In Trump’s America, who’s protesting and why? Here’s our March report.

[Commentary] For March 2017, we tallied 585 protests, demonstrations, marches, sit-ins and rallies in the United States, with at least one in every state and the District. Our conservative guess is that 79,389 to 89,585 people showed up at these political gatherings, although it is likely that there were far more participants. Because mainstream media often neglect to report nonviolent actions — especially small ones — it is probable that we did not record every event that occurred. This is particularly true of the “A Day Without a Woman” strikes on March 8. It’s virtually impossible to record an accurate tally of participants for strikes, in part because many people deliberately conceal their motivations for skipping out on work or school when they participate.

Nevertheless, we think our tally gives us a useful pool of information to better understand political mobilization in the United States — particularly how reports of crowds change from month to month. In this case, we note that March 2017 saw fewer people protesting than February 2017, during which we observed 233,021 to 373,089 people participating in crowds.

[Erica Chenoweth is a professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. David Prater is a program manager at the War Prevention Initiative. Jeremy Pressman is an associate professor of political science and director of Middle East Studies at the University of Connecticut. Ches Thurber is assistant professor of political science at Northern Illinois University. Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco.]