (including me!) learn to paddle and build as well.

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What resistance looks like: telling the truth….

Posted on August 2, 2026 by David S. Meyer

Demonstrations capture the imagination–at least sometimes–but effective social movements always include much more.

The image above covers a March on the Pentagon (October 21, 1967), and demonstrations, large and small, were a critical component of the antiwar movement. The 1967 march followed years of teach-ins on American college campuses, draft counseling and draft resistance, testimony before Congress, lobbying at the national and state level, and local draft boards employing varying degrees of sensitivity to claims of conscientious objection. There were electoral efforts and organization building, journalism–including hard questions of authorities and first hand reporting.

Effective movements include diverse efforts, sometimes spilling into public spaces, but often taking place around kitchen tables and church basements and classrooms–less visible, maybe less dramatic, but no less important.

One important strategy relies on telling the truth when authorities seem to be lying. And sometimes the settings in which truth-telling takes place are smaller and far more subtle than the large demonstration.

Rejecting official mendacities is a core component of “living in truth,” a first step in changing the world. The phrase is from Czech and Czechoslovakian playwright/president/dissident Vaclav Havel in his powerful and elegant essay, “The Power of the Powerless.” Translated into English by Paul Wilson, it’s a powerful piece of writing, which recognizes a kind of heroism of small gestures–the key example in the essay is of a grocer who doesn’t display a sign in his store: “workers of the world unite.”

When I first read the piece, I saw the nobility of individual resistance–and then I read political scientist David Ost’s insightful analysis of Havel’s essay,* which recognized the cumulative power of smaller, less dramatic gestures, taking the steps that appear available and recognizing that effective resistance to authoritarian governance is contingent upon many factors outside an individual’s influence–and it often takes a very long time.

But finding a way to reject lies and resurrect the truth is a core task of effective democratic politics, and is particularly critical in the current moment.

To be sure, Donald Trump is hardly the first American president to dissemble about critical issues publicly. All presidents lie, recognizing more and less selfish motivations. But the volume, carelessness, and transparency of Trump’s lies far surpasses previous presidential deceptions, and dishonesty is redolent throughout all levels of the Administration.

Although there’s plenty of malice, Administrative incompetence and carelessness is everywhere. You may have seen the story of a State Department presentation at an international conference on AIDS in Africa, in which every country on the continent was mislabeled. (The picture below is from a story in The Guardian.)

Ulp.

In this context, injecting a bit of truth and respect for truth is critical activist and democratic work.

Checking and correcting facts doesn’t generally make for the same dramatic images as a big protest, but it’s important to put some sands of truth into slowing the mendacity machine. Examples will follow in the next few entries.

Hint: take a look at the reflecting pool.

*David Ost, “The Sham, and the Damage, of ‘Living in Truth,’” East European Politics and Societies, May 2018, 32 (2): 301-309.

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Froze and reversed the arms race: anniversary, repost.

Posted on June 12, 2026 by David S. Meyer

The June 12th nuclear freeze post, tweaked and updated….

I try to remember to repost this every June 12, a reminder about the massive nuclear freeze march, part of an important campaign in the 1980s. Of course, nuclear weapons are rarely the most salient story today, although the United States and Israel continue to wage a war against Iran allegedly focused on preventing a rogue nation from going nuclear. The Russian war against Ukraine continues, and activists across the country demonstrate against mass arrest and deportation sweeps of migrants, and a general fear about the eroding of democracy.. Just for starters.

Still, a fairly short story of the nuclear freeze offers useful lessons for all sorts of other movements. Not the least of these is that movements (sometimes) matter, and don’t get credit for their efforts unless organizers claim it. The June 12 demonstration made international news in 1982, but is generally edited out of popular histories of the Cold War or of the Reagan era. (See if you can find anniversary remembrances in your media feed today, and tell me if I’m wrong.)

The threat of nuclear war isn’t gone, and more than a few developments in the Trump era have made it more pronounced: The United States abandoned an arms control treaty with Iran that was working, and initially made a show of trying to renegotiate it. That moment passed, and the Trump administration launched a war against Iran, determined to extract concessions through punishment; at this moment, there’s no evidence that it’s working at all. And at this moment, it looks like Iran has figured out how to enhance its leverage by not losing and by imposing costs on the United States and the rest of the world. (Fill up the gas tank of your car and you’ll know what I mean.) The United States had already announced that it would no longer abide by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, negotiated in the mid-1980s, and announced that it was withdrawing from an “Open Skies” verification accord first proposed by Dwight Eisenhower, and in force for decades. At the same time, the Trump administration is working purposefully to reduce American commitments to NATO. Bilateral and multilateral negotiations on nuclear arms control have largely stalled. But the Russian invasion of Ukraine–which ceded nuclear weapons deployed on its territory to Russia in 1994 for a promise from the major powers, including Russia, to protect its territorial integrity–put nuclear weapons back on the agenda, and Russian leader Vladimir Putin periodically threatens to use nukes on the battlefield.

It’s an urgent moment.

