Is US activism really still a thing?

[Grinkle]

One also mustn't forget how rapidly developments have progressed since the 1960s.

edit:
Thread inspired by a comment from @fresh_42 in a different thread, not really the topic of my post so I started a new thread with it.


This is a very salient point and the US is undebatebly a much different society than it was in the 60's.

I wonder if an academic study would bear out my gut feeling that political activism in America has almost vanished since the 60's - such a brief span, less than a single human lifetime. When I think of the things US activists accomplished in times past, it seems like another country altogether.

Child labor laws / 8 hour workday
The direct election of Senators (they used to be selected by the state legislature, not the voters)
Prohibition
Repealing prohibition
Women's suffrage
The Civil Rights Act / de-segregation

I'm sure there are more. The US seems to me so firmly entrenched relative to the 60's and prior.

Things off the top of my head we can't do that make me feel this way, that look to me much smaller in scope than the things in the above list -

Common sense gun regulation
Pass budgets at a national level
Address healthchare efficiency and costs
Change our broken immigration system even with work visa's

One may argue that MAGA is effective activism, but I don't see it that way myself.

Trump has changed things, but by personal fiat, not structurally as the things my list were / are. MAGA is informal and ham-fisted, and unless they manage to burn the house down, much more temporary, or at least oscillatory. Although I do think that MAGA's success stems in part from frustration over the entrenchment I am anecdotally saying exists.

This is OT for this thread - I'm going to move it to its own thread after I hit 'Post'.

 

[Klystron]

Prohibition
Repealing prohibition
Women's suffrage

Very interesting list of civic accomplishments also providing insight into MAGA Republican views.

I grew up in a staunchly Republican Catholic household with many comparisons to DJT. My conservative angry father was also a millionaire's son born and raised in New York City. His political cohort blamed Prohibition and many social ills on allowing women to vote and to drive automobiles. As traffic increased in bucolic Palo Alto and Cupertino, California where we relocated when I was a baby, Dad would fume and curse "women drivers" while puffing on Lucky Strike cigarettes. He loved females but was inculcated with this perverse hatred of women as free equal citizens.

Republican lore held that newly enfranchised women voted for Prohibition while men were otherwise occupied fighting WWI. Never mind that Republicans drove an anti-drug racist agenda that still roils the world as long as they could drown in legal liquor and tobacco products.

 

[OmCheeto]

The direct election of Senators (they used to be selected by the state legislature, not the voters)

This reminds me of a very silly looking post I made one day.
I think it had to do with the best way to elect a president.
But that's quite off topic, so I'll just snip it here.

ps. Saved to diary. So, as always, ok to delete, infract, and ban.

 

[Grinkle]

I can't draw at all, but I had an idea for a cartoon and ChatGPT did a fine job with the artwork based on my description. Putting it here instead of the humor thread because I thought of it when pondering this thread.

 

[collinsmark]

I wonder if an academic study would bear out my gut feeling that political activism in America has almost vanished since the 60's - such a brief span, less than a single human lifetime.

If you were to have made this claim a dozen years or so ago, I might have (and probably would have) agreed. But I don't think that's the case today.

Things are changing. Things are changing rapidly. Anecdotally, I went from not even hearing about any US protest for years before 2015 or so, to attending protests every few months, to now attending protests weekly.

Relatively recently, the No King's protest on June 14th, 2025 was by some estimates the largest protest in US history (possibly surpassing the Woman's March on Jan. 21, 2017).
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2025/...of-the-largest-days-of-protest-in-us-history/
And even more than that on the No Kings Oct. 18th, 2025 protest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_protests_and_demonstrations_in_the_United_States_by_size

And protests are gaining momentum ever since, and I anticipate that trend to continue.
https://www.statista.com/chart/35335/cumulative-number-of-protests-per-day-in-the-us/