One morning in October, Donna DesRuisseaux headed to a local bridge near her home in Goffstown, New Hampshire, armed with a sign that said: “Honk for democracy.” The 62-year-old business manager was taking part in a new tradition of protesting on various bridges and overpasses throughout the state.
“I’m very worried about our democracy, freedom of speech, social security and health insurance,” said DesRuisseaux, who attended a No Kings protest in Manchester, New Hampshire, later that day, where she ran into some of her “bridge friends”. DesRuisseaux had never protested anything prior to 2025, in part because she was a busy working mom. But after discovering the NH Bridge Brigade for Democracy group on Facebook, she knew she had to do something to express her outrage.
DesRuisseaux said they get plenty of honks of support and the occasional middle finger as well. “Each week, protesting is more and more important,” she said. “It’s not that hard of a commitment and I’ve met so many people. You feel the camaraderie because we’re all in the same boat.”
As Donald Trump and his administration have rolled back rights, cut social safety net programs to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and ignored or failed to comply with court orders, new demographics are being activated to join a broader coalition of people fighting for education, racial justice, gun control, science, the environment, immigration and the LGBTQ+ community. From local grassroots efforts to nationwide groups, today’s organizers are breaking down barriers and creating clever campaigns to welcome in those who are new to protesting – people who never saw themselves as activists.
It’s not that hard of a commitment and I’ve met so many people
Donna DesRuisseaux, new activist
“Any successful anti-regime organizing effort at scale cannot just depend on people who are political addicts who follow everything going on,” said Ezra Levin, co-director of Indivisible, the group behind the nationwide No Kings protests that drew around 7 million people into the streets last month and has more than 2,600 local chapters across the US. “It requires reaching out to people who are not currently with you. That means we’re hungry for opportunities to escape the bubble we’re in.”
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Organizers and researchers say there are common reasons why people don’t protest or get involved in activism. Some do not know how to get involved or engaged or don’t see themselves as the type to do so. Others are cynical about the system and unconvinced that their efforts will make a difference. And some people are fearful about their safety, which organizers say is a legitimate concern given how the Trump administration has unleashed the US military on protesters and unlawfully arrested journalists and legal observers.
“We’re seeing a lot of people who have never been politically active coming into the space,” said Autumn Gonzalez, an attorney and community organizer with NorCal Resist, a grassroots group based in Sacramento, California. “We try to always be very welcoming to people and understand that people are at different places in their political education. We’re trying to have some fun, too, because you’re not going to keep showing up to stuff if you’re not feeling like it’s a positive experience.”
NorCal Resist hosts reading groups, film screenings and flower-pressing workshops in addition to vigils, rallies, letter-writing campaigns and food-distribution events. They’ve also found success hosting events on Zoom so that more people, especially from rural areas, can attend, and by speaking at churches and other community organizations. The northern California group also attracts new activists by working with artists who will help raise money for them and share their efforts with like-minded fans. Hip-hop artist Princess Nokia held a benefit concert for NorCal Resist in October and the street theater troupe Bad Taste for a Good Cause is selling 3D lenticular posters to raise money for the non-profit.
Indivisible has also used pop culture to connect with new communities. Over the summer, the group created a digital ad campaign that targeted the fandom of Andor, the critically acclaimed Star Wars show that follows the beginnings of the resistance to the fictional world’s evil empire, via Meta ad campaigns and host-read ads on Andor fan discussion podcasts. A theme of “courage is contagious” is highlighted throughout the series by showing the ways everyday people are inspired to resist by the actions of others.
Our community is a protagonist of their own liberation and as a community organizer you are not a teacher
Lydia Walther-Rodriguez, Casa
“There is not a better representation in popular culture of what it means to be part of an effective grassroots resistance to an authoritarian regime,” said Levin of the Disney+ show. “A successful movement is made up of people who didn’t start out as activists or grassroots leaders, but because of personal impact and authoritarian overreach and seeing other people are engaged, you get more people involved and produce the one thing the regime is deeply afraid of: coordinated mass action against their unpopular overreach.”
Indivisible is also running a Signs of Solidarity campaign to encourage local businesses to publicize that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) is not welcome, but immigrants are. “You will succeed in reaching people who are not currently paying attention, but happen to go to that bookstore or coffee shop,” said Levin.
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Millions of protesters in the US may be new to activism, but so are some of the organizers behind movements that have sprung up under the second Trump administration.
Colette Delawalla, a clinical psychology graduate student at Emory University, was in the process of submitting a National Science Foundation grant when the Trump administration implemented a sweeping ban on DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) language. All of a sudden, words such as “women”, “disability”, “trauma” and “marginalized” were triggering reviews by the so-called department of government efficiency, or Doge. “I felt like I was living in a chapter of 1984,” said Delawalla, who studies alcohol addiction. “I couldn’t believe I was in this position where I couldn’t do my work. This was about stopping science because science is a threat to untruth.”
Although she had only attended a handful of protests in the past, Delawalla felt compelled to form Stand Up for Science with four other researchers. In addition to encouraging people to sign petitions, host a teach-in or attend protests, Stand Up for Science uses humor to lure new allies. Their policy objectives include ending censorship and political interference in science, securing and expanding scientific funding and defending and supporting programs that offer equal opportunity for all people to become scientists. They name their rallies “Get In, Dorks”, and they continue to deliver Quack-O-Grams (little yellow rubber ducks) to congresspeople with a goal of impeaching and removing US Health and Human Services secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, whom they refer to as “the quack”.
“Mockery and humor are really effective political tools and protest tools,” said Delawalla. “We’re seeing it with the fact that Trump lobbied to get [Stephen] Colbert cancelled. We’re seeing the effectiveness of South Park and its political messaging. If RFK Jr wants to make a joke of our public health system, which is the crown jewel of our nation, I will make a joke of him.”
Other organizers, like Lydia Walther-Rodriguez, connect with first-time protesters primarily by listening. “My mission is to listen 80% or more and only speak 20% or less,” said Walther-Rodriguez, chief of organizing and leadership development at Casa, which advocates for immigrant and working-class families. “Our community is a protagonist of their own liberation and as a community organizer you are not a teacher.”
Related: A groundswell of activism takes hold in the US: ‘We are a bridge to the future’
She said when people are hesitant about protesting or organizing, it is often because of fears of retaliation by the government. “During the first Trump administration, we saw these racially divisive tactics,” said Walther-Rodriguez, “and we are seeing true weaponization of the white supremacist system at play during the second Trump administration.”
Some organizers offer new activists hope by referring to the “3.5% rule”, coined by political scientists Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan. Their research shows that movements that engage 3.5% of a population can almost always bring about change (in the US, that means engaging about 12 million people in long-term mobilizations). While it’s unknown exactly how many people are new to protesting in 2025, Chenoweth’s Crowd Counting Consortium at Harvard has said the scale of protests is significantly larger now than it was during Trump’s first term.
“This administration is attacking everybody and when you do that wide attack, then it becomes a basis of unity and solidarity,” said Diane Fujino, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara who studies social movement and activist histories. “People can start to see that what’s happening to immigrant workers is happening to women’s rights and is happening to students and university faculty – there is a common struggle.”
Fujino pointed to the success of the nonviolent farmworkers’ movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which featured solidarity between Mexican Americans and Filipinos, as a model and inspiration for today’s activism. She said it’s crucial that everybody’s voices are heard and that those who are most affected by policies or issues are in the forefront of leadership.
“For the first time, all of us have to be worried,” said Casa’s Walther-Rodriguez. “It’s not just about our immigrant and working-class community. It’s about everyone’s constitutional rights being dismantled in front of our eyes and that is bringing about a new generation and intersectional identities to unite in a way that is so urgent.”