The Federation of American Scientists, an expert group that has promoted nuclear safety and arms control since the end of the second World War, maintains a “Doomsday Clock,” signaling its perception of the nuclear danger. In 1981, when Ronald Reagan took office and the freeze campaign took off, the clock was set at 4 minutes to midnight. In 2012, when I first wrote the appreciation below, the Clock was set at 5 minutes to midnight. 

Today (2026), the Doomsday Clock is set to 90 89 85 seconds to midnight, the closest to apocalypse that it’s ever been. Had you heard of the Doomsday Clock before reading today’s post? When first created in 1947, it was a big deal, and every adjustment–usually closer to midnight–got lots of attention in mainstream media. Now that the perceived danger is worse than ever, the Clock doesn’t seem to claim much public attention.

So:

Forty-four years ago today, one million people marched in the streets of New York City to protest the nuclear arms race in general and the policies of Ronald Reagan in particular.

 Organized around a “nuclear freeze” proposal, the demonstration was a watershed event for a movement that seemed to come out of nowhere, not just in the United States, but throughout what was then called Western Europe.

Of course, movements have deeper roots. Relatively small groups of people have been protesting against nuclear weapons since the idea of nuclear bombs first appeared. On occasion, they’re able to spread their concerns beyond the few to a larger public. Such was the case in 1982, when Europeans rallied against NATO’s new intermediate range missiles planned for West Europe, and when Americans protested against the extraordinary military build-up/ spend-up of Ronald Reagan’s first term in office.

The freeze proposal, imagined by Randall Forsberg as a reasonable first step in reversing the arms race, was the core of organizing efforts in the United States, which included out-of-power arms control advocates and radical pacifists. Local governments passed resolutions supporting the freeze, while several states passed referenda. People demonstrated and held vigils, while community groups in churches and neighborhoods organized freeze groups to discuss–and advocate–on the nuclear arms race.

The freeze figured in large Democratic gains in the 1982 election, and Ronald Reagan ran for reelection as a born-again arms controller. Formerly an actor, he learned the line, “Nuclear war cannot be won and must not be fought,” and he took it on the road. Most activists didn’t buy it, but after Reagan won in a landslide, to the horror of his advisers and many of his supporters, he actually negotiated large reductions in the nuclear arsenals of the United States and what used to be called the Soviet Union. Of course, a new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, made those agreements possible.

US/ Russia nuclear warheads

The arms control agreements created the space in the East for reforms, reforms that spun out of control and eventually unraveled the cold war and the Eastern bloc.

The world changed.

It was both less and more than what most activists imagined possible.

Do you want to call it a victory?

Update:

The nuclear freeze movement was the subject of my doctoral dissertation and my first book

The issues in it remain relevant.

The story shows the long and complicated trajectory through which social movements affect influence. That’s the topic of my most recent book.

There are a few simple lessons that merit repeating today:

  1. It’s never one event, action, demonstration, statement, or lawsuit that makes the difference; rather, it’s an accumulation of efforts.

2. All victories take forever.

3. And they’re never enough, and certainly not necessarily permanent.

4. The work is important, and it must continue in order to be effective.

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Distant issues and proximate opponents: a note on campus protests +

Posted on May 29, 2026 by David S. Meyer

Enemies help activists build movement campaigns. Aggressive or offensive antagonists personify grievances and help unify coalitions of opposition. They provide convenient targets and simplify the story.

Think about Donald Trump and advocates for climate action and anti-corruption crusaders and health care reformers or critics of corruption. Trump simplifies explanations, particularly for new activists, and provides a source of unity for people working on all sorts of different issues.

But the president is far away and hard to influence. Foreign leaders, like Benjamin Netanyahu, are even further. Student activists have long found common cause in opposing local administrators, presidents, and (gulp) professors. Graduation is a good place to see it in operation.

I’m no stranger to college graduations, having attended a couple of dozen over the years, starting with my own at the now sadly shuttered Hampshire College. There are robes and rituals, some speeches, and sometimes even bagpipers. There are happy and less happy new graduates eager to grab the tangible sign of their efforts—a diploma. And there are friends and family even more eager to celebrate their achievements—that is, an audience.

I went to a graduation a couple of weeks ago and got to see a student protest, focused, I think, on getting the school to divest its financial holdings and/or academic connections to Israel. Whenever the president or the Chair of Board of Trustees stepped to the podium, scattered students and observers yelled at them, booing vigorously. A few held signs or waved Palestinian flags. It was a little disruptive; I’m sure some near-graduates and their families were disturbed, but the ceremony went on.

And then the big event, when the new graduates walk across the stage and accept the applause of their families with their diplomas. This is all choreographed: the bestower of degrees holds the diploma in his left hand, and reaches across with his right to shake the student’s right hand. The left hand passes documents while the right congratulates.

Some grads—my wild guess is 5-10%–disrupted this choreography.  Handing off scrolls with their right hands, they skipped the ritual handshake, and grabbed the diploma with the left hand. The president passed the scroll off to a robed assistant—a minor inconvenience.  

