Protest Policing and Nonviolent Resistance in the US by Nicolas K

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Protest without Repression: Protest policing and nonviolent resistance in the US by Nicolas K. Dumas B.A., Washington University in St. Louis (2014) Submitted to the Department of Political Science in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY September 2020 ○c Nicolas K. Dumas, MMXX. All rights reserved. The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created.

Author...... Department of Political Science August 20, 2020 Certified by...... Adam J. Berinsky Mitsui Professor of Political Science Thesis Supervisor Accepted by ...... Fotini Christia Professor of Political Science Chair, Department Committee on Graduate Theses 2 Protest without Repression: Protest policing and nonviolent resistance in the US by Nicolas K. Dumas

Submitted to the Department of Political Science on August 20, 2020, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Abstract Activists often identify violent repression, and ensuing backlash, as a key mechanism through which peaceful protests can successfully achieve political change. This view has been affirmed by a body of research showing that the violent repression of protest can raise awareness of and build support for the protesters. And US history has many examples of these repression backlash benefiting protesters, from the Birmingham bus boycotts to the “Bonus Army" March on Washington, to the Kent State shootings. However, in the United States, and in other western democracies, the probability of violent police repression of protests has varied significantly over time, as a result of a multitude of institutional factors. While the impacts of repressed protest have been documented, how peaceful protests fare in the absence of repression is less well- understood. This dissertation explores whether the absence of repression impacts protests’ ability to capture attention and persuade the public, and whether the absence of repression impacts the types of protests that are successful. To answer these two questions, I draw on a wide array of data sources, including a novel dataset of local protests coded from protest permit applications, geo-referenced Google search data, Wikipedia page-view data, New York Times coverage data, historical archives of an activist group’s internal communications. I show that, while repression makes it easier for protests to garner news coverage, command public attention, and persuade the public, it is not a necessary condition. Peaceful protests can achieve these outcomes without repression if they can become newsworthy in other ways, such as by increasing the scale of the protest. I also show that in the absence of repression, the types of protests that achieve success are similar in background to the protests that achieve success in the presence of repression. Unlike some other forms of political participation, the resources needed to succeed without repression do not appear to be skewed towards individuals or groups with higher socio-economic status. Although the probability of violent repression changes over time, protests continue to serve as an effective tactic for a relatively small group to capture attention and

3 build broader support.

Thesis Supervisor: Adam J. Berinsky Title: Mitsui Professor of Political Science

4 Acknowledgments

Inferring counterfactuals is a difficult task, but I can say with confidence thatthis dissertation would be nowhere near complete (nor would it likely even have been started) without the kindness, support, and encouragement of an enormous number of people. There are far many to enumerate, and I’m sure that I have benefitted from the help and kindness of people that I was unaware of.

I have been lucky to have phenomenal teachers my entire life, from the late Karen Robinette in pre-school, to Kiyomi Masatani in third grade, to Kaye Paugh in high school, to name just a few. I also benefited from a fantastic college education at Washington University in St. Louis. I had wonderful mentors in college, including Michael J. Nelson, Andrew Martin, Matthew Gabel, John Patty, Maggie Penn, Jacob Montgomery, and Gary Miller, without whom I would not have gone to graduate school. And I have learned so much from the entire faculty at MIT Political Science, who are a testament to the idea that one can be both a world-class researcher, and a great mentor and colleague and person. Taken classes with, or collaborating with, Charles Stewart, Lily Tsai, Danny Hidalgo, Teppei Yamamoto, In Song Kim, Ariel White, Chris Warshaw, Rich Nielsen, Gina Bateson, to name a few, has been an extraordinary opportunity.

Throughout my time in graduate school, my fellow graduate students, including Marsin Alshamary, Kacie Miura, Guillermo Toral, Nicholas Intscher, Rachel Es- plin Odell, Olivia Bergman, Ignacio Puente, Kyle Shohfi, Meg Goldberg, Justin de Benedictis-Kessner, and Dan de Kadt, have been an invaluable source of support, friendship, and inspiration. I remember our first two years, when we spent hours every day poring over notes and problem sets, quizzing each other to prepare for exams. I remember spending a delightful Thanksgiving together in Boston. I remember fas- cinating arguments both in and out of the classroom. These memories are as valuable to me than the degree itself. I’m enormously grateful to have gotten the chance to spend my twenties with such a wonderful, brilliant group of people.

I would like to thank the administrative staff at the Political Science department.

5 I’m confident that 50% of Susan Twarog’s time the past six years has been answering emails from me. The entire staff, including Zina, Paula, Diana, Janine, Kate, and Maria, have been invaluable sources of support and assistance throughout the years. They were always there to help me in those scatterbrained months leading up to the new school year, and in the scatterbrained months ever since.

I have also been fortunate to have an extraordinary committee. Devin Caughey was the instructor for my two-person American Political Institutions class, and he’s one of the most well-read people I’ve ever met. His knowledge of historical facts, and debates and questions is something I had never seen in a political scientist, but it has inspired me to always keep an eye for how my research speaks to history. Andrea was my instructor in my first semester of graduate school and I couldn’t imagine a warmer welcome to the world of political science and academia. I’ve always admired how her research is always grounded in the practical impact it has on the lives of real people. She’s the kind of researcher I aspire to be.

Adam is the most attentive advisor I could imagine. He’ll respond to work often within a day or so, with detailed feedback. He has an ability to immediately identify the weaknesses or strengths in an argument that is unparalleled. Not every advisor responds graciously when their student tells them they are planning on leaving academia, but Adam was not just supportive but actively helpful in helping me secure an internship and full-time position. He has also been a supportive mentor as I try to navigate research in the private sector. He and his wife Deirdre were the faculty residents for my graduate dorm, and were my very first introduction to life in Boston. At a time when I was far away from my home, in a foreign, new, and extremely cold place, they were a source of warmth and support.

In the interest of reducing stigma around these things, it’s important for me to note that invaluable role that mental health care, including medication, had on both my general well-being, and my ability to work on this dissertation. My brain works differently and it wasn’t until grad school that I finally understood why some things seemed insurmountably difficult for me that were easier for others. I’m learning how to cope with these challenges and I deeply appreciate the support and care of my

6 providers along the way leading to this point. Finally, I’d like to acknowledge my family. I’d like to thank my grandparents, Kazem and Nazireh; my uncles Farid and Farshid; and my cousins Nikki, Nousha, and Keyon. I’d like to thank my parents, Firoozeh and Francois, who are more excited about my earning this degree than I am, and who have been role models for me in so many ways; my brilliant, insightful, and kind sisters, Sophie and Eloise, who have been such a joy to grow with; and my infinitely patient partner, Michael.

7 8 Contents

1 Introduction 17

2 Protest Repression and Media Coverage 35

3 (How) Can Contemporary Protests Capture Attention? 61

4 Is Protest News Coverage Persuasive Without Repression? 79

5 Repression and Representation 99

6 Appendix 131

9 10 List of Figures

1-1 Peaceful protests in DOCA were more likely to be violently repressed during the 1960s, and when they supported black civil rights . . . . . 25

1-2 ANES Feeling Thermometer Scores for different protest movements from 1970 to 2016. While there is variation, no protest movement has scored over 80, and most score below 60...... 27

2-2 Repressed and non-repressed protests in the DOCA dataset. There was a particularly large spike in repressed protests in the 1960s. More recent decades saw a much greater proportion of non-repressed protests. 42

2-3 The distribution of page numbers and number of paragraphs for repressed and non-repressed protests. On average, repressed protests received longer coverage, earlier in the paper...... 45

2-4 NYT coverage of countries with repressed protests was greater, over a longer period of time, than countries with non-repressed protests. . . 49

2-5 NYT coverage of the Freedom Rides spiked after instances of violence against participants...... 50

2-1 Repressed and non-repressed protests in the NAVCO dataset. There are more events of each type in more recent years, but recent years featured more repressed protests...... 58

2-6 DOCA protest coverage data, separated by repression status and protest size. For both repressed and non-repressed protests, larger crowd sizes meant more coverage...... 59

11 2-7 Observational relationship between the number of cities (logged) and the number of paragraphs (left) and page number (right), separated by repression status. In the raw data, more cities is weakly associated with more coverage, as is repression. However, the difference in coverage by repression status is larger than the difference by number of cities. . 60

2-8 Observational relationship between the number of claims and the number of paragraphs (left) and page number (right), separated by repression status. In the raw data, more claims is weakly associated with more paragraphs, but not with earlier story placement. As with the number of cities, the difference in coverage by repression status is larger than the difference by number of claims...... 60

3-1 The distribution of protest attendance estimates in Seattle. The four Pride events are not shown. The mean protest (excluding Pride) featured 567 people...... 65

3-2 Local isolated protests had little impact on NYT coverage...... 70

3-3 Both local Black Lives Matter and Immigrants’ Rights protests appeared to have an impact on national news coverage...... 71

3-4 The coefficient plots for protest leads and lags in three cities .72

3-5 The coefficient plots for protest leads and lags in three cities .74

4-1 Repressed Protest Experiment Arm ...... 91

4-2 Large Protest Experiment Arm ...... 92

4-3 Activist Message Experiment Arm ...... 94

4-4 The treatment effects for both outcomes, and both samples. To put the effect sizes in context, the coefficients for demographic (non-randomized variables) are also included. None of the treatments has a significant impact on “Animal deserve the exact same rights as people to be free from harm and exploitation," but they did have an impact on “States should pass stricter laws concerning the treatment of farm animals." 95

12 5-1 Daily TV news references to “Dakota Access Pipeline." Dotted lines highlight instances of protest repression and President Obama’s comments. Public interest increased significantly following the use of water cannons on protesters...... 102 5-2 Wikipedia Page-views and Google Search results for Dakota Access Pipeline. Dotted lines highlight instances of protest repression and President Obama’s comments. Public interest increased significantly following the use of water cannons on protesters...... 103 5-3 Compared to a scenario with no repression, the number of protests predicted to receive front page coverage declines. This is true for both predictive models, and for both time periods...... 109 5-4 The distribution of mean family income for locations with front-page protests with and without repression. Across 1960s and 1970s, for both LASSO and ridge, the difference in means is 0.2% or less...... 111 5-5 The distribution of proportion with a college degree for locations with front-page protests with and without repression. While there’s more variation than with family income, across 1960s and 1970s, for both LASSO and ridge, the difference in means is less than 2%...... 112 5-6 The distribution of proportion unemployed for locations with front- page protests with and without repression. While there’s more variation than with family income, across 1960s and 1970s, for both LASSO and ridge, the difference in means is less than 2%...... 113 5-7 The distribution of proportion white with front-page protests with and without repression. Across 1960s and 1970s, for both LASSO and ridge, the difference in means is less than 2%...... 114 5-8 The relationship between mean family income and repression (left) and the probability of garnering front page news coverage without repression (right). Protests in the poorest areas are the most likely to face repression, but they’re also the most likely to garner front-page coverage without repression...... 116

13 5-9 The relationship between proportion unemployed and repression (left) and the probability of garnering front page news coverage without repression (right). There is little relationship between unemployment and both repression and the probability of coverage without repression. 117 5-10 The relationship between proportion white and repression (left) and the probability of garnering front page news coverage without repression (right). Protests in areas that were fewer than 60% white were more likely to face repression, but also more likely to otherwise garner news coverage...... 119 5-11 The relationship between proportion with a college degree and repression (left) and the probability of garnering front page news coverage without repression (right). Protests in areas with a low percentage of college degrees were more likely to be repressed, and less likely to generate news coverage in the absence of repression...... 120

6-1 The coefficient plots for protest leads and lags in three cities (andthree placebo cities) ...... 132 6-2 NYC Protests and NYT Coverage – No ACA protests ...... 140

14 List of Tables

2.1 ...... 47 2.2 ...... 48 2.3 Regression of news coverage against violence. The relationship between violence and news coverage is weakly significant...... 51 2.4 ...... 55 2.5 The relationship between the number of news stories about Freedom Riders, the number of riders, and violence. Weeks with more riders saw significantly more news stories the next week...... 56

3.1 ...... 75

4.1 ...... 97

6.1 Regression Summaries (NYC) ...... 133 6.2 Regression Summaries (Boston) ...... 134 6.3 Regression Summaries (Seattle) ...... 135 6.4 Regression Summaries (Portland) ...... 136 6.5 Regression Summaries (Chicago) ...... 137 6.6 Regression Summaries (St. Louis) ...... 138

15 16 Chapter 1

Introduction

In the weeks after peaceful protesters marching from Selma to Montgomery were brutalized by white police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Martin Luther King put to paper a detailed explanation of how nonviolent protest could and would lead to political change. In his words:

“The goal of the demonstrations in Selma, as elsewhere, is to dramatize the existence of injustice and to bring about the presence of justice by methods of nonviolence. Long years of experience indicate to us that Negroes can achieve this goal when four things occur:

1. Nonviolent demonstrators go into the streets to exercise their consti- tutional rights. 2. Racists resist by unleashing violence against them. 3. Americans of conscience in the name of decency demand federal intervention and legislation. 4. The administration, under mass pressure, initiates measures of im- mediate intervention and remedial legislation." (King Jr, 1986, pg 127)

The idea that the violent repression of peaceful protest would lead to backlash and an increase in support has since been widely validated by scholars (e.g., Stephan and Chenoweth, 2008; Sharp, 1973; Rasler, 1996; Hess and Martin, 2006; Gregg, 2018). Examples from US history abound, from the imprisonment and subsequent abuse

17 of suffragettes in 1913 (Stevens, 1920) to the national guard unleashing teargason veterans marching for their bonus checks (Lisio, 1967), from the state guard shooting student anti-war protesters at Kent State, to Bull Connor using fire hoses on civil rights protesters.

These backlash effects speak to one of the most crucial questions in the studyof American politics: in a political system where policy is implemented by politicians elected by the majority, can minority groups, broadly defined, exercise power? Some theories hold that policy is driven largely by the preferences of economic elites (Mills, 1956; Gilens, 2012). Others contend that policy is largely driven by the preferences of the majority, which can pose a threat to minority rights, especially in a political system relying on referenda (Lewis, 2013, 2011). The events at Selma, and the research into backlash effects, suggest that these theories ignore a crucial mechanism; ina context where police regularly engage in overt violent repression of peaceful protests, protests can be an effective means for even small minority groups to “expand the scope of conflict," and influence policy (Schattschneider, 11960). And echoing King’s argument, analyses of the African-American Civil Rights Movement have explicitly posited that the repression following episodes of nonviolent resistance were a necessary condition to the movement’s success (Barkan, 1984; McAdam, 1983).

However, in the decades since Selma, a series of local and state reforms in the US and other western democracies have changed the relationship between protesters and activists. Cities now widely employ a system where activists can register their protest and coordinate with police ahead of time (McPhail et al., 1998). Police on average tend to show greater restraint in using force and arrests during protests (Soule and Davenport, 2009). When law enforcement agencies do engage in repressive behavior, they tend to use other, less visible, means, such as extortion (Garrow, 2015),

1This assumes that the minority group in question can overcome the collective action problems associated with maintaining nonviolence. See Chong (2000) for a rational-choice analysis of the strategic challenges of nonviolent resistance.

18 or arresting would-be protesters before the protest can begin (D’Arcus, 2003). As a consequence, the likelihood that a protest will be violently repressed – a crucial component of many theories of nonviolence– has varied significantly across time, with lower levels of repression on average in more recent years (e.g., Rafail et al., 2012; Soule and Davenport, 2009).2

Normatively, a decrease in state repression is unambiguously good. Less protest repression means fewer innocent people being tortured, maimed, and killed. It means a society that feels freer to exercise a fundamental right. From an empirical standpoint, an open question remains what the absence of repression means for the prospects of nonviolent protest. Without repression, can protests still capture the public interest and mobilize the public? Although this is a significant question with significant implications for our understanding of the American political system, understanding the causal impacts of different types of protests has been nearly impossible until recent advances in both statistical methods and digital data collection. In this dissertation, I leverage these advances to develop a theory of protest in the absence of repression, and compare the two contexts. First, I show that repression does increase the likelihood that a protest will garner coverage, capture public interest, and persuade the public. Second, I show that repression is not a necessary condition for any of these outcomes. In the absence of repression, activists employ alternate strategies to garner media coverage and public interest, and persuade the public. Third, I show that low-SES and minority protests are no more or less impacted by repression than are other types of protests. In the absence of repression, protests can still be an effective tool for minority or low-resource groups to expand the scope of conflict.

2Of course, this doesn’t mean that peaceful protests are no longer ever violently repressed. Con- temporary examples of violent repression abound, from peaceful Occupy protesters being pepper- sprayed on UC Davis’ campus in 2011 (Garofoli, 2013), to law enforcement using fire hoses on peaceful protesters at Standing Rock in freezing temperatures in 2016 (Barajas, 2016), to US Secret Service using pepper spray against peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square in 2020 (Muller, 2020). Nonetheless, the fact remains that for many protests, the probability of facing violent repression is significantly lower than it was during the civil rights movement.

19 How protest policing has evolved over time

At the time that Dr. King described the strategy behind Selma, violent repression of peaceful protest was a regular, if not routine, event, especially for civil rights protests. In the decades since the civil rights movement, episodes of police violently repressing protesters in the US have varied, but declined overall (Rafail et al., 2012; Soule and Earl, 2005; McCarthy and McPhail, 1998). 3 There are numerous possible reasons for this decline.

One possible contributor to decreasing repression is a shift in policing strategy in general, and protest policing specifically. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the federal government issued numerous reports related to protest policing, including reports from the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (also known as the “Kerner Report"), reports from the Civil Rights Commission, as well as a report from the Department of Justice in 1970. These reports urged local police departments to employ gentler tactics in the face of protests. Although there was variation in adop- tion, police departments on a whole did implement changes, and shifted their protest strategy from what McPhail et al. (1998) refer to as an “Escalated Force" approach to a “Negotiated Management" approach. These changes included the implementation of specialized officer training, and a protest permit system, where activists can register their protests with the city or with local police ahead of time. These shifts in the United States also coincided with shifts in protest policing occurring in western Europe (Della Porta et al., 1998). In the summer of 2020, after Pres. Trump deployed federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security to Portland, Oregon, an internal department memo cited the agents’ lack of protest training as a possible contributor to the backlash that ensued (Olmos, Baker, and Kanno-Youngs, Olmos

3It’s also important to note that the police are not the only possible source of violent repression, although they are arguably the largest. Private individuals and groups can also engage in a variety of repressive tactics. For an analysis of how nonstate actors can repress women’s rights movement activists, see Marx Ferree (2004).

20 et al.).

Another potential contributor to the decline in violent repression of protests in the US was the consequences of increased media scrutiny. Wisler and Giugni (1999) show that increased media coverage of protest repression cause police departments to shift their tactics, in order to avoid the negative press that often follows. The events at Selma and Kent State in particular received very widespread national coverage. Although it’s difficult to directly test the causal effect of these two events, it’s possible that the coverage prompted police departments across the country to exercise greater restraint. In the second half of the 20th century, there have also been a global increase in concern for human rights, and increased coverage of human rights violations (Fariss, 2014).

Another potential cause of this shift lies in the courts system. Beginning in the 1970s, a body of case law known as the “Public Forum Doctrine" began to develop. This doctrine lays out the circumstances under which governments can restrict protest or demonstrations that occur in various public places. One result of this is that federal and state agencies implemented procedures for allowing individuals to protest in spaces that constitute a public forum. A key component of this doctrine is that regulations on protests that are “content-neutral," in other words, can apply to ev- eryone, face a lower level of scrutiny than regulations of speech that are specific to the content (Day, 1992). One consequence of this doctrine is that it increased the rollout of protest permits (McCarthy and McPhail, 2006).

The role of the United States Department of Justice in regulating the police has also evolved over time. In 1994, after the Rodney King beating, Congress passed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, a provision of which empowered the Department of Justice to investigate misconduct in local police departments, and to impose structural reforms where needed. Instead of going to court, sued police departments have historically tended to settle with a legally binding agree-

21 ment to impost legal reforms as prescribed by the DOJ. Research on the impact of consent decrees on police misconduct are mixed. Some research suggests that consent decrees causes a modest decline in civil rights violations (Powell et al., 2017), On the other hand, other research argues that the impacts of consent decrees on police misconduct have been minimal (Kupferberg, 2008), or effective but short-lived (Chanin, 2015). Regardless of the ultimate impact on police misconduct, consent decrees have been highly effective at imposing structural reforms in police departments (Chanin, 2014). The DOJ’s role over time has not uniformly grown. In 2018, Pres. Trump’s beleaguered attorney general Jeff Sessions issued a policy change rolling backthe usage of consent decrees (Benner, Benner).

In addition to law enforcement substituting repressive policing with more permis- sive policing, it is also possible that apparent decreases in protest repression are to some degree a result of law enforcement shifting from visibly repressive behavior to more covert forms of repression. One such form of repression law enforcement has used is extortion. A particularly well-known instance of this is the FBI’s famous efforts to blackmail Martin Luther King, Jr. (Garrow, 2015), but there have been other examples of extortion, including against the Black Separatist group The Re- public of New Africa (Davenport, 2005), and the American Indian protest movement (Churchill and Vander Wall, 2002).

Law enforcement can also engage in what Noakes et al. (2005) refer to as “strategic incapacitation," where police preempt large protests through the use of surveillance, pre-protest arrests, and restricting the space that protests can move around in (Gill- ham, 2011). This tactic was facilitated at the federal level by the so-called “H. Rap Brown Act," which made it a federal crime to cross state lines to participate in a riot. Noakes et al. (2005) argues that the use of strategic incapacitation has increased over time, although tactics like it have been employed for decades. One example of strategic incapacitation occurred during the American Indian Movement occupation

22 of Wounded Knee. During this event, the FBI arrested activists intended on participating in the Occupation as they crossed state lines, prior to participating, arguably in order to reduce the number of participants to deter coverage (D’Arcus, 2003). Strategic incapacitation has also been employed by other governments as well. In 2008, the Olympic Torch arrived in San Francisco on its route to Beijing. In anticipation of this high-profile event, a variety of activists, including Tibetan Independence Activists and members of Falun Gong, planned protests, intending to use this high- profile event to raise awareness of their cause. In response, the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) bussed thousands of students, under threat of funding revoca- tion, to San Francisco, in order to to disrupt, prevent, and overwhelm the anti-CCP protests, dampening their news coverage. That these protesters had been targeted and overwhelmed by a hostile foreign government was not publicly revealed until over a decade later (Dorfman, 2018).

How much each of these factors individually has contributed to overall shifts in protest repression are unclear. Nonetheless, the evidence suggests that the probability of overt violent repression of peaceful protests has varied over time, responds to changes in various institutional features, and is lower in the contemporary age than during the 1960s.

To illustrate the changes in protest policing and their implications, I turn to the Dynamics of Collective Action dataset (DOCA), compiled by McAdam et al. (2009). To assemble this dataset, researchers relied on human research assistants to first sift through the New York Times daily, collecting all articles about protest events in the United States. Research assistants then coded each protest, providing information about a variety of protest features, including the topic of the protest, the date, the number of participants, the location, any Social Movement Organizations involved, police activity, and so on (?). The data comprise over 17,000 observations, from 1960 to 1995. The DOCA dataset has been used in a wide array of analyses, including in

23 articles published in the American Sociological Review (Earl et al., 2003; Martin et al., 2009; McAdam and Su, 2002), the American Journal of Sociology (Wang and Soule, 2012; Walker et al., 2008; Soule and King, 2008; Jung et al., 2014), the American Political Science Review (Wasow, 2020) the American Journal of Political Science (Mazumder, 2018), and the American Economic Journal (Lovenheim and Willén, 2019).

Figure 1-1 shows the proportion of peaceful protests that were met with violence by police. For reference, I split the protests by pro-cvil rights protests, and all other types of protests. It shows that the scenario under which King laid out the strategy of nonviolent resistance was specific both to the protest category, and the period. Black civil rights movement protests were much more likely than other protests to be met with violent repression, and protests during the 1960s were more likely to be violently repressed than protests afterwards.

Research Questions

The plot in Figure 1-1, and the research described above, suggests that the political environment in which King laid out the strategy of nonviolence was largely specific to the time period. This gives rise to the question of whether, absent repression, protests can still be effective.

Existing research point to multiple possibilities, which are anchored by two poles. On one side of the spectrum is the possibility that, unless a protest follows the specific path that Dr. King prescribed, it will be entirely ineffectual, failing to capture public interest or move public opinion. In this view, a state can easily starve a protest movement by simply refusing to publicly repress it.

There are informed reasons to subscribe to this view. The first is that protests as a tactic are typically unpopular. In the 1970s, the American National Election

24 Figure 1-1: Peaceful protests in DOCA were more likely to be violently repressed during the 1960s, and when they supported black civil rights

US Protests And Repression Over Time

Civil Rights Protest 0.30 Non−civil rights protests 0.25 0.20 0.15 0.10 Probability of Violent Repression 0.05 0.00

1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995

Index

25 Study measured approval of protests, and found that protests had a 25% disapproval (-19% for Democrats, -35% for Republicans). In the 1990s, the General Social Survey asked respondents their views about protests, and between 25 to 30% of respondents reported believing that protests definitely or probably should be banned. It’s not just protests as a tactic, but protesters as a group that are unpopular. Protests and protest movements are often initiated by groups that are minorities in some way (Schattschneider, 1960; McCarthy and Zald, 1977). One of the most consistent findings in social science is that people exhibit a preference for fellow members ofthe in-group over members of an out-group (e.g., Tajfel, 1970; Kinder and Kam, 2010). This is consistent with survey evidence. Figure 1-2 shows the distribution of feeling thermometer scores for various groups and entities connected to social movements. It shows that protest movements are generally unpopular, and have been over time. This is true not just of movements that are clearly tied to a particular unpopular minority group, such as the civil rights movement, but of other groups, such as the Tea Party, environmentalists, or women’s rights activists. This pattern is not simply a result of partisanship; in the Appendix, I separate scores from Democratic and Republican respondents. The results are similar; protest movements remain largely unpopular, even within a particular party.

Many historical analyses of the civil rights movement also lend support to the theory that, absent repression, protests may be ineffective. Lee (2002) analyzes con- stituent letters about civil rights, and shows that interest in civil rights spiked after episodes in which civil rights protesters were violently repressed. Barkan (1984) directly compares civil rights campaigns that were violently repressed to ones that were not, and finds that only campaigns which were met with overt violent repression appeared to have achieved their goals. He writes: “This paper has suggested that the major successes of the movement would not have been possible without inappropri- ate tactical choices by Southern officials. If this is true, then the movement’s major

26 Figure 1-2: ANES Feeling Thermometer Scores for different protest movements from 1970 to 2016. While there is variation, no protest movement has scored over 80, and most score below 60.

Feeling Thermometer Scores For Movements and Activists 100

80 ● ●

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

60 ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● 40 Mean FT Score ●

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

20 ● ● ● Tea Party ● Pro−life movement ● ● ● Civil Rights Leaders ● Environmentalists ● Womens' Rights Mvt. ● Radical Students

● ● 0 Black Militants Black Lives Matter

1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Year

27 successes derived not from its own ability to compel white violence and hence federal intervention by the use of mass protest, but from the crude and unlearned responses of certain Southern officials to such protest" (pg 563).

On the other extreme is that possibility that whether a protest is violently repressed or not ultimately makes very little difference. In this view, changes inhow protests are policed have essentially no impact on how they are received by the public. The pluralist system works just as effectively in the absence of police repression. There is also some evidence to support this view. Research on social movements has identified media coverage as an important resource (Gitlin, 2003; Barker-Plummer, 1995; Ryan et al., 1998). In order to cover a particular topic, news coverage typically needs a “news peg:" a single atomized event around which to write an article (Ryan, 1991). Whether it is violently repressed or not, a protest can still serve that purpose. While violence is newsworthy, o too are other factors. Wouters (2013) analyze police protest data from Brussels, to identify the determinants of coverage, and finds that, while violence does increase coverage, so too does increased participation, and the presence of symbolic actions.

Consistent with the view that protests can be newsworthy in other ways, prior research has found that protests that do not follow the nonviolent ideal can nonetheless impact public opinion. McCarthy et al. (1996) analyzes data from protest permits in Washington DC. Out of 3065 non-repressed protests, they find that 291 (approximate 9%) succeeded in receiving news coverage. Banaszak and Ondercin (2016), Branton et al. (2015), and Madestam et al. (2013) examine the impacts of women’s rights protests, 2006 Immigrants’ rights protests, and 2010 Tea Party protests, re- spectively, and find that each had significant effects on public opinion. None ofthese protest movements had nearly the level of violent repression that African-American civil rights protests did.

Regardless of whether repression impacts overall protest efficacy, the second ques-

28 tion is whether repression impacts the types of protests that are effective. One school of thought has argued that protests disproportionately benefit under-represented groups. Weldon et al. (2011) argues that “While they are not perfect, social movements are still the best avenues of representation for disadvantaged groups" (pg. 5). McAdam (2010) conceptualizes social movements as “rational attempts by excluded groups to mobilize sufficient political leverage to advance collective interests through non-institutionalized means" (pg. 37). Costain (2005) argues that “What makes movements unique and worthy of their study is their demonstrated capability to de- liver access to the excluded" (pg. 111). There are certainly many historical examples of repressed protests leading to increased power for under-represented groups. But when protests are not met with repression, does a similar pattern hold?

There is reason to suspect that, absent repression, protests might benefit the privileged. Political participation is unevenly distributed throughout the population. Frequent political participators are more likely to be white, college educated, and wealthy (Verba et al., 1993a). Political scientists have identified a wide range of ex- planations for these systematic disparities. Three types of resources are particularly important for facilitating political participation: money, time, and civic skills (?). Verba et al. (1993b) show that although there is no difference in participation levels by race or ethnicity after controlling for those resources, blacks’ and latinos’ turnout suffers from the uneven distribution of those underlying resources. Fraga (2018)argues that differences in perceptions of efficacy drive some of the differences in turnout by race and ethnicity. Particularly in districts where they comprise a smaller portion of the electorate, blacks and latinos are less likely to perceive their participation as impactful, and therefore less likely to participate in politics. ? argue that racial and ethnic differences are driven in part by systematic differences in political conversation networks. They find that, on average, non-hispanic whites are more likely tohave multiple conversation partners with whom to discuss politics, and that the average

29 education level of those conservation partners is higher, depriving non-whites of “information shortcuts" that lower the cost of political participation. While the bulk of research on political participation has focused on voter turnout, or participation in general, studies that have focused specifically on protest participation have found similar systematic differences in participation. Petrie (2004) finds that protesters are more likely to be educated, have a higher family income, and are less likely to be Latino. (Williamson et al., 2011) find that Tea Party protest participants likewise tended to skew white, higher-educated, and wealthy.

Methods Overview

The quantitative study of protests is difficult for many reasons. Neither the existence, location, nor topic of protests is randomized, making it difficult to assess their causal impact. There exists no database of every protests in the country over time, forcing scholars to rely on datasets that paint a partial picture, risking the introduction of selection bias into their analyses. Unlike votes in a legislature, the topic of a protest is not clearly agreed upon by all participants and written out for the record, making it difficult for studies to determine the exact policy preferences of a particular protest.

Nonetheless, several technological advances have made the study of protests easier, and I leverage many of them in this dissertation. The rise of the internet has increased the availability of data about protests. In this dissertation, I assemble an original dataset of local protests drawn from protest permit applications accessed through the government initiative data.gov. I also use geo-referenced data from Google searches, as well as data on Wikipedia page views, TV transcripts, and New York Times coverage.

I also leverage new statistical methods. Recent advances in machine learning have led to the development of tools that help evaluate the causal relationships between

30 variables in the absence of randomization. I make extensive use of one of these tools, developed by Belloni et al. (2014a,b). The ”Double-Selection" method is applicable in a situation where treatment isn’t random, but where there are a very large number of pre-treatment variables in the data, and where those variables approximately capture the underlying data generating process. The double-selection method entails using a tool called LASSO to select a smaller number of covariates, and then including those variables in a regression of the outcome against the treatment. Under several assumptions I discuss in later chapters, this approach obtains consistent estimates of the underlying causal effects.

I also draw on more traditional data sources and analytic approaches. I analyze protest data coded from newspapers, review extensive planning documents from archives, use time-series modeling, and conduct a series of survey experiments. While none of these approaches in isolation are a silver bullet, considered together, they paint a consistent portrait of the relationship between protests and policing.

Argument

This dissertation makes three arguments. The first is that the presence of repression makes both garnering coverage and generating persuasive coverage significantly easier. Absent repression, protests need additional newsworthy features to garner media coverage. One of the most common ways to increase protest news coverage is to dramatically increase the number of participants. Non-repressed protests also need additional features to be persuasive. Having a large number of participants can also make news coverage more persuasive on its own, but another way that activists to to persuade the public in the absence of repression is by cultivating endorsements from elites. These types of activities – organizing large-scale protests, managing news coverage, cultivating elite endorsements – are resource-intensive. They take time,

31 connections, or the means to quickly mobilize large numbers of people. In this sense, police repression serves as an inadvertent subsidy for activists; it lowers the threshold for a protest to garner persuasive news coverage.

The second argument is that, although repression helps protests, it is not a necessary condition. In the absence of repression, a protests can still capture public interest and national news coverage, and that coverage can still be persuasive. In this respect, protests are a more durable and flexible tool than some theories of nonviolence might suggest. Backlash is only one of several pathways through which protests can expand the scope of conflict.

The final argument is that the absence of repression does not disproportionately favor or hinder low-SES or minority protests. While certain protests, particularly minority protests, may be more likely to be repressed, those also tend to be the protests that are more likely to garner coverage in the absence of repression. In a world without repression, it would be more difficult in general for protests to succeed, but low-SES and minority protests are not disproportionately impacted.

Overall, this paints a bullish portrait of protests in the American political system. Even if institutional reforms significantly reduce the probability of repression, protest will likely continue to serve as a viable tool for activist groups to enact change.

Structure of the Book

The dissertation comprises four substantive chapters after the introduction. In Chap- ter 1, I argue that, all else equal, repressed protests are more likely to garner news coverage. I analyze data from the DOCA dataset, and use the double-selection method to estimate the causal effect of repression on where a story is placed in the paper,as well as how many paragraphs it receives. The analyses suggest that repression has a large effect, giving protests more coverage, earlier in the paper. I then testhow

32 other protest features can make up for the absence of repression, and I show that increasing the protest size, other features equal, increases the newsworthiness. While the presence of repression helps protests garner prominent coverage, there are other means by which protests can secure comparable coverage. I also present a detailed analysis of the Dakota Access Pipeline protest movement, and show how coverage and attention was consistently driven by episodes of violent repression.

In Chapter 2, I evaluate how difficult or easy it is for contemporary protests that go through the protest permit process to garner news coverage. I analyze a novel data set of local protests compiled from protest permit applications, and I merge that with local Google search data, as well as New York Times coverage data. I show that while non-repressed protests that are part of a coordinated national campaign can garner national coverage and public interest, local non-repressed protests are unable to garner national coverage, although they do increase local interest. I also show that single protests with larger attendance are more likely to capture local interest, replicating the finding in Chapter 1 that protest participation is an important feature.

Chapters 1 and 2 show that both repressed and non-repressed protests can garner news coverage. But does the resulting news coverage differ between repressed and non- repressed protests? In Chapter 3, I test the impacts of news coverage of repressed protests versus non-repressed protests. First, I conduct a case study of one activist group, the Gay Activist Alliance in New York City in the 1970s. Operating in the second half of the 1970 in New York City, the GAA faced a lower level of overt violent repression. I show that they employed other strategies to generate persuasive news coverage, in the absence of the persuasive frame that repression provides. Second, I conduct a series of survey experiments, which show that news coverage of protests can be persuasive even in the absence of repression.

In Chapter 4, analyze how repression impacts the type of protests that are successful. Merging data from DOCA with census data, I employ different machine learning

33 models to build a predictive model of front page coverage. I then use this model to estimate which protests would receive coverage if no repression occurred. Across a variety of models, I show that in a context where no protests are repressed, the distribution of front-page protests is not significantly different with respect to income, education, employment rate, minority status, or civil rights. To understand why this is, I examine the relationship between those factors and the probability of news coverage absent repression, as well as the probability of repression. I show that although minority and civil rights protests were more likely to face violent repression, they were also more likely to have features that made them likely to garner front-page coverage, even without repression. In this sense, the increased probability of repression was cancelled out by other structural factors.

34 Chapter 2

Protest Repression and Media Coverage

Abstract In this chapter, I examine the link between repression and news coverage. I show that the absence of repression makes it more difficult for protests to garner national news coverage, but that there are ways that activists can partly make up the difference, including by significantly increasing the number of participants. Repression isa helpful, but not necessary, condition for media coverage. I draw on three datasets: the Nonviolent And Violent Campaign Outcomes (NAVCO) dataset of international protests, the DOCA dataset discussed in the Introduction, and data on the Freedom Rides compiled by Arsenault (2007). First, I combine the NAVCO dataset with data on weekly New York Times coverage, and estimate a series of fixed effects models. I show that peaceful protests that were repressed were more likely to receive US news coverage than peaceful protests that were not. Next, I analyze the DOCA data using the “post-double-selection" method for causal inference in observational datasets with many covariates (Belloni et al., 2014a). Using this method, I show that stories about protests that were repressed, other features held constant, received longer and more prominent coverage. Combining the Freedom Rider data with New York Times weekly coverage data, I show that the weeks of the Freedom Rides that featured violent repression saw significantly more coverage. Second, I examine the ways in which activists can make up for this difference, in the absence of repression. Using the same double-selection method with the DOCA data, I show that as the number of protest participants increases, so too does news coverage. I again show a similar observational pattern with the Freedom Rides, where the weeks with more freedom riders also saw more coverage.

35 “Most conversations between social movement activists and journalists take a drearily predictable form: ‘Send my message,’ say the activists; ‘Make me news,’ say the journalists." (Gamson and Wolfsfeld, 1993, pg 115)

August 1, 1989 was a day that could have gone down in history. On that day, six members of the Chicago chapter of the AIDS activist group ACT UP chained themselves to the front entrance of Rush Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Hospital in order to protest the continued unavailability of an experimental AIDS drug. The media were already onsite when the Chicago Police finally arrived. This was the moment the activists had been waiting for. They watched as the police huddled among themselves. At this point, the police could have taken a number of actions. They could have used pepper spray on the protesters. They could have physically assaulted them. They could have arrested them. They could have used slurs. Instead, the police chose to do nothing. After a few minutes of deliberating amongst themselves in the hospital parking lot, they got back in their cars and left. Several hours later, the activists unchained themselves and quietly left. While the protest received some local press attention, it received no national news coverage, and quickly receded into obscurity. The Chicago hospital incident was chronicled several weeks later in Outweek, an LGBT newspaper. The article opened by noting: “Sometimes a guy just can’t get arrested no matter what he does" (Wockner, 1989, pg 18).

This incident highlights the significance that activist groups place on media coverage, and the difficulty of receiving said coverage when protests are not publicly repressed. In the Introduction, showed how the probability of violent represion of peaceful protests has declined in the US over time. In this chapter, I investigate more formally the impact that protest repression (or the absence thereof) has on news coverage, and the degree to which other protest features can counter-act these effects. I find that when police exercise restraint, the probability of news coverage decreases

36 significantly. However, non-repressed protests can still gain significant coverage, when their protest possesses other newsworthy traits, particularly a large number of participants.

The analyses in this chapter draw on three data sets. The first is the Nonvi- olent And Violent Campaign Outcomes (NAVCO) dataset (version 3.0), collected by Chenoweth et al. (2018). NAVCO 3.0 collects data on violent and nonviolent campaigns across 27 countries,1 spanning from 1990 to 2012. The second dataset the DOCA dataset, discussed in the Introduction, which contains data on the NYT articles that made up the protest data, including the number of paragraphs of coverage, and the page number the stories appeared on. And the third is data about the Freedom Ride dates and participants, compiled by Arsenault (2007).

In order to estimate the relationship between repression and media coverage, and other protest features and media coverage, I follow the method laid out by Belloni et al. (2014a). I discuss this method in detail further in this chapter, but in essence, this approach uses penalized regression on data with a very large number of variables in order to select the optimal covariates. I then use regular OLS to estimate a model regressing the outcome of interest against the treatment and these covariates.

The results suggest that while protest can still garner media coverage, absent repression, the absence of such repression raises the threshold of newsworthiness. Protest need to do more to garner coverage, such as increase the number of protest participants.

1The countries are Algeria, Bahrain, China, Egypt, Estonia, India, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Libya, Madagascar, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, South Korea, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, US, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.

37 Why does media coverage matter for protest movements?

From Father Coughlin’s radio program, to the live broadcast of Bloody Sunday, from the Black Panther Party Newspaper to the televised anti-war self-immolations, media coverage has played a role in the history of nearly every social movement in the US. And scholars have noted that activists accordingly spend a significant portion of their time and other resources cultivating news coverage (Ryan, 1991; Gitlin, 2003). As Gamson (1989) observes about the post-war protest landscape, “Virtually every aspect of a challenger’s experience today is affected by a potential or actual media presence - recruitment efforts, organization, strategy, and tactics" (pg 456-7).

In Chapter 3, I explore the effects of news coverage of protests in greater depth, but I offer a cursory review here.

Previous studies have shown that media coverage can increase the public’s knowledge about policy (Barabas and Jerit, 2009), and about upcoming elections (Hayes and Lawless, 2015). It can encourage the public to join protest movements (Williamson et al., 2011). It can increase public discourse about a policy area (King et al., 2017). Slanted or partisan media can change public attitudes (Martin and Yurukoglu, 2017; De Benedictis-Kessner et al., 2019). The media coverage can frame how the public views an issue (Berinsky and Kinder, 2006; Chong and Druckman, 2007).

Social movement scholars often argue that media coverage is an essential component of movement success. As Rucht (2004) writes in his analysis of post-1960s social movements in western Europe: “Given the reach of modern mass media, and the dependency of power-holders on public opinion and voting behaviour, it is clear that mass media play a crucial role for most social movements. We can hypothesize that reactions of the mass media are a precondition for the ultimate success or failure of these movements...when outward-oriented movements fail to get visibility, they tend

38 to shrink, to fall apart, to take a sectarian course, or to radicalize" (Rucht, 2004, pg 27).

Does Repression Increase Coverage? What prior research suggests

While journalists and editors have some level of agency in selecting news stories to cover (Molotch and Lester, 1974; Ross and Staines, 1972), there are consistent and predictable patterns in which events get selected for news coverage (e.g., Gans, 1979; Snyder and Kelly, 1977). One consistent finding across a range of studies is that violence during an event increases its newsworthiness. Myers and Caniglia (2004), in an analysis of which protests and riots get coverage in the New York Times, and Washington Post, assemble a composite measure of “intensity," which includes variables such as arrests, arson, deaths, the number injured, and the length of the protest. They find that protests that score higher on this dimension were more likely to be covered. Likewise, Barranco and Wisler (1999) analyzes protests in Switzerland, and finds that violent protests were more likely to receive news coverage than peaceful ones. Conversely, Wouters (2013), analyzing protests in Belgium, finds that violent or disruptive protests are more likely to receive news coverage. Not every study has found the link between violence and protest coverage; Oliver and Myers (1999), in their analysis of protests in Madison, Wisconsin, find that, while protests on contentious topics are more likely to receive news coverage, protests that are violent or disruptive are not. Of course, the variation between violent and peaceful protests in the above studies was with respect to the protesters themselves, whereas the question before us is the impact of police violently repressing a peaceful protest. Nonetheless, the weight of existing evidence suggests, unsurprisingly, that violent protests are more likely to receive coverage than peaceful ones.

39 That having been said, there is also reason to suspect that exogenously decreasing the probability of violent repression may not impact coverage of protests. The first reason is that protests have a lot going for them besides violent repression. As Gamson and Wolfsfeld (1993) write: “Social movements often make good copy for the media. They provide drama, conflict, and action; colorful copy; and photo opportunities" (pgs 116-117). Studies have shown that unusual or strange events may receive more coverage (Gans, 1979). Non-repressed protesters have employed all sorts of dramatic tactics, including the use of flamboyant costumes (Tea Party protesters donning Revolutionary-era wardrobes, Code Pink activists wearing bright pink, abortion-rights demonstrators dressing as characters from The Handmaid’s Tale), nudity (anti-immigrant protests), props (carrying mattresses), and reenact- ments (reenacting waterboarding), among others. Moreover, journalists have some agency in selecting how a story is covered, and can pick out unusual or dramatic aspects of otherwise mundane activities. In his study of protests against the Israeli withdrawal from Yamit, Wolfsfeld (1984) interviewed a protester who lamented that journalists would cherry-pick who they interviewed. The protester explained that “One reporter spent the whole day looking for the ‘authentic’ movement member. He kept searching until he found one that met with his stereotype: religious, extreme and looking a bit crazy. That’s the one he interviewed" (pg 554).

Another argument in favor of the idea that repression might not significantly decrease news coverage builds from the fact that, regardless of the days events, there will be news coverage every single day, so a given protest’s newsworthiness is measured against other recent events. If there is a uniform decrease in repression across all protest events in that time period, then the key variable isn’t how non-repressed protests compare to repressed protests, but how non-repressed protests compare to other non-protest events. If even non-repressed protests are more newsworthy than other possible events, then we would expect no change in coverage at all. On the other

40 hand, if non-repressed protests are significantly less newsworthy than other possible events, then we would expect a large decrease in news coverage.

Data

The analyses in this section draw on three data sources: the NAVCO 3.0 dataset, compiled by Chenoweth et al. (2018), the DOCA dataset compiled by McAdam et al. (2009), and data on the Freedom Rides, compiled by Arsenault (2007). The NAVCO 3.0 dataset comprises 112,381 total events, of which 13,822 are nonviolent resistance events taken by non-state actors. In order to analyze the NAVCO dataset, I first subset to focus on those 13,822 events. Then I separate the data between nonviolent campaigns that were repressed (1,241 events), to nonviolent campaigns that were not (12,581 events). The histogram in Figure 12 shows the distribution of these event types over time.

The figure shows that both repressed and non-repressed protests are more frequent in recent years (likely due to increased coverage and reporting). In the countries sampled in NAVCO, more recent protests on average have a higher probability of repression. However, both repressed and non-repressed protests have occurred over more or less the entire period covered.

To supplement the NAVCO dataset, I collect data on New York Times coverage of the 25 non-US countries. Using the NYT API, I assembled a dataset with counts of NYT articles referencing each of those countries, for each week from 1990 to 2012.

The DOCA dataset covers domestic protests, over a different period of time. I subset the dataset to include only nonviolent protests (protests where the protesters were nonviolent), of which there were 14,168. Of those, 868 were violently repressed by police, and 13,300 were not. Figure 22 shows the distribution of repressed and non-repressed peaceful protests in the US.

41 Repressed and non−repressed Protests over time (DOCA)

Repressed Non−repressed 6e−04 4e−04 Density 2e−04 0e+00

1960 1970 1980 1990

Date

Figure 2-2: Repressed and non-repressed protests in the DOCA dataset. There was a particularly large spike in repressed protests in the 1960s. More recent decades saw a much greater proportion of non-repressed protests.

In the DOCA data, repressed protests were concentrated in the 1960s, but have continued to the end of the dataset in the 1990s. Non-repressed protests were more constant across time. The plot shows density for each type, with each type of protest adding up to 1. Even in the 1960s, the raw number of non-repressed peaceful protests was larger than the raw number of repressed ones. Even in this circumstances, we

42 find that the most

The third dataset, compiled by Arsenault (2007), is from the 1961 Freedom Rides. Set amidst a backdrop of nonviolent campaigns, including student sit-ins several months before, the Freedom Rides were organized by the Congress for Racial Equal- ity (CORE), to force enforcement of the recent Supreme Court upholding federal bus desegregation. From May to December 1961, volunteers rode buses throughout the South, with white volunteers sitting in the back, and black volunteers sitting in the front. A repeat of a similar campaign in 1947, the campaign generated significant news coverage across the country, and inspired support as well as violence and arrests. By the time the campaign was over, 63 Freedom Rides had transpired in total, with three episodes of violence, and many more arrests or police confrontations. The rides had garnered national news coverage, and at the end of the campaign, Attorney Gen- eral Bobby Kennedy successfully petitioned the Interstate Commerce Commission to prohibit segregation in interstate travel.

I draw on data on the participants and dates of each Freedom Ride event, compiled by Arsenault (2007). ? compiled data on the duration of each Freedom Ride, as well as each participant. From this, I compiled a dataset with weekly data on the Freedom Rides: the number of Rides, the number of participants, and, as with the NAVCO data, the number of stories in the NYT. There were three weeks featuring prominent instances of violence against Freedom Riders. And each week, there was variation in the number of individuals participating. This allows me to examine the observational relationship between repression and coverage, as well as participation and coverage.

Analysis: Does repression increase coverage?

The first question I ask in this chapter is whether repression increases news coverage.

First, I turn to the DOCA data, and test the effects of a repression on the length of

43 and placement of stories about protests. The unit of analysis for the DOCA dataset is individual protest events, each of which had received NYT coverage. For each protest event, the DOCA dataset includes a count of the number of paragraphs the story received, and the page of the paper it the story first appears on. Figure 2-3 shows the mean number of paragraphs, and the story page, for both repressed and non-repressed protests. It shows that, observationally, repressed protests received longer coverage, placed earlier in the paper.

44 Figure 2-3: The distribution of page numbers and number of paragraphs for repressed and non-repressed protests. On average, repressed protests received longer coverage, earlier in the paper.

Repression and Number of Paragraphs (DOCA)

Repressed Protests 0.08 Nonrepressed Protests 0.06 0.04 0.02 0.00

0 50 100 150 200

Repression and Page Number (DOCA)

Repressed Protests 0.10 Nonrepressed Protests 0.08 0.06 0.04 0.02 0.00

0 20 40 60 80

45 The above analyses with the DOCA data don’t involve any sort of causal design. In order to estimate the causal effect, I use the method laid out by Belloni etal. (2014a), for causal inference with observational data and a large number of possible covariates.

Simply regressing the outcome of interest against the treatment variable will result in a biased estimate if the true causal effect when there are other variables not controlled for that impact both treatment and outcome. One common approach to address this issue in the absence of randomization, is to try to control for the other variables that could be contributing to both treatment and outcome. This is particularly challenging in a context where there are a small number of pre-treatment covariates, because the likelihood is that additional unobserved variables are confounding the results. With the DOCA dataset, there are a large number of covariates, many of which are factors with a large number of dummies. In a situation such as this one, the analyses can be unbiased if the variables included closely approximate the underlying data-generating process. However, a challenge is that there are too many covariates to control for every possible variable at once. Belloni et al. (2014a,b) propose an approach to address this, which they refer to as “post-double-selection," to address this issue. Their approach assumes that the omitted variables can be modeled with a relatively small number of covariates, included in the dataset, with a small amount of error. They use LASSO to select the variables that best predict the treatment, and that best predict the outcome. LASSO is a form of penalized regression, where the number of regressors can exceed the number of observations. They then estimate an OLS model where they regress the outcome against the treatment and the selected covariates. Under the assumption of “approximate sparsity," this approach results in unbiased estimates of the causal effect. And that is the approach I use in this chapter. The DOCA dataset contains a wide array of covariates, including the date and city of the event, the number of participants, the protest topics, which social movement

46 organizations were involved, police activity, whether there was violence, the specific tactics used by the protesters, and the page and length of news coverage.

Of course, there is still bias that stems from the fact that these protests were previously selected into NYT coverage. It may be that the features that determine whether a protest garners coverage are very different from the features that determine, conditional on coverage, the placement within a newspaper. That having been said, this is relatively unlikely. Newsworthiness is both a determinant of news coverage, and more prominent news coverage. Nonetheless, the selected nature of the DOCA dataset is an important weakness of the analyses.

I first use post-double-selection to estimate the effect of repression on thenumber of paragraphs logged. The results are shown in Table 2.1. They again suggest that, among protests that were covered in the NYT, repression increased the length of coverage. Specifically, going from a non-repressed to a repressed protest, other features held constant, increases the number of paragraphs by about 23%.

Table 2.1:

Dependent variable: log(paragrph) Violent Repression 0.208*** (0.038)

LASSO covariates X

Observations 14,165 R2 0.214 Adjusted R2 0.104 Residual Std. Error 0.974 (df = 12434) F Statistic 1.639*** (df = 1730; 12434) Note: *p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

I repeat the same process for the starting page of the story. The results show that

47 stories about protests that were repressed were placed earlier in the paper, controlling for other features. This gives further credence to the theory that repression, all else equal, increases news coverage.

Table 2.2:

Dependent variable: page police_repression -3.214*** (0.685)

LASSO_covars X

Observations 14,102 R2 0.315 Adjusted R2 0.219 Residual Std. Error 17.382 (df = 12376) F Statistic 3.292*** (df = 1725; 12376) Note: *p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

I then turn to the NAVCO data, and compare the effects of repressed and non- repressed protests. To do this, I merge the NAVCO data on which weeks featured a repressed or a non-repressed protest, with the NYT data on weekly coverage, and then separately estimate the effects of a repressed and of a non-repressed protests, using a two-way fixed effects model. I also include leads andlags.

48 Protests and NYT Coverage

● Repressed Protest 0.15 ● Non−repressed protest 0.10

●

● ● ●

● 0.05 ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● 0.00 ● ● Coefficient (Y = NYT Coverage) −0.05 −0.10

−6 −4 −2 0 2 4 6

Weeks after Event

Figure 2-4: NYT coverage of countries with repressed protests was greater, over a longer period of time, than countries with non-repressed protests.

Figure 32 summarizes the coefficients. In the appendix to this chapter, Isum- marize the full regression results in table form. As Figure 32 shows, the impact of a non-repressed protest is significantly larger than the impact of a repressed one.

Finally, I turn to the Freedom Rides data. The analyses are limited in that the campaign lasted only 34 weeks, and of course each week isn’t an entirely indepen- dent new observation. Nonetheless, they provide a granular look into one specific

49 protest campaign. Figure 42 shows the breakdown of the number of New York Times references by week, and I highlight the three weeks that featured violent repression. Visually, it appears that coverage was higher after episodes of violence.

NYT Coverage of Freedom Rides 40 30

●

● 20 Num. of NYT Articles

●

10 ●

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● 0

05−01 05−08 05−15 05−22 05−29 06−05 06−12 06−19 06−26 07−03 07−10 07−17 07−24 07−31 08−07 08−14 Date08−21 08−28 09−04 09−11 09−18 09−25 10−02 10−09 10−16 10−23 10−30 11−06 11−13 11−20 11−27 12−04 12−11 12−18

Figure 2-5: NYT coverage of the Freedom Rides spiked after instances of violence against participants.

To more formally measure the relationship between coverage and violence, I estimate an OLS model, regressing the log number of articles against a lagged DV, a dummy indicator for violence, and a lagged indicator for violence. The results are

50 summarized in Table 2.3. As the table shows, there is a weakly statistically significant relationship between violence and news coverage. Violence is associated with an 100% increase in news coverage the next week.

Table 2.3: Regression of news coverage against violence. The relationship between violence and news coverage is weakly significant.

Dependent variable: log_num_stories Lag D.V. 0.506*** (0.141)

Violence 0.672 (0.406)

Lag Violence 0.764* (0.420)

Constant 0.492** (0.212)

Observations 33 R2 0.470 Adjusted R2 0.415 Residual Std. Error 0.638 (df = 29) F Statistic 8.574*** (df = 3; 29) Note: *p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

None of these analyses are as compelling as a large randomized experiment, but all three of them considered together paint a consistent picture, and one that is also unsurprising: repression increases coverage.

51 How can protesters counter-act the effect of police restraint?

The results so far suggest that, when protests are not repressed, it becomes harder for those protesters to garner media coverage. But are there ways in which protests can counteract this effect? To examine this, I look at three factors: the number of participants, the number of claims the protesters make, and the number of cities the protest occurred in.

First, I look at the effect of crowd size. I split up up the DOCA data byboth repression status and the size of the protest. For both repressed and non-repressed protests, I estimate the effect of a small-sized protest, a medium-sized protest, anda large-sized protest. I find that, for both repressed and non-repressed protests, asthe number of protest participants increases, so does the probability of news coverage. The results are displayed in Figure 32.

I then analyze the number of cities the protest has occurred in. In the DOCA Data, coders included the number of cities that the protest occurred in. I plot the outcome against the number of cities, logged, for both repressed and non-repressed protests. The results show little evidence of an observational relationship.

The third variable I examine is the number of claims the protest makes. For each protest in the DOCA dataset, coders listed up to four claims that the protesters made. From this, I construct a variable that measures the number of claims, truncated at 4. Figure 2 shows the relationship between the number of claims, repression status, and news coverage. It suggests that, observationally, the difference between the number of claims is smaller than the difference between repression and non-repression.

Of course, these are observational relationships. In order to estimate the relationship between repression, crowd size, and coverage more precisely, I repeat the double-selection LASSO procedure separately for all three protest features (crowd

52 size, the number of cities, and the number of claims), selecting the covariates that best predict that feature, and that best predict the outcome (number of paragraphs and page number), and estimating an OLS model with the feature and those covariates. The results mirror the pattern with the observational data.

Of the three protest features, the feature that has the most significant impact on coverage is the number of participants.

53 Dependent variable:

log(paragrph)

(1) (2) (3)

Total participants (Log) 0.059*** (0.005)

Number of claims 0.112*** (0.015)

Number of cities 0.167 (0.093)

LASSO_covariates XXX

Observations 8,163 14,173 14,015 R2 0.186 0.211 0.156 Adjusted R2 0.146 0.102 0.140

Note: *p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

I then repeat the process, to estimate the effect these variables have on the page number. Here, the number of participants is the only feature to have a statistically significant impact on coverage.

54 Table 2.4:

Dependent variable:

Page Number

(1) (2) (3)

Total participants (Log) -0.262** (0.100)

Number of claims 0.193 (0.286)

Number of cities -0.112 (0.1363)

LASSO Covariates XXX

Observations 8,130 14,110 13,952 R2 0.314 0.313 0.313 Adjusted R2 0.190 0.146 0.217

Note: *p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

Finally, I return to the Freedom Rides data, and regress the number of news stories against indicators for violence, as well as the number of participants. The results are

55 shown in Table 2.5. Consistent with the DOCA and NAVCO analyses, weeks with more participants garnered significantly more coverage.

Table 2.5: The relationship between the number of news stories about Freedom Rid- ers, the number of riders, and violence. Weeks with more riders saw significantly more news stories the next week.

Dependent variable: Number of NYT Stories (Logged) Lagged DV 0.246 (0.162)

Total Riders (Log) 0.089 (0.148)

Violence 0.549 (0.400)

Total Riders (Log, Lagged) 0.339** (0.150)

Violence (Lagged) 0.630 (0.387)

Constant −0.628 (0.460)

Observations 33 R2 0.591 Adjusted R2 0.515 Residual Std. Error 0.581 (df = 27) F Statistic 7.802*** (df = 5; 27) Note: *p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

Conclusion

In the Introduction, I laid out how the policing of protests in the US has changed over time, and traced the decline in the probability of violent repression. In this

56 chapter, I delved deeper into the consequence of repression on news coverage, a key resource for protest movements. The first finding is that, in general, all else equal, the absence of repression makes it harder for a protest to garner news coverage. While not surprising, this is an important first component of the theory laid out in this dissertation. The second insight is that other features of the protests, mostly the number of participants, can make up for the absence of repression, such that, among protests that do gain news coverage, those which were repressed are likely to be systematically different from those that were not. Consider two hypothetical protests. One features a small but hearty group of individuals willing to protest in the face of arrests, imprisonment, harassment, violence, lasting damage, or even death. Another features a much larger group of individuals, who are only willing to protest in a context where they know the risk of any lasting damage is extremely slim. But what they lack in depth of commitment to the cause, they make up for in numbers. The results of this chapter do show that going from a context of protest repression to one of policing restraint shifts media coverage from the first protest, to the second. In the next chapters, I further explore the consequences of media coverage, and more systematically compare participants of different types of protests.

57 Repressed and non−repressed protest campaigns over time

Repressed Non−repressed 8e−04 6e−04 Density 4e−04 2e−04 0e+00

1995 2000 2005 2010

Date

Figure 2-1: Repressed and non-repressed protests in the NAVCO dataset. There are more events of each type in more recent years, but recent years featured more repressed protests.

58 ie o ohrpesdadnnrpesdpoet,lre rw ie en more meant sizes crowd larger protests, protest non-repressed and status and repression repressed coverage. by both separated For data, coverage size. protest DOCA 2-6: Figure

Effect on log NYT Coverage

−0.2 −0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4

Repressed − Small ● Protest RepressionandNYTcoverage Repressed − Medium ●

Repressed − Large ● 59

Nonrepressed − Small ●

Nonrepressed − Medium ●

Nonrepressed − Large ● 200 150

150 100

violent_repression violent_repression

100 0 0 page 1 1 paragrph 50

0 1 2 3 4 0 1 2 3 4 log_number_of_cities log_number_of_cities

Figure 2-7: Observational relationship between the number of cities (logged) and the number of paragraphs (left) and page number (right), separated by repression status. In the raw data, more cities is weakly associated with more coverage, as is repression. However, the difference in coverage by repression status is larger than the difference by number of cities.

200 150

150

100

violent_repression violent_repression

100 0 0 page 1 1 paragrph

0 0

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 num_claims num_claims

Figure 2-8: Observational relationship between the number of claims and the number of paragraphs (left) and page number (right), separated by repression status. In the raw data, more claims is weakly associated with more paragraphs, but not with earlier story placement. As with the number of cities, the difference in coverage by repression status is larger than the difference by number of claims.

60 Chapter 3

(How) Can Contemporary Protests Capture Attention?

Abstract In this chapter, I test the impacts that permitted, non-repressed protests have on public interest and news coverage. Because there is a lower probability of repression, the analyses in Chapter 1 suggest that these protests will have a harder time garnering coverage than if they were repressed, but just how difficult is it? To quantify the effects that these protests have, I compile a novel dataset ofper- mitted protests, drawn from permit applications in three cities: New York, Chicago, and Seattle. To test the impacts of protests on local interest, I merge the with geo-referenced Google search data, and to test the impacts of protests on national interest, I merge the data with data on national TV coverage, NYT coverage, and Google searches from a different region. To merge the protest topic with the appropriate data, I develop a novel algorithm that extracts an optimal term from the protest event name. I find that local permitted protests have a short-lived but statistically and substantively significant effect on local interest. Consistent with the findings in theprevious chapter, I find that larger protests tend to have larger effects than smaller protests. On the other hand, local permitted protests have no apparent impact on national interest. To test the impact of protests that are part of a larger protest movement, I repeat the process with a dataset of Black Lives Matter protests in 2015, and the 2006 Im- migrants’ Rights marches. I find that Immigrant’s rights protests did have a national impact on days when they were part of a coordinated effort, bolstering the idea that, in the absence of repression, protests can garner national interest by increasing in scale.

61 In the contemporary political age, when protests can be pre-registered and coordinated with the police ahead of time, the probability of violent repression of peaceful protest is comparatively lower. In chapter 1, I argued that the absence of repression, all else equal, raises the threshold for protests to garner news coverage. In practice, what do these two findings, considered together, mean for the average permitted contemporary protest? How prohibitive is the increased threshold for news coverage in practice?

In this chapter, I test the circumstances under which permitted protests can capture news coverage and public interest. I analyze a range of types of permitted protests, and I examine heterogeneity along two dimensions. First, I compare single, atomized protests, to ones that were part of a coordinated series of protests. I find that atomized protests have minimal effects on national news coverage, oron national interest, but that they do have short-term effects on local interest. On the other hand, nationwide, coordinated protests appeared to have more success at garnering national news coverage and national interest, and also capturing local interest. Next, looking within atomized protests, I compare protests with a large number of participants, to those with a smaller number of participants. I find that larger protests garnered greater local interest than small local protests. However, even large atomized protests had no impact on national coverage or interest. In the contemporary context, protests typically need a coordinated series of protests nationwide in order to capture national public attention. Today, as in previous decades, more participation means more interest and more coverage.

To measure the impact of permitted, atomized protests, I compile a novel dataset of protests in three American cities – New York, Chicago, and Seattle – drawn from the protest permit applications themselves. To measure the impact of nationwide protests, I analyze data on Black Lives Matter protests, compiled by Williamson et al. (2018), and on 2006 Immigrants’ Rights protests, compiled by Bada et al.

62 (2006). I select these two protest movements because they featured variation in when the protests occurred, as opposed to many other protest movements, such in which all protests occur in a single selected day.

To measure news coverage, I use two measures. One is the the number of New York Times articles referencing a particular topic, similar to the previous chapter. The second is the number of references to that topic on daily TV news coverage, scraped from archive.org’s collection of TV news closed captioning. To measure public interest, I follow the suggestions of Chykina and Crabtree (2018), and use geo-referenced Google search data. To merge protest data with these three outcomes, I develop a novel algorithm that extracts an optimal term from each protest, and I use that to term to match each protest to the NYT, TV news, and Google data.

Protest Data

In order to test the effect of state-sanctioned protests on issue interest, I use three protest data sources: an dataset of local, atomized protests on various topics, a dataset of Black Lives Matter Protests, and a dataset of 2006 Immigrants Rights’ protests. I estimate their effect on two sets of outcomes: New York Times coverage (as in the previous chapter), and local and national Google search activity. I discuss each data source in turn, beginning with the local protests.

McCarthy et al. (1996) relied on the fact that activists may have to apply for permits to engage in a particular protest, and obtained data from several years of permit requests to the D.C. police. I used a similar approach, and collected data on permit requests from New York, Seattle, and Chicago, from data.gov. There were several other cities that posted permit applications, but they were typically smaller, and none of the events were protests. Because the permit applications included events that were clearly not protests or public demonstrations in any sense of the word –

63 photo shoots for weddings, corporate promotional booths, bar mitzvahs, school field trips, and other such events – I went through the data, and hand-coded each event as constituting a protest or not. In determining whether the event was a protest, I used the definition used by the US Supreme Court that a protest is a public behavior on the part of activists “who are making some sort of collective point, not just to each other but to bystanders along the way."1 To that end, I removed events that did not appear to have a goal of communicating a message to a larger audience. Most of the events removed were some sort of sales event, like a farmer’s market, or corporate promotional event.

Because these protests were applied for ahead of time, the data does not include spontaneous protests, legal or illegal, such as the protests that erupted in Saint Louis when it was announced that a Grand Jury had failed to indict Officer Darren Wil- son in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown. This means that the analysis avoids the possibility that one event could be spontaneously prompting both a protest and increased Google searches or news coverage. I also removed protests that were about and scheduled on a specific day (e.g., marches in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. day or Earth Day), in order to avoid the same kind of bias. After coding, I had 159 demonstrations in Chicago, 83 protests in Seattle, and 128 protests in New York City. The protests were all fairly recent, but the precise timing varied from city to city. The Seattle protest data ranged from January 1 2014 to May 1 2017, the New York City data from January 1 2017 to Sept 1 2017, and the Chicago data from March 1, 2012 to Sept 1, 2016. The Seattle data included estimated attendance from the event permit application, providing a window into how large these protests roughly are. In Seattle, there were 4 pride events that had very large estimated attendance: two at 25,000, one at 250,000, and one at 352,000. The other protest events were significantly more modest in scope, with a mean estimated attendance of 567 people,

1(Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston Inc., 515 US 557 (1995))

64 Figure 3-1: The distribution of protest attendance estimates in Seattle. The four Pride events are not shown. The mean protest (excluding Pride) featured 567 people.

Seattle Protest Attendance 20 15 Frequency 10 5 0

0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000

Attendance

and a median attendance of 400 people. Figure 3-1 shows the distribution, excluding the four exceptionally large pride events. The median is shown in a dotted line.

To compare to the atomized, local protests, I analyze data from two nationwide coordinated protest movements: the 2015/2016 Black Lives Matter protests, and the 2006 Immigrants’ rights protests. The data on Black Lives Matter protests was compiled by (Williamson et al., 2018), who scraped data from the website Elephrame. The Black Lives Matter protests varied in their participation. Of the 780 protests in the dataset, the median protest attendance was 100 people, and the mean was 45,000.

The second dataset I use is data from Bada et al. (2006), who compiled data on the 2006 Immigrants’ Rights protests. These protests occurred in the Spring of 2006,

65 while the US Senate was considering the so-called “Sensenbrenner Bill," a law that would have increased immigration enforcement, increase punishment for illegal entry, and restricted undocumented workers’ access to state resources. While the bill had passed the house, it never went on to pass in the Senate. The protests themselves occurred between February and May, with most occurring on March 15 and May 1.

Outcome Data

As in the previous chapter, I examine the relationship between these different types of protests and news coverage. I use two measures of media coverage. The first is daily TV news coverage, as measured by archive.org closed captioning dataset.2 The second is as measured by New York Times coverage. To supplement this, I also leverage a data source that wasn’t available for the data in the previous chapter: Google search. - The second data source I need is a measure of public interest in an issue. Unfortunately, due to the number of topics covered, it wouldn’t be possible to match each protest to a survey item measuring how interested they are in a particular issue. Instead, I rely on a behavioral measure: google searches. Google Trends is a new but useful source of data, and academics have begun to use it in their analyses. Stephens-Davidowitz (2014) used geo-referenced data on searches for racial slurs as a measure of a particular geographic area’s racial animus, to measure the effect of racism on votes for Obama in 2008. Chykina and Crabtree (2018) argue that Google Trends is a useful tool for measuring issue salience for hard-to-each populations, showing how it can be used to measure anxiety about deportation from undocumented populations in the US. For each protest keyword, I downloaded data from Google Trends at the Designated Market Area level. The resulting data provides information on the number of searches for a particular keyword for each day in my time range. In order to connect protests to Google Trends data, I need to connect each protest

2As found on https://archive.org/details/tv

66 to one or more related search terms. If I were to select the relevant search terms myself, that would introduce significant researcher degrees of freedom, which could inadvertently introduce bias (Wicherts et al., 2016). In order to avoid the degrees of freedom, I develop an original algorithm that extracts the relevant search term from the protest event name automatically. I lay out the full algorithm in the Supporting Information, but in essence, the algorithm uses Google searches

I include a detailed description of how this algorithm works, as well as the keywords assigned to each protest, in the Appendix. In order to do this, I extract bigrams and monograms from the event name (after some data pre-processing). I then collect Google trends data for each bigram and monogram, and select the term that scores the most on the dominant dimension.

The algorithm generally extracts keywords that on visual inspection make sense. When possible, it prefers a bigram to a monogram. The basic intuition behind the algorithm is that I’m looking for a search term that’s as narrowly focused on the protest topic as possible, but not so obscure that there are no search results. For example, the Seattle event “SEIU Healthcare Informational Picket and Rally" gets assigned the keyword “SEIU healthcare," or the New York City event “remembrance for victims of islamic terror" gets the keyword “islamic terror." However, there are certain cases where the algorithm extracts a keyword that isn’t germane, or which taps into a different topic. For example, the Seattle event titled “March Against the Trans Pacific Partnership" results in the search term “trans." Changing these keywords to something more appropriate would reintroduce the researcher degrees of freedom that I avoided using with an algorithm, so I simply use the selected keywords. If a keyword is unrelated to the protest topic, then I would expect there to be no effect of a local protest on that term, which would cause my results to under-estimate the true effect of protests. To the degree keyword selection is an issue, it likelybiases my results downward.

67 Google Trends doesn’t provide the raw number of google searches for a particular keyword. To preserve anonymity, it automatically scales the data from 0 to 100, and then rounds to the nearest 1 digit. In order to convert this to a more easily interpretable measure, I divide each keyword by its standard deviation, which gives the regression results a more meaningful interpretation.

Permitted Protests and National News Coverage

First, I measure the effect of atomized permitted protests on New York Times coverage. Using the search terms extracted by the algorithm, I test whether a local protest increases the number of NYT articles that mention their respective term.

In order to estimate the causal effect of these atomized protests on google searches, and on NYT coverage, I estimate two classes of models: a distributed lag model, where I regress the Google Trends value for day 푖 against the Google Trends values for days 푖 − 1, 푖 − 2, 푖 − 3, up until 푖 − 12, and against a dummy indicator for whether there was a protest on day 푖, on day 푖 − 1, day 푖 − 2, and so on. I also estimate a model using fixed effects for both the keyword, and for the day, as well as both leads and lags for the treatment indicator.

The nature of my data and analysis remove several possible sources of confounding. For example, certain days of the week may receive more google search activity in general than others (for instance, weekends). If those are days where protests are more also likely to occur, unless that phenomenon is properly modeled, that would be a potential source of bias. The fixed effect for day removes that. It could alsobe that certain topics are both more likely to be googled and more likely to be protested at a certain time. For example, when Pres. Trump announced the so-called “Muslim Ban," there were many spontaneous protests, and also a large increase in Google searches related to the ban. In order to try to avoid this bias, I removed protests

68 obviously related to a particular holiday or commemorative data. Because permit applications are required weeks prior to the day of the protest, it is unlikely that some unobserved spontaneous event is driving both protests and google searches.

By including dummy leads, I can detect certain instances of bias. For instance, if there is a seasonal trend associated with both a keyword search and protests – thereby biasing our estimates – the dummy indicators for the days prior to the protest would also be statistically differentiable from zero. While this can’t detect all biases, failing to find a statistically significant effect for lead dummies would increase confidence in the results.

The results are shown in Figure 3-3.

These results suggest that atomized permitted protests have little impact on national news coverage, at least as measured by New York Times coverage. But what about permitted protests that are part of a coordinated movement? To answer that question, I turn to the two protest movement datasets.

Whereas the atomized protests were on different topics, allowing for a difference- in-differences design, in this case, all protests were on the same topic, immigration, or Black Lives Matter. For this reason, I employ an alternative strategy. I estimate a model regressing the outcome (the number of NYT stories referencing “immigration," on each day) against the number of protests nationwide, as well as lagged dependent and treatment variables, and a dummy indicator for the day of the week. While these analyses are not a silver bullet, they rely on weaker assumptions than the selection on observables assumptions that a strictly cross-sectional approach.

Permitted Protests and national interest

The analyses above suggest that permitted protests are more likely to garner national news coverage when they are part of a broader, coordinated series, than a standalone

69 Figure 3-2: Local isolated protests had little impact on NYT coverage.

Two−Way Fixed Effects Model (NYC) Two−Way Fixed Effects Model (SEA) 2.0 2.0 1.5 1.5 1.0 1.0

● 0.5 0.5

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● 0.0 ● ● ● ● 0.0 ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

NYT References (standardized) NYT References (standardized) NYT References ● −0.5 −0.5 −1.0 −1.0

−10 −5 0 5 10 −10 −5 0 5 10

Days After Protest Days After Protest

Two−Way Fixed Effects Model (CHI) 2.0 1.5 1.0 0.5

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● 0.0 ● ● ● NYT References (standardized) NYT References −0.5 −1.0

−10 −5 0 5 10

Days After Protest

70 Figure 3-3: Both local Black Lives Matter and Immigrants’ Rights protests appeared to have an impact on national news coverage.

Time Series Model (Immigration) Time Series Model (Black Lives Matter)

● Single Protest ● Single Protest 2.0 2.0 ● Multiple Protests ● Multiple Protests 1.5 1.5 ● 1.0 1.0

● ● 0.5

● ●

0.5 ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●● 0.0 ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● NYT references (standardized) NYT references ● ● ● ● ● ● (standardized) NYT references ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● 0.0 ● ● ● ● ●● ●● ● ●

● ● −0.5 ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● −0.5 −1.0

−15 −10 −5 0 5 10 15 −15 −10 −5 0 5 10 15

Days before protests Days before protests

protest. Next, I extend the analysis to estimate the effect that different types of protests have on Google search activity.

The results from the previous analysis suggest that state-sanctioned protests can have a meaningful but short-lived impact on Google searches in their city. But does this effect extend beyond the city in which the protests occurred? The ideal test would be to measure the impacts of the protest on Google searches for the country nationwide, and Google Trends does aggregate data at the country level as well. However, because Google trends data are automatically scaled from 0 to 100 based on the search volume, then if I were to find that protests had an effect on national Google searches, I wouldn’t be able to determine how much of that was driven by the city in which the protest occurred as opposed to a different one. Therefore, in order to examine how widespread the effects are, I test whether protests influence Google searches in a different city. For each of the three cities in my analysis, I select a geographically proximate major city (for Seattle, Portland, for Chicago, St. Louis, and for New York, Boston) and estimate the effect of a local protest in the true city on google searches in the other city.

71 Figure 3-4: The coefficient plots for protest leads and lags in three cities

Distributed Lag Model (BOS) Distributed Lag Model (POR) 2.0 2.0 1.5 1.5 1.0 1.0 0.5 0.5 ●

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Google Search Level ● Google Search Level ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● 0.0 ● ● 0.0 ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● −0.5 −0.5 −1.0 −1.0

−10 −5 0 5 10 −10 −5 0 5 10

Days After Protest Days After Protest

Distributed Lag Model (St. Louis) 1.0 0.5

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● 0.0 ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

● Google Search Level −0.5 −1.0

−10 −5 0 5 10

Days After Protest

The results are shown in Figure 3-4. Whereas protests increased Google searches locally, there’s very little evidence that that effect spread to other, more distant locations.

Permitted protests and local interest

For each of the three cities with protest data (New York City, Chicago and Seattle), I estimated three models: a fully pooled model, where I regressed the google trends

72 value for each keyword-day pair against an indicator for whether there was a protest topic on that day; distributed lag model, where I regressed google trends value against lagged dependent variables as well as lagged protest indicators (12 lags); and a two- way fixed effects model, with fixed effects for both keyword and date. In total,this analysis comprised 9 models. In the Supporting Information, I include summaries of each of these models. For the main text, I plot the coefficients for the protest leads and lags. The results are shown in Figure 3-5.

For each city, the largest coefficient is on the day of the protest. In Chicago, the coefficient for the day of the protest is not statistically distinguishable from zero, but for the other two cities it is. For Seattle, the estimated effect of a protest is approximately a one standard deviation increase in Google Searches for a related keyword. In New York, it’s 50% of a standard deviation, and in Chicago, it’s 25%. For all three cities, the effect of the protest decays over the several days following the protest.

In the Supporting Information, I create the same plots for the Fixed Effects analyses. The results are generally similar, but the estimates of protest effects are slightly larger, particularly in Chicago. The effect of a protest is statistically significant in all cities. For Chicago and New York City, the estimates of the protest effects are around 50% of a standard deviation, while for Seattle, it’s over 100%. In Seattle, several of the protest leads are statistically differentiable from zero, although the coefficient magnitude increases substantially on the day of the protest. In St. Louis, the day-of-protest coefficient is statistically differentiable from zero, although much smaller than the coefficient for Chicago. Again, we observe a relatively rapid decay of the protest effect over time.

The results in Figure 3-5 suggest that protests can increase Google search activity by around 50-100%, but what does that mean, substantively? In order to place this effect size in context, I leverage the fact that since assuming office, Pres. Trumphas

73 Figure 3-5: The coefficient plots for protest leads and lags in three cities

Distributed Lag Model (NYC) Distributed Lag Model (SEA) 2.0 2.0 1.5 1.5 1.0 1.0

● ● ●

● 0.5 0.5

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Google Search Level ● ● Google Search Level ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● 0.0 ● ● ● 0.0 ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● −0.5 −0.5 −1.0 −1.0

−10 −5 0 5 10 −10 −5 0 5 10

Days After Protest Days After Protest

Distributed Lag Model (Chicago) 1.0 0.5

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● 0.0 ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● Google Search Level −0.5 −1.0

−10 −5 0 5 10

Days After Protest

74 written tweets referencing some of the topics of these local protests.

I subset the data to include protests that Pres. Trump tweeted about in the same 6-month period as the protest (because the Chicago data ends prior to 2017, only New York and Seattle protests are included). I then estimate a distributed lag and a fixed effects model controlling for the presence of a protest, as well as thepresence of a Trump tweet, with leads and lags for both. Table ?? shows the results. On the subset of topics that Pres. Trump tweeted about, the effect of a protest relative to the terms’ standard deviation was a bit smaller. In both models, the effect of a local protest is equal to about 60% the estimated effect of a tweet by Pres. Trump on the same topic.

Table 3.1:

Dependent variable: Google Search Volume (1) (2) Protest event 0.207 −0.077 (0.153) (0.210)

Trump tweet 0.340*** 0.310*** (0.063) (0.090)

Fixed Effects X

Lagged D.V. X

Observations 7,075 6,379 R2 0.879 0.752 Adjusted R2 0.871 0.749 Residual Std. Error 0.929 (df = 6679) 1.301 (df = 6316) F Statistic 122.398*** (df = 395; 6679) 308.134*** (df = 62; 6316) Note: *p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

75 Discussion

The results presented above suggest that state-sanctioned protests can cause a short- term increase in local public interest in an issue, but not on national news coverage or national interest. However, there are several limitations to the research design. I’ve relied on a single measure of public interest – google searches. While this is a useful measure because of its granularity, providing day-by-day measures at the DMA level, any measure is subject to some amount of error. In the future, researchers could field a panel survey in conjunction with a protest event they know will occur, such as the March For Our Lives protests, which were announced ahead of time, and examine interest before and after the protest, exploiting variation in proximity to protest locations. Another possible measure of public attention besides Google Search activity and survey measures would be visiting a particular website. To that end, researchers or practitioners with access to the analytics data for a suitable website could examine the effect of protests in a particular location on the number of unique IP addresses from that location that visited the website shortly after the protest. Alternatively, researchers with access to the historical Twitter API could examine the effects of local protests on the probability of users generating sympathetic tweets.

I also rely on a single measure of national news coverage, namely New York Times coverage. While the New York Times is the preeminent American newspaper, drawing on a wider range of newspapers might offer deeper insight into news coverage patterns. Another limitation to the design is that the protests in the dataset are not necessarily reflective of the average protest in the United States. I omitted protests thatwere part of a wider protest movement, such as the Women’s March, or protests that were based on a particular day, such as Earth Day protests. Moreover, the study only included protests from three cities. While this was necessary to select a universe of cases that could fit with my research design, it makes the interpretation ofthe findings somewhat more complex. While this paper cannot claim to find theaverage

76 effect of protests in the US, it can say that at least certain types of protests canhave significant effects on public attention. In the future, researchers can develop other non-media methods of selecting protests, such as accessing Facebook data on Event descriptions, to test the effects of a broader set of protests.

Another limitation with the current approach is that, while it offers insight into the average effect of protests, it doesn’t necessarily provide much insight into the precise mechanism that is driving the result. The current study can’t decompose how much of the increased Google searching was people directly observing the protest, people who had been told about the protest from a direct observer, someone who saw mention of the protest on social media, or journalists interested in potentially covering the protest.

Conclusion

This paper has leveraged variation in both timing and subject of local pre-registered protests across three cities to test the effect of local protests on public interest in the topic. The results suggest that protests can have large effects on Google search activity, with effects ranging from 25 to over 100 percent of a standard deviation. When I focus on the protests on topics that Trump tweeted about as President, I find that a single local protest is equal to about 60% the effect of aTrumptweet. However, this effect is short-lived, and limited to the local geographic area ofthe protest. State-sanctioned protests fail to garner national news coverage or national interest.

In an age where the probability of a peaceful protest in the US being violently repressed has decreased significantly, these findings offer important insight into the way in which protests do or do not influence the political system. They paint a mixed portrait of democracy; by following the procedures laid out by local governments,

77 activists can use protests to briefly garner significant attention locally. But if activists want a larger impact, then a single pre-registered protest is likely insufficient.

78 Chapter 4

Is Protest News Coverage Persuasive Without Repression?

Abstract

Having shown that there are numerous paths to news coverage, I turn to the question of whether news coverage of non-repressed protests can be as persuasive as news coverage of repressed protests can be. I analyze data from the archives of the Gay Activist Alliance, an LGB activist group in the 1970s and 1980s in New York City, in a context where overt protest repression was less likely. I show how, in the general absence of this type of repression, the GAA took alternative steps to ensure that news coverage of them and LGB issues were framed in a persuasive way. A significant part of this initiative was the cultivation of elite endorsements; the group would survey prominent politicians on a range of LGB issues, and then disseminate information about the support. I then conduct a survey experiment, to test whether, absent repression, news coverage can change political attitudes. I show participants a fake news article about an animal rights protest. In one version of the article, the protesters are violently repressed by police. In another, there are a large number of coordinated protests nationwide. And the third version contains direct quotes from the protesters about the animal abuses they have witnessed. I find that, across two samples, the impacts of news coverage without repression is comparable to news coverage with repression. Conditional on garnering coverage, repression is not a necessary condition for persuasion.

When Sheriff Clark and his deputies beat peaceful protesters crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge, footage of the violence was broadcast on TV news that night, with

79 CBS famously interrupting their broadcast of “Judgment at Nuremberg" to broadcast the brutality unfolding at home. Lee (2002) describes the massive backlash that immediately followed the broadcasting of the raw footage:

“Congress and the President...reacted with a sense of urgency and outrage. On the floor of the House of Representatives and the Senate, fifty members of Congress publicly condemned the events of Bloody Sunday. Michigan’s John Conyers, for one, declared that the entire Michigan congressional delegation (which included Republican conservatives Gerald Ford and Ed Hutchinson)...demand[ed] that President Johnson immediately propose voting rights legislation and use of federal authority to prevent further violence in Alabama. At the same time, representatives throughout the nation began to receive a flood of mail from their constituents, and many of thee elected officials explicitly cited thee correspondences in their public statements" (pg 4-5).

As I’ve shown in Chapter 1, when a peaceful protest is violently repressed, it makes it easier to garner news coverage. However, as the Selma experience highlights, repression confers an additional benefit beyond newsworthiness: once a protest gains news coverage, repression provides an automatic, sympathetic frame. The analyses of Google search data and NYT coverage in Chapter 2 suggest that even if the non- repressed march had garnered national news coverage, it could have increased national interest, but it’s unclear how that coverage would have impacted national opinion. In this chapter, I aim to understand whether, and under what circumstances, news coverage of non-repressed protests impacts the public’s attitudes.

In this paper, I conduct two analyses. First, I conduct a case study of the 1970s Gay Activist Alliance, which, as an LGB activist group in New York City in the 1970s, faced a comparatively low-repression environment. This case study explore the alternative means that activist groups can employ to ensure that news coverage of their protests is persuasive.

The GAA documented their activities extensively, and their archives include meeting minutes, promotional content, collected press clippings, financial records, internal

80 election results, and correspondences with political figures, other activist groups, journalists, and scientists, as well as correspondences between members.1 These provide an in-depth portrait of the machinations and deliberations of a group of activists facing the challenges that the previous two chapters highlighted: the difficulty getting press as a small activist group in the absence of repression.

First, I confirm that reforms in New York City made overt repression of protests less likely. I discuss how allegations of misconduct were addressed by city and national officials, and how the relationship between the GAA and NYPD, while hostile and even adversarial at times, was much more collaborative and communicative than the relationship between, for instance, CORE and southern police departments.

Next, I discuss the strategies that the GAA took in order to try to persuade the public despite these challenges. While they did thoroughly publicize instances of overt police repression of protests when they occurred, most of their energies were directed towards cultivating endorsements from elites, including prominent political figures and mental health experts. A considerable portion of each meeting would be dedicated to tracking specific articles and op-eds that were in the process of being written. They would conduct surveys of politicians, and provide information to journalists about these endorsements.

The results of this case study suggest that, absent widespread repression, activists can use alternative strategies to ensure that news coverage, when achieved, is persuasive.

The second research design is a series of survey experiments, which compare the effect of news coverage of a repressed protest, to coverage of a non-repressed protest. The results echo the findings in the case study, in that repression does notappear to be a necessary condition for persuasion. Even in conditions when respondents are shown a news story featuring a non-repressed protest, that coverage can build support

1The archives are accessible at https://www.nypl.org/collections/articles-databases/archives- human-sexuality.

81 for protesters’ cause.

Case Study: Gay Activist Alliance

The Gay Activist Alliance was a homophile activist group based in New York City, which branched off of the Gay Liberation Front over disagreement over strategy. Whereas the GLF advocated for an overthrow of the capitalist system, and allied with other causes, including anti-war groups and the Black Panthers, the GAA founders strategy was to work within the political system, not fundamentally replace it (Rapp, 2004). In their first general meeting, they discussed the goals of the GAA and drafted their Purposes Clause, which included “safeguard[ing] the rights guaranteed homosexual individuals...through peaceful petition and assembly and nonviolent protest when necessary." They also passed a motion clarifying that any group wishing to use the GAA name must, among other requirements, “not ally itself with any other group for any action which is not related to the homosexual issue," and “must be concerned solely with the issue of the liberation of homosexuals" (Kantrowitz, 1970, pg 25). The original group consisted of around 65 members, based on tallies from the first board election (pg 16). Throughout the period covered by the GAA archives, the GAA was involved in a variety of activities, some political, and others cultural. The GAA’s activity included organizing social events for the LGB community, such as dances and movie screenings; advocating for LGB issues with city, state, and federal officials during small meetings; coordinating activity with LGB groups nationwide; and organizing demonstrations and protests. A significant proportion of their effort was dedicated to advocating for the passage of Intro 475 and Intro 2, municipal bills that would have extended discrimination protection to gay men and women in New York City.2 My analysis of the GAA’s archives has two parts: first, I confirm that the rela-

2Intro 2 was introduced after Intro 475 failed in 1973.

82 tionship between the GAA and police reflected the changing policing strategies that motivate the dissertation, I lay out how the GAA tried to influence media coverage, in the general absence of repression.

Interactions with police

The interaction between GAA and NYPD, as captured in the archives, was multi- faceted. One of GAA’s main focuses was addressing abusive behavior by NYPD, although said abuse was generally limited to abuses that were covert, plausibly deni- able, or minor enough not to merit significant news attention. With one borderline exception that I discuss below, GAA protests were not met with the kind of violent repression that characterized Selma, Kent State, or the Bonus Army. The GAA’s interactions with higher-level officials in the NYPD and city government, on the other hand, reflected institutional reforms that help explain why the abuses were limited in scope. From the beginning, mistreatment at the hands of the police was a major policy focus for the GAA. In both meeting minutes, and correspondences with others, the GAA archives depict three types of police misconduct: verbal or physical harassment, disproportionate targeting of gay men for arrests, and failure to properly investigate crimes against gay men. For instance, from April to June of 1973 the GAA received multiple reports of police officers patrolling in the 17th precinct targeting gaymen. Bruce Voeller, then President of the GAA, summarized the complaints in a letter to the NYPD Commissioner:

Typical of the complaints we hear, a gay man indicates that he was in the area of 3rd Avenue and 50th or 51st Street and ordered to ‘move on,’ or asked for his identification while peacefully standing there. If the man did not move on or otherwise dared to displease the police, he was taken to the Precinct, often held for several hours and then released without

83 charges. Several men have protested that they were taken to ‘The Tombs’ where they were held over night and subsequently released ‘out the back door without ever entering a court.’ In short, we have reason to believe that a systematic harassment of gay men has been occurring in the area in question" (“Committee Files, Police" pg 2).

The second category of harassment occurred during non-protest displays of affec- tion between men. There were numerous accounts of officers harassing putatively gay men during patrols. For instance, in February of 1976, the president of the GAA wrote a letter to the Commissioner of Marine and Aviation Police to alert him to harassment of a same-sex couple by Staten Island Ferry police after a couple was allegedly harassed and threatened with arrest by an officer on duty at the ferry after they were seen holding hands (‘Committee Files, Police" pgs 14-16).

A notable omission from these types of harassment are accounts of harassment or other repression during protests themselves. While GAA members were arrested numerous times during unlawful protests, there were no accounts of violence being used by police against those protesters, nor are there accounts of police violence during lawful protests. In general,

There was one case of violent protest repression in this time period, although the perpetrator was not the police. In 1972, the GAA decided to organize a protest during the annual Inner Circle Dinner, a private event in New York City which featured journalists and prominent public officials.

During the event that year, on April 15, protesters from the GAA barged in and passed out leaflets, hoping to raise awareness of anti-gay discrimination. Asthey were being removed from the premises, an event attendee, Michael Maye, head of the firefighter’s association, allegedly beat and kicked Morty Manford, for whichhe was subsequently charged (?). The incident garnered significant news coverage, and prompted an assault trial after which Maye was acquitted.

84 The GAA understood that this was an opportunity for them. They issued four separate press releases about the incident between April and June of 1972 (out of 11 total press releases in that same period). They organized demonstrations demanding that the governor appoint a special prosecutor to investigate. On the one-year anniversary of the dinner, they organized a commemorative event (and issued another press release commemorating the event). As they noted in a general meeting planning the commemoration:

“the anniversary of the Hilton Incident provides GAA with the opportunity to really ignite the gay community as a whole and get them involved in something that caused great and deep feeling one year ago. The whole city was involved, and, as we all know, the Hilton caper made front page news for quite a long time It became a classic case of justice denied."3

The GAA’s handling of the Hilton Incident was not the only evidence that the GAA understood that power of repression. In a press release announcing a demonstration in support of Intro 475, the GAA that “Over 500 outraged Gays will attend, and IF NECESSARY WILL ACCEPT BEING ARRESTED."4

Despite other forms of abusive behavior by law enforcement, and despite the GAA’s willingness to face repression during protests, and well-prepared media strategy, the GAA never faced overt, violent repression from police during a protest. While some of that may have been a result of chance, the archives offer evidence of several types of institutional reforms and constraints that help explain the absence of repression. The first is that there was an ongoing relationship between theGAAand high-ranking officials in the NYPD, which occurred even at the beginning ofGAA’s tenure. The second was the protest permit system, with the GAA used.

During one of the first general meetings after incorporation, in May of 1970, Morty

3Committee Files, Political Action, Jan. 30, 1973-May 29, 1980, pg 45. 4“Press Releases," pg 73.

85 Manford discussed his recent meeting with NYPD Chief of Personnel D’eForrest W Taylor. At the meeting, Manford, who was the chair of the political action committee, raised concerns about harassment against gays, including in city prisons. He also raised concerns about harassment from officers in the Tactical Patrol Force and the 66th precinct. Taylor assured Manford that he would call them and investigate5). The May meeting was followed two months later by a meeting between GAA leadership and NYPD Commissioner Howard Leary, in which they discussed harassment by police. Leary apologized for past behavior by the NYPD, collected information about allegations against specific officers, and requested a followup meeting.

These contacts would continue for the duration of GAA’s tenure. After numerous meetings with NYPD in the summer of 1970, the GAA established a new policy that they would not meet alone with NYPD leadership, but rather with civilian officials who exercise control over NYPD. Nonetheless, GAA would continue to regularly meet with NYPD officials (with other government officials present) to discuss a varietyof concerns. There were regular contacts between the NYPD Commissioner and the head of the GAA in writing and in in-person meetings. As an example, in 1973, after numerous incidents of discrminatory arrests by police officers in the 17th precinct, the GAA leadership met with the precinct captain, as well as with a lawyer from the ACLU. During this meeting they raised this issue, and disputed the precinct’s official arrest count. The head of GAA subsequently also raised this issue with the NYPD Commissioner in a letter.6

While interactions with the police were initially lead by the Political Affairs head, the GAA later established a position specifically for police relations. Likewise, within NYPD, by 1972, there was an established officer liaison, Louis DiVito, specifically to the LGB community. The existence of these official positions reflect a level of institutional investment in cooperation that was very different than with Civil Rights

5“Topical File, Minutes - General Meetings, 1970," pgs 4-5. 6“Committee Files, Police," pg 2.

86 or anti-Vietnam war protesters, for instance.

NYPD leadership was not the sole source of oversight. Other government officials outside of the chain of command also signaled their interest in addressing potentially abusive behavior by the NYPD. The GAA was in frequent contact with members of Congress, several of whom would offer to raise issues with NYPD. For instance, in October of 1972, the GAA sent Congressman Ed Koch a letter drawing his attention to an effort by the GAA to ban the use of anti-gay slurs by NYPD. The letter included numerous allegations about NYPD officers using these slurs on various occasions. In 1973, after the commissioner banned the use of offensive language against gays, Con- gressman Koch sent a memo to the commissioner commending him on the decision.7 The GAA also frequently corresponded with both Bella Abzug, first as a candidate for Congress then as a Congresswoman, and Eleanor Holmes Norton, then Human Rights Commissioner of New York City.

Like other cities in the 1970s, New York City had developed a protest permit system, where protesters apply for permits ahead of time. The records show that GAA made use of this system, and did pre-register their protests with police at time. In a press release announcing a demonstration commemorating the one-year anniversary of the Hilton Incident, the GAA noted that the NYPD had initially denied their request allowing space for picketing in front of the hotel, but that they had successfully appealed the decision in court.8

These two institutional features: oversight by NYPD leadership, and the protest permit system, help explain the lack of widespread repression, even while other abusive behaviors persisted. Having shown that the GAA was operating in a relatively low-repression environment, I then to to their media strategy, to understand how they tried to generate persuasive coverage in the absence of repression.

7“Committee Files, Police," pg 4. 8“Committee Files, News and Media Relations -Press Releasess", pg 149.

87 How the GAA shaped news coverage

The GAA was deeply attuned to media coverage. Their meeting minutes would contain frequent references to articles or op-eds that were being written. For instance, during a meeting of the Political Action Committee in 1973, representatives noted that their sources indicated that the New York Times had considered publishing an editorial supportive of Intro 475, and might do so at a later date. 9 They continued to follow the status of the potential NYT editorial in detail, posting updates at later meetings, until, on April 24, Bruce announced the status of the op-ed to be “doubtful."10

In the cases when protests did face repression, or faced the possibility of repression, the GAA pursued an aggressive media strategy, publicizing the abuse as widely as they could, as in the case of the Hilton Incident. However, as I’ve explained, these incidents were relatively rare, and so, in the absence of repression, they employed alternative strategies.

One of the major focuses of the GAA, as reflected in the amount of documents focusing on it, was cultivating relationships with elites. This sometimes occurred informally, though individual meetings and correspondences. For instance, at a general meeting in May 1970, Bella Abzug, then a candidate for Congress, visited and spoke about her support for pro-gay policies.11 In September of that year, Eleanor Holmes Norton also met with the GAA and offered her support for discrimination protection legislation.12 The GAA also designed and fielded candidate questionnaires, which were sent to candidates for local, statewide, and federal office. In a meeting in September of 1970, the committee on the 1970 elections explained that a questionnaire would be sent to “strategic" candidates, and that GAA would “publicize the percent-

9“Committee Files, Political Action, Jan. 30, 1973-May 29, 1980" pg. 9 10“Committee Files, Political Action, Jan. 30, 1973-May 29, 1980" pg. 23. 11“Topical File, Minutes - General Meetings, 1970," pg 16. 12“Topical File, Minutes - General Meetings, 1970," pg 36.

88 age of supportive candidates and encourage them to make their positions public."13 A later meeting in 1974 similarly explained that these questionnaires were “informational vehicles."14 They were fielded in 1970 and 1972, although they discussed the possibility in 1974. Each questionnaire was a serious undertaking by the GAA. The Political Action Committee would updated the GAA at large almost weekly on the status of the questionnaires beginning months before.

The questionnaires gave a list of policies, and asked the candidates whether they supported each of them. They also provided candidates a space to add additional information, and to sign to give GAA permission to “release its contents to any and all news media for purposes of public action." The GAA had a policy of not endorsing candidates. The function of these questionnaires was not to inform internal decision-making, but to allow the GAA to communicate to the general public. The GAA would mention these statements of support in subsequent press releases, as background information for journalists. For instance, on August 5, 1970, the GAA conducted a protest of Gov. Rockefeller that drew some media coverage. The GAA noted their success at garnering media attention, and noted that as part of the media blitz, several members of Congress, including Bella Abzug and Ed Koch, had offered statements of support.15

In a press release commemorating their one-year anniversary, the GAA issued a list of their most fruitful efforts. The first item listed was “Statements in support of the Alliance’s goals from political candidates such as Arthur Goldberg, Charles Goodell and Richard Ottinger in November’s state and local elections."16

The archival evidence shows how GAA built a sophisticated set of strategies for generating positive news coverage. In the absence of clear-cut repression, they culti- vated other types of information in order to generate persuasive coverage. In the next

13“Topical File, Minutes - General Meetings, 1970," pg 37. 14“Committee Files, Political Action, Jan. 30, 1973-May 29, 1980", pg. 39. 15“Topical File, Minutes - General Meetings, 1970 16“Committee Files, News and Media Relations -Press Releasess", 24.

89 section, I conduct a survey experiment in order to test how effective these alternative strategies can be.

Survey Experiment

As the GAA case study illustrates, in the absence of repression, protest groups use other strategies to try to ensure persuasive news coverage. But how effective can protest news coverage be, absent repression?

To understand whether repression is a necessary condition for protest news coverage to be persuasive, I conducted a survey experiment in 2018. I fielded this experiment on two separate platforms: Lucid, and SSI. There were 1280 respondents for the Lucid experiment, and 1524 respondents for the SSI experiment.

In this experiment, respondents are shown either one of three versions of an article about an animal rights protest, or no article at all. The three versions of the article were based on an actual article from The Intercept (Greenwald and Woodhouse, 2017). In the first version, which is intended to measure the effect of repression, the article emphasizes the protesters peaceful behavior, and describes abusive behavior by the local police. The text for this treatment was based off of news coverage of the UC Davis Occupy Wall Street incident when police used pepper spray on protesters.

The text of the first treatment is shown in Figure ??.

The second version of the article did not mention any sort of repression, but mentioned that this protest was part of a larger trend of protests occurring nationwide. This was intended to reflect the finding in Chapters 1 and 2 that a non-repressed protest can garner news coverage with a large enough crowd size. That treatment is shown in Figure ??.

The third version of the article featured quotes from the protest organizers talking about why they care about this issue, and describe witnessing animals suffering in

90 Figure 4-1: Repressed Protest Experiment Arm

An Oakland Slaughterhouse, Saba Live Poultry, was occupied last weekend by more than 200 people, protesting the conditions in which animals are kept before being slaughtered. While the protest began peacefully, it quickly escalated when police were called onto the scene.

Priya Sawhney of Direct Action Everywhere, which organized the protest, said that walking onto the kill floor and blocking the entrance was a nonviolent way to protest the inhumane treatment of animals, and condemned the behavior of the police who were dispatched to the scene.

Several videos uploaded to YouTube show police officers dousing the protesters — mostly students— with orange pepper spray, after repeatedly asking them to disperse. The protesters were seated with their arms linked in front of the slaughterhouse. In one of the videos, the officer holds the pepper spray bottle in the air, then sprays it in the protesters’ faces in a coordinated fashion as eyewitnesses gasp and shout, “Shame on you.” Most of the protesters remain seated; police officers then forcibly remove and arrest them.

The Saba owner insists that he is committed to ending suffering, including for animals. Hsiung says his commitment to reforms, and particularly to instituting practices far superior to industrial farms, appears genuine: He has already ordered a sweeping cleanup of the slaughterhouse and has agreed to periodically allow inspections and to release animals to DxE.

91 Figure 4-2: Large Protest Experiment Arm

An Oakland Slaughterhouse, Saba Live Poultry, was occupied last weekend by more than 2,500 people, protesting the conditions in which animals are kept before being slaughtered.

Priya Sawhey of Direct Action Everywhere, which organized the protest, said that walking onto the kill floor was a way to show “the sheer number of people willing to stand up for animal rights.” The events at Saba Live Poultry were not an anomaly; over the past year alone, dozens slaughterhouses across the country have experienced protests of a thousand participants or more. Sawhey hopes that that these occupations will motivate slaughterhouses to improve their treatment of animals.

92 inhumane conditions. This message had been in the original version of the article, and was intended to capture the effect of a curated, pre-prepared message.

After being either shown one of three treatment articles or no article at all, all respondents were asked to show how much they agree or disagree with two statements: “States should pass stricter laws concerning the treatment of farm animals,” and “An- imals deserve the exact same rights as people to be free from harm and exploitation.” Respondents evaluated these statements on a seven-point scale from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.”

Analysis

In order to analyze the treatment effect, I used an ordered probit to estimate theef- fect of each protest type on both outcomes, leaving the control group as the baseline. To place the treatment group comparisons in contrast, I also include several standard covariates, including Party ID, income, race, and education. I separate results by sample. The coefficient plots are shown in the next page. The three treatment conditions were “Repression,” the indicator for the article featuring a nonviolent protest being met with violent repression, “Crowd Size,” the indicator for the article featuring a large number of protesters, and “Message,” the indicator for the article featuring the third strategy I emphasize in the paper, where activists use news coverage to directly communicate a message.

For the question ““Animals deserve the exact same rights as people to be free from harm and exploitation," no treatment had a statistically significant impact on agreement. However, treatment assignment did influence agreement to the statement “States should pass stricter laws concerning the treatment of farm animals.” Consis- tent with theories of nonviolence, the impact of repression on attitudes was positive, but only statistically significant in the Lucid sample. In the Lucid sample, the other two treatments had a positive, borderline significant effect. In the SSI sample, the

93 Figure 4-3: Activist Message Experiment Arm

An Oakland Slaughterhouse, Saba Live Poultry, was occupied last weekend by more than 200 people, protesting the conditions in which animals are kept before being slaughtered.

Priya Sawhney of Direct Action Everywhere, which organized the protest, said that walking onto the kill floor was “one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever seen in my life. We saw bodies of animals on the floor, bloodied heads of chicken, animal feet, blood everywhere.” She added, “In one of the trash cans I looked in, there were dead quail along with quails still alive, one of which I picked up to rescue.”

As atrocious as the conditions were, the activists said they are no worse than the standard factory farms run by large corporations. If anything, said Sawhney, the country’s largest industrial farms are worse, because the mass scale of slaughter and abuse.

94 Figure 4-4: The treatment effects for both outcomes, and both samples. To put the effect sizes in context, the coefficients for demographic (non-randomized variables) are also included. None of the treatments has a significant impact on “Animal deserve the exact same rights as people to be free from harm and exploitation," but they did have an impact on “States should pass stricter laws concerning the treatment of farm animals."

States should pass... (SSI) States should pass... (Lucid)

Under 40 ● ●

College ● ●

Hispanic ● ●

Black ● ●

White ● ●

Female ● ●

Rep ● ●

Dem ● ●

Message ● ●

Crowd Size ● ●

Repression ● ●

−1.0 −0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 −1.0 −0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0

Index Index

Animals deserve same... (SSI) Animals deserve same... (Lucid)

Under 40 ● ●

College ● ●

Hispanic ● ●

Black ● ●

White ● ●

Female ● ●

Rep ● ●

Dem ● ●

Message ● ●

Crowd Size ● ●

Repression ● ●

−1.0 −0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 −1.0 −0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0

Index Index

95 other two treatments had a statistically significant effect, but repression didn’t.

In order to more directly compare the effectiveness of the repression treatment, and the other treatments, I estimate an ordered probit with the two samples combined. I regress the outcome (“states should pass...") against a dummy indicator for control, and for repression, as well as demographic covariates. By coding the variables in this way, the coefficient for the repression treatment will summarize its effect as compared to non-repression treatments. If repression is a necessary component for news coverage to be persuasive, we would expect the coefficient on repression to be large and statistically significant, while the coefficient for control would remain small and not statistically significant (because the other treatments aren’t much of an improvement).

The results are summarized in Table 1, and offer compelling evidence against the theory that repression is a necessary condition. The difference between repressed and non-repressed news coverage was small in substance and statistically insignificant.

The results of the experiment offer evidence that news coverage of protests can be persuasive, and that repression is not a necessary condition.

Conclusion

The analyses in this chapter offer insight into what happens once a protest manages to gain media coverage. Chapters 1 and 2 showed that there are multiple pathways to coverage, with repression being one of them. The case study of the GAA shows how, in the relative absence of repression, protest groups can employ other strategies to be persuasive. And the results of this survey experiment show that, while protest news coverage can be persuasive, repression is not a necessary component. This suggests that when protests manage to gain news coverage in the absence of repression, that coverage may be as likely to effective at persuading the public as news coverage that

96 Table 4.1:

Dependent variable: Support of Animal rights Repressed 0.029 (0.088)

Control −0.295*** (0.088)

Female 0.388*** (0.073)

Dem 0.640*** (0.086)

Rep 0.265*** (0.099)

Under_40 0.212*** (0.073)

College −0.075 (0.094)

SSI −0.060 (0.072)

Observations 2,448 Note: *p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

97 emerged from a repressed protest.

98 Chapter 5

Repression and Representation

Abstract The previous chapters have shown that, on average, the absence of repression decreases the probability of news coverage. But are certain types of protests more impacted than others? Without repression, is protest still a viable strategy for low- SES groups? In this chapter, I test whether the existence of repression impacts the types of protests that succeed. To do this, I merge geo-referenced DOCA data from the 1960s and 1970s with demographic data from the US census, to measure the demographic features (employment status, proportion with a college degree, proportion white, mean family income) of the location of each protest. I use machine learning to build a predictive model of whether a given protest will receive front-page NYT news coverage under existing repression levels, and in the absence of repression. I compare the demographic distribution of front-page protests under existing levels of repression to the distribution under a scenario with no repression. I find that although the absence of repression significantly reduces the overall number of front-page protests, it has minimal impacts on the demographics of front- page protests. Switching to a scenario with no repression would decrease front-page coverage protest by 30%, but the change in mean family income, education levels, and employment levels is typically less than 2%. In order to better understand why repression decreases coverage but preserves the demographic distribution, I analyze the relationship between demographics of a protest location, and the probability of repression and of front-page coverage. I find that, while certain types of protests – particularly ones in low-education and minority areas – are more likely to face repression, those same protests are also more likely to have other newsworthy features, cancelling out the impact of reductions of repression. Just as repression is not a necessary condition for generating media coverage, capturing public interest, or persuading the public, it is not a necessary condition for advancing low SES or minority protests. In a world without protest repression, protests would still be viable a tool for low-income groups.

99 In July of 2016, the US Corps of Engineers approved the plan for construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which included a portion running across the Lake Oahe reservoir, half a mile upstream of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. The reservation comprises the entirety of two counties: Corson County, South Dakota, and Sioux County, North Dakota. According to the 2018 American Community Survey, the median household income in Corson County was $35,441, with one in four residents having a household income below $16,000 a year.1 Its sister county north of the state border, Sioux County, has a median income of $40,000, with one in five residents having a household income below $16,000 2. In 2016, during the protests, the Standing Rock poverty rate as of 2016 was 43%, and the unemploment rate was 73% (Lee, 2016).

The Standing Rock Sioux sued the US Government to oppose this project, explaining that “Water is sacred to the Standing Rock people, as is the Missouri River itself...the Tribe feared an oil spill could pose an existential threat to the Tribe" (v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 2016, pg 17-18). Legal battles notwithstanding, Dakota Access, LLC began construction activity, and by mid-August, members of the tribe began and blockading the construction, prompting Dakota Access, LLC to countersue, and to send in additional private security guards (Hersher, 2017). By mid-September, members of other tribes had come to assist in the occupation, and footage showed security forces began threatening the protesters with dogs. This generated some news coverage, and the governor called in the national guard (Peralta, 2016). Protests, construction, and legal battles continued. In October, celebrities began joining in the protests, generating publicity. In late October, police began arresting hundreds of protesters. On October 26, according to some activists, police used teargas on the protesters (Levin, Woolf, and Carrington, Levin et al.; Levin, Levin). On November 2, President Obama addressed the issue, and floated the pos-

1Accessed at https://bit.ly/3dmLIDm. 2Accessed at https://bit.ly/3fT6mwE

100 sibility of identifying an alternative route. In the early morning of November 21, in below freezing temperatures, security forces used water cannons and tear gas against protesters, in a move that was captured on video and posted to Facebook (Michaud, 2016). This received national coverage, and public interest in the Dakota Access Pipeline soared. Two weeks later, on Dec. 4, the US Army Corps announced suspen- sion of the construction of DAPL, pending further public input (Hersher, 2017).

To understand how these events related to press coverage, Figure 1 plots the number of TV news stories referencing the Dakota Access Pipeline, from early August to late December. The dotted lines mark both instances of protest repression, as well as President Obama’s comments. Consistent with the findings in Chapter 1, episodes of repression predicted large spikes in news coverage. By comparison, President Obama’s remarks garnered less coverage.

To illustrate how these events related to public interest, Figure 2 plots over-time Google Trends data for the Dakota Access Pipeline, and page-views for the Wikipedia “Dakota Access Pipeline" article.3 These episodes of repression sparked an increase in public attention.

After Pres. Trump took office, he issued an executive order expediting the approval process, and construction resumed, prompting more legal action, and the Pipeline’s status remains in legal limbo. Nonetheless, as Figure 1 illustrates, the trajectory of DAPL protests in 2016 are a perfect manifestation of the theory of nonviolent protest that Martin Luther King laid out in his essay 50 years prior: a group engages in largely peaceful protest; that protest is repressed; and the repression draws the attention and ire of the larger public, who in turn demand a change in policy. It is consistent with the findings in the previous three chapters that the presence of repression increases news coverage and public attention considerably, and can generate persuasive news coverage.

3The “Dakota Access Pipeline" wikipedia page was created immediately after the accounts of protesters threatened with dogs.

101 Figure 5-1: Daily TV news references to “Dakota Access Pipeline." Dotted lines highlight instances of protest repression and President Obama’s comments. Public interest increased significantly following the use of water cannons on protesters.

Protest Repression and "Dakota Access Pipeline" TV News References 150 DAPL Decision DAPL Police use teargas Police Obama addresses DAPL Police use water cannons use water Police 100 Private securityPrivate uses dogs 50 0

2016−08−03 2016−08−28 2016−09−22 Date2016−10−17 2016−11−11 2016−12−06 2016−12−31

102 Figure 5-2: Wikipedia Page-views and Google Search results for Dakota Access Pipeline. Dotted lines highlight instances of protest repression and President Obama’s comments. Public interest increased significantly following the use of water cannons on protesters.

Protest Repression and "Dakota Acces Pipeline" Wikipedia Pageviews 70000 60000 50000 DAPL Decision DAPL Police use teargas Police 40000 Obama addresses DAPL Police use water cannons use water Police Private SecurityPrivate uses dogs 30000 20000 10000 0 2016−08−03 2016−08−28 2016−09−22 2016−10−17 2016−11−11 2016−12−06 2016−12−31

Protest Repression and "Dakota Access Pipeline" Google Searches 100 80 60 DAPL Decision DAPL Police use teargas Police Obama addresses DAPL Police use water cannons use water Police Private SecurityPrivate uses dogs 40 20 0

2016−08−03 2016−08−28 2016−09−22 Date2016−10−17 2016−11−11 2016−12−06 2016−12−31 103 But the Standing Rock protesters’ ability to temporarily halt the DAPL pipelines speaks to another feature long ascribed to protests: their ability to serve the interest of groups that otherwise have few political resources. The previous chapters have focused on how repression impacts protests in general. In this chapter, I turn to whether repression impacts low-SES or minority protests disproportionately. If all of the dials that can impact protest repression discussed in the Introduction are turned in the same direction at once, and the probability of protest repression plummets, fewer protests would garner media coverage and capture attention. But would low-SES or minority protests be more greatly impacted by this shift?

In order to better understand how different types of protests would be impacted by the absence of repression, I use machine learning to build multiple models that predict whether, conditional on receiving NYT coverage, a protest will be featured on the front page. These models take in a wide array of information about the protest itself, as well as census data from the city the protest was in. I then use the model to predict the number of front-page protest stories in two circumstances: with the observed amount of repression in the original dataset, and in a scenario where no repression at all occurred. I compare the change in coverage among all protests, as well as different types of protests.

Consistent with the previous chapters, I find that in the absence of repression, there would be fewer front-page protests overall. However, the heterogenous effects are surprising. Contrary to what some resource theories would suggest, I find that protests in low-income or low-education areas, controlling for other demographic features, are no more impacted by the absence of repression than the average protest. In other words, eliminating protest repression would not shift the average covered protest towards wealthier or more-educated areas. This is because, from the standpoint of news coverage, repression is most likely to occur in the contexts where it’s least likely to matter.

104 The relationship between resources, identity, and repression

There are two ways in which repression can disproportionately impact a type of protest. The first is of course of that type of protest is more likely to face repression. If a particular type of protest rarely faces repression, then a blanket reduction in repression will, by definition, have less impact on this type of protest than itwould on the average protest. There is evidence that the distribution of repression is uneven, and that in the United States, minority protests are more likely to face repression in the first place (Davenport et al., 2011). This dovetails with a larger body of research around race and policing which generally finds that police behave harsher in a variety of ways towards people of color than towards whites (Donohue III and Levitt, 2001; Fryer Jr, 2019), although there are lingering debates over what types of statistical comparisons are appropriate (Johnson et al., 2019; Johnson and Cesario, 2020; Knox and Mummolo, 2020; Knox et al., 2020; Heckman and Durlauf, 2020).

The second way repression could disproportionately impact a particular type of protest would be if that protest type is less likely to otherwise garner news coverage, absent repression, than is the average protest. Previous chapters have identified protest participation as an important determinant of news worthiness, suggesting that reductions in repression will disproportionately impact groups that have greater difficulty generating large-scale protests. Existing schools of research offer competing predictions about what types of protest will have an easier time generating mass participation. As I discuss in the Introduction, a large body of work has emphasized the role of resources in political participation. If protest participation is skewed towards people with more resources, that would imply that low-SES protests will be disproportionately less likely to be able to generate news coverage without repression. In this view, protest participation can best be understood as a form of consumption,

105 a costly activity that favors people who have money, connections, and free time (?).

Another school of thought has emphasized the role of grievances in motivating political participation (Muller and Jukam, 1983; ?; Finkel et al., 1989). In this approach, features like an absence of resources, or exposure to police repression, could motivate individuals to participate in protests. Protests from whites or higher-SES individuals or groups may have a more difficult time recruiting participants outof a lack of underlying demand. Another related body of research has emphasized the role of threat and policy in motivating political participation. Whereas wealthier people are typically more likely to participate in politics, (Campbell, 2002) shows that low-income senior citizens were more likely than higher-income seniors to participate on behalf of social security. Seniors are also more likely to participate on behalf of social security when there are threats to the policy (Campbell, 2003). Similarly, White (2016) shows that the rollout of the immigration enforcement initiative Secure Comunities caused an increase in Latino voter turnout. There is some contemporary evidence for this theory with respect to protest participation: cities with more police shootings saw greater participation in Black Lives Matter protests (Williamson et al., 2018).

Predicting protest coverage counterfactuals with machine learning

The DOCA dataset is limited to protests that received NYT coverage, so I can’t measure the impact of changes in repression on the probability of getting NYT coverage on the first place. However, I can simulate the decision that editors make when selecting where stories get placed. While this is subject to the selection bias I discuss in Chapter 2

In order to understand how the absence of repression would impact certain types

106 of protests, I use machine learning to build a model that predicts whether a particular protest will receive front page news coverage. To build the predictive model, I merge DOCA data with data from the 1960s Census Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs), and with the 1970s Census data at the County Group level. The covariates include both features of the protest, including the topic, location, size, and any social movement organizations involved, as well as demographic features of the location, including the mean income, the proportion white, and the proportion without a college degree.4

For each model, I generate two sets of predictions: predictions based on the observed level of repression, and predictions from a scenario where there is no repression, but in which the other protest and location features remain the same. I treat the lat- ter as the counterfactual for coverage in a scenario without repression. I then compare front page protest coverage under these two scenarios.

To build a predictive model of front page coverage, I use two methods, each of them a form of penalized regression: LASSO, and Ridge. LASSO, as I’ve discussed previously, is a method that selects a small number of covariates out of a dataset with many variables, and then estimates a regression using those variables. Ridge, on the other hand, shrinks the coefficients on many variables, and then estimates a regression with those many covariates and the shrunken coefficients (Hastie et al., 2009; Tibshirani, 2011).

In my analysis, I focus on protests from the 1960s (where the data were merged

4The full of list covariates were: the city of the protest; the state of the protest; the total number of cities involved (a dummy indicator for each value); the number of participants; the number of identifiable groups (a dummy indicator for each value); the year of the protest; thenumberof SMOs involved (a dummy indicator for each value); the number of cities (as a continuous variable), the number of groups (as a continuous variable), the number of protest targets, the proportion of low-income residents in the PUMA, the topic of the protest ( a dummy indicator for each value), the number of protest claims, an indicator for whether the protest occurred in a single city, dummy indicators for the target of the protest (government, private entity, a school, a foreign government, the medical community, a racial group, or another target), dummy indicators for the number of days over which the protest occurred, the mean age for the geographic protest location, and proportion white, the proportion black, the proportion with a high school degree, the proportion with a college degree, the proportion not in the labor force, the mean family income, and the proportion unemployed.

107 with 1960 PUMA data), and protests in the 1970s (where the data are merged with 1970 Country Group data). In the DOCA dataset, 9% of nonviolent protests were violently repressed in the 1960s, compared to 2% in the 1970s.

Before presenting the results, it’s important to note the causal assumptions underlying this analysis and previous DOCA analyses. In both this and previous analyses, I assume that protest features such as political participation are not a function of repression. In other words, in a scenario without repression, there would still be underlying grievances that can motivate individuals to protest. For instance, during the civil rights movement, even in areas where police did not respond violently, there was a significant groundswell of support, partly motivated by a range of other abusive discriminatory state behaviors. While that is likely true to some extent, it’s also likely the case the the anticipation of future repression (which often is not subtle) can influence protest participation, or that features that reduce violent repression may have additional impacts that affect underlying grievances, by, by extension, protest participation. In the absence of randomization, or a natural experiment, the only way to conduct an analysis like this is to rely on strong assumptions, and be as transparent as possible about them.

The impact of repression across demographic features

To understand how repression impacts different types of protests, I compare the distribution of various demographic features among protests predicted to be on the front page under current repression levels, and with no repression. First, I examine the overall number of front page protests. Figure 3 shows the total number of protests predicted to make the front page with current levels, and without repression. The plots on the top show the predictions from the LASSO model, and the plots on the bottom show the predictions for ridge. The plots on the left show the results

108 for the 1960s and the plots on the right show the results for the 1970s. Although the predictions vary across model and time, across specifications, the absence of repression results in fewer front-page protests. This is consistent with findings of previous chapters.

Figure 5-3: Compared to a scenario with no repression, the number of protests predicted to receive front page coverage declines. This is true for both predictive models, and for both time periods.

Predicted Total Protest Coverage and Represion (LASSO, Census Data) Predicted Total Protest Coverage and Represion (LASSO, 1970s) 1000 400 34% Decrease

800 31% Decrease 300 600 200 400 100 200 Number of Predicted Front Page Total Protest Stories Total Number of Predicted Front Page Protest Stories Total Number of Predicted Front Page 0 0

With Repression Without Repression With Repression Without Repression

Predicted Total Protest Coverage and Represion (Ridge, Census Data) Predicted Total Protest Coverage and Represion (Ridge, 1970s)

1000 14% Decrease 400 24% Decrease 800 300 600 200 400 100 200 Number of Predicted Front Page Total Protest Stories Total Number of Predicted Front Page Protest Stories Total Number of Predicted Front Page 0 0

With Repression Without Repression With Repression Without Repression

After seeing that the absence of repression is expected to decrease overall front- page protest coverage, I plot the distribution of the demographics of front-page protest

109 locations, under repression, and without repression. Figure 4 shows the result for mean family income. Dotted lines show the means with repression and without repression. The exact difference in means varies slightly across model and time,but the differences are 0.2% or less. Figures 4 through 7 show the distribution ofmean family income, proportion with a college degree, proportion unemployed, and proportion white for front page protests under both scenarios. Although there is some variation across demographic features, and across time, the means don’t change by more than 2%. Although the simulated absence of repression significantly decreases front-page coverage, the types of protests that get front-page coverage without repression are strikingly similar to the ones that get front-page coverage with the existence of repression.

110 Figure 5-4: The distribution of mean family income for locations with front-page protests with and without repression. Across 1960s and 1970s, for both LASSO and ridge, the difference in means is 0.2% or less.

Mean Family Income (LASSO prediction, 1960s) Mean Family Income (LASSO prediction, 1970s) 8e−04 8e−04

With Repression With Repression Without Repression Without Repression 6e−04 6e−04 Density Density 4e−04 4e−04 2e−04 2e−04 0e+00 0e+00

4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 6000 8000 10000 12000 14000 16000

Family Income (w/out repression, mean front page protest is 0.1% lower) Family Income (w/out repression, mean front page protest is 0.2% lower)

Mean Family Income (Ridge prediction, 1960s) Mean Family Income (Ridge prediction, 1970s) 8e−04

With Repression With Repression 6e−04 Without Repression Without Repression 6e−04 4e−04 4e−04 Density Density 2e−04 2e−04 0e+00 0e+00

4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 6000 8000 10000 12000 14000 16000

Family Income (w/out repression, mean front page protest is −0.2% lower) Family Income (w/out repression, mean front page protest is 0% lower)

111 Figure 5-5: The distribution of proportion with a college degree for locations with front-page protests with and without repression. While there’s more variation than with family income, across 1960s and 1970s, for both LASSO and ridge, the difference in means is less than 2%.

Mean College Degree (LASSO prediction, 1960s) Mean College Degree (LASSO prediction, 1970s)

With Repression With Repression 70 40 Without Repression Without Repression 60 30 50 40 20 Density Density 30 20 10 10 0 0

0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10 0.12 0.14 0.16

College Degree (w/out repression, mean front page protest is 2.7% lower) College Degree (w/out repression, mean front page protest is −0.4% lower)

Mean College Degree (Ridge prediction, 1960s) Mean College Degree (Ridge prediction, 1970s)

With Repression With Repression Without Repression 60 Without Repression 50 30 40 20 30 Density Density 20 10 10 0 0

0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10 0.12 0.14 0.16

College Degree (w/out repression, mean front page protest is −1.5% higher) College Degree (w/out repression, mean front page protest is 1.8% lower)

112 Figure 5-6: The distribution of proportion unemployed for locations with front-page protests with and without repression. While there’s more variation than with family income, across 1960s and 1970s, for both LASSO and ridge, the difference in means is less than 2%.

Unemployment (LASSO prediction, 1960s) Unemployment (LASSO prediction, 1970s) 200

With Repression 300 With Repression

150 Without Repression Without Repression 200 100 Density Density 100 50 0 0

0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.010 0.015 0.020 0.025 0.030 0.035 0.040

Unemployment (w/out repression, mean front page protest is −2.4% higher) Unemployment (w/out repression, mean front page protest is 1.9% lower)

Unemployment (Ridge prediction, 1960s) Unemployment (Ridge prediction, 1970s) 200 300 250

150 With Repression With Repression Without Repression Without Repression 200 100 150 Density Density 100 50 50 0 0

0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.010 0.015 0.020 0.025 0.030 0.035 0.040

Unemployment (w/out repression, mean front page protest is −1.8% higher) Unemployment (w/out repression, mean front page protest is 1.1% lower)

113 Figure 5-7: The distribution of proportion white with front-page protests with and without repression. Across 1960s and 1970s, for both LASSO and ridge, the difference in means is less than 2%.

Mean Proportion White (LASSO prediction, 1960s) Mean Proportion White (LASSO prediction, 1970s) 8 With Repression With Repression 40 Without Repression Without Repression 6 30 4 20 Density Density 2 10 0 0

0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0

Prop. White (w/out repression, mean front page protest is −2.7% higher) Prop. White (w/out repression, mean front page protest is 0.9% higher)

Mean Proportion White (Ridge prediction, 1960s) Mean Proportion White (Ridge prediction, 1970s)

With Repression 7 With Repression Without Repression Without Repression 8 6 5 6 4 Density Density 4 3 2 2 1 0 0

0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0

Prop. White (w/out repression, mean front page protest is 0.1% higher) Prop. White (w/out repression, mean front page protest is 0.9% higher)

Why doesn’t repression impact certain protest types more?

To understand why repression does not appear to disproportionately impact these different types of protests, I examine the relationship between protest location de-

114 mographics, and both repression and the ability to garner news coverage. As I have discussed previously, both of these features interact to determine how much a protest is impacted by repression. If the probability of repression is higher than average for a particular segment of the population, and the probability of news coverage without coverage is lower than average, we would expect this population to be impacted by a reduction in repression. Figures 8 through 11 show the relationship between these demographic traits and both repression and the probability of news coverage. The relationship between each of these varies by outcome. There’s a steady decrease in the probability of repression as the family income increases, but there’s also a decrease in the probability of garnering news coverage without repression. This helps explain the lack of overall impact of repression on income of protests that get covered. There is likewise a weak relationship between the proportion unemployed and the probability of repression, or the probability of front page coverage without repression. There is more of a relationship between the proportion with a college degree, and repression. Protests in low-education areas are more likely to face repression, and somewhat less likely to be able to otherwise generate news coverage. This pattern might explain why the magnitude of the differences for education were more pronounced than other demographic features.

115 Figure 5-8: The relationship between mean family income and repression (left) and the probability of garnering front page news coverage without repression (right). Protests in the poorest areas are the most likely to face repression, but they’re also the most likely to garner front-page coverage without repression.

1.00

0.75

0.50

0.50 ridge_prediction violent_repression

0.25 0.25

0.00 0.00

8.0 8.5 9.0 8.0 8.5 9.0 log(faminc) log(faminc)

1.00

0.6 0.75

0.50 0.4 ridge_prediction violent_repression

0.25

0.2

0.00

0.0

9.0 9.5 9.0 9.5 log(faminc) log(faminc)

116 Figure 5-9: The relationship between proportion unemployed and repression (left) and the probability of garnering front page news coverage without repression (right). There is little relationship between unemployment and both repression and the probability of coverage without repression.

1.00

0.75

0.50 0.50 ridge_prediction violent_repression

0.25 0.25

0.00 0.00

−5.0 −4.5 −4.0 −3.5 −3.0 −5.0 −4.5 −4.0 −3.5 −3.0 log(unemployed) log(unemployed)

1.00

0.6 0.75

0.4 0.50 ridge_prediction violent_repression

0.25 0.2

0.00 0.0

−4.5 −4.0 −3.5 −4.5 −4.0 −3.5 log(unemployed) log(unemployed)

Nonetheless, these plots help explain why repression overall has not historically benefitted protests with particular demographic features. While the analyses here can’t identify the definitive cause, this is consistent with grievances being an important motivator for protest participation. Unlike an activity like campaign donations, protests from a wide array of backgrounds have been able to achieve success.

117 Conclusion

The second question of the dissertation was whether protests can be a vehicle specifically for low-resource groups to achieve power. Certainly in the case of the civil rights movement, repression was harnessed very successfully by nonviolent activists. The evidence presented in this chapter suggests that repression is not a necessary condition for low-resource groups. The previous chapters show that repression on average helps protests garner news coverage and persuade the public. This chapter offers insight into what kind of protests are impacted by repression.

118 Figure 5-10: The relationship between proportion white and repression (left) and the probability of garnering front page news coverage without repression (right). Protests in areas that were fewer than 60% white were more likely to face repression, but also more likely to otherwise garner news coverage.

1.00

0.75

0.50 0.50 ridge_prediction violent_repression

0.25 0.25

0.00 0.00

0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 white white

1.00

0.6 0.75

0.4 0.50 ridge_prediction violent_repression

0.25 0.2

0.00 0.0

0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 white white

119 Figure 5-11: The relationship between proportion with a college degree and repression (left) and the probability of garnering front page news coverage without repression (right). Protests in areas with a low percentage of