In real life, a college president is not responsible for Israeli policies and doesn’t make decisions about targeting or selling weapons; most don’t even make investment decisions. (They may be more or less supportive of expressive student protests.) But finding a way to influence a foreign leader—or even the American politicians supporting him—is no easy matter. The distance is a challenge for activists who see and want to stop distant wrongs.  The trick of a divestment campaign is to draw lines of complicity between local targets and evils far away. Local targets are convenient, especially when Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump won’t be on stage.

Refusing the cordial greeting may be a little rude, but anyone who aspires to a college presidency should develop a thick enough skin to handle such an affront; it’s part of the job.

Hanging responsibility for additional offenses on a local target can build solidarity among the protesters—even if it offends other audiences. And it does contribute to social and political polarization.

Still, it’s hard to get too upset at young people—or even older people–who learn about distant horrors and try to stop them, even if they don’t have access or tools to make much quick impact.

A note on comity: I noticed that a couple of protesting students made a point of juggling their scroll and shaking the president’s hand, as if to say their protest wasn’t personal. And I noticed one young graduate who made a point of exchanging harsh words with the president once he had the diploma. I don’t know how much it did for the cause.

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Remembering Kent State (May 4, 1970, revised and reposted)

Posted on May 5, 2026 by David S. Meyer

This is a repost of a report on the Kent State shootings, on occasion of an anniversary. At the end, I’ve added a bit on Neil Young’s emblematic song, which helped keep the memory alive.

As I write in 2026, last year’s burst of student protest about the Gaza War and America’s role in arming Israel, is far less visible, even as the United States is now engaged in a war (with Israel) against Iran. The broader campus-based resistance that seemed to lurk on the horizon has yet to emerge–a casualty of stricter rules about campus protest or anxiety about a terrible job market. But there is a broad campaign against higher education, including the end of diversity efforts, caps on student loans, cuts to research funding of all kinds, and severe budget cuts on everything else. Effective resistance will require student engagement. Recalling Kent State raises questions about the special environment campuses are supposed to provide.

It’s the anniversary of the killing of four college students at Kent State University. Young National Guardsmen opened fire on students protesting the war on May 4, 1970, discharging more than 60 rounds in roughly 13 seconds. They killed four students: Allison Krause, 19, and Jeffrey Miller, 20, were part of a nonviolent protest that university authorities promised to ban; Sandy Scheuer, 20, and William Schroeder, 19, were walking to class. The Guardsmen also wounded nine other students, some severely.

The Kent State student actions were part of a wave of protests that swept across American college campuses on May 1, a Friday, the day after President Richard Nixon announced that he had already ordered American air forces to expand their bombing to Cambodia. (Roughly a week earlier, after operations had already commenced, Secretary of State William P. Rogers testified before Congress, explicitly denying any intention of expanding the war to Cambodia.)

In Kent, protest and disruption spread into the town that night, with bonfires set in the streets and altercations with police.  The mayor declared a state of emergency, ordered the bars closed, and asked the governor for help in getting everything back under control; the National Guard arrived at the University on Saturday. Students planned a demonstration for Monday to protest the presence of the Guard on campus.  University officials tried to cancel the demonstration, but students assembled anyway. The Guardsmen ordered the students to disperse, then used tear gas before opening fire.

It was terrible, and there is still a great deal we don’t know: why the National Guard was on campus in the first place? why the order to fire on unarmed students hundreds of feet away? Who gave the order? or, was an order even given?  There’s a lot of writing, and a lot of controversy, still.  A good start is a summary, including an annotated bibliography, by two emeritus professors at Kent State, Jerry M. Lewis (Sociology) and Thomas R. Hensley (Political Science).

The shooting of unarmed students on a public college campus fostered a sense that the country was coming apart.  It was followed by a police shooting of student protesters at Jackson State in Mississippi, killing Philip Gibbs, 21, and James Green, 17, and wounding 12 other students.

President Nixon established a commission, chaired by William Scranton (formerly governor of Pennsylvania), to report on campus unrest. Published in September, the Scranton Commission answered few of the pressing questions about Kent State or Jackson State, but observed that campus unrest seemed to decline when the war in Vietnam seemed like it was winding down, and escalated after the bombing in Cambodia started.

The war and the demonstrations continued for a while, tapering off when the draft ended the next year.  Authorities developed ways to control dissent, on campus and elsewhere, without using live ammunition against protesters involved in large demonstrations. Demonstrations generally became less threatening, less disruptive, and less dangerous.

The Kent State and Jackson State killings remain tragic exceptions to more routine protest politics. It’s a good sign that they stand out in our memories.

One reason the memory remains is a powerful and idiosyncratic protest song, recorded within just a few weeks of the event. Days after the Kent State shootings, Neil Young wrote, “Ohio,” a song mourning the deaths. Apparently, he was shocked by photos published in Life magazine. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young released the song, which called out President Nixon and ended with the repeated line, “Four dead in Ohio”  (lyrics). The song reached the top 20 in the United States and Canada, and appeared on several albums by Young and by the group; they often performed the song in their occasional reunion tours over the past half-century.)

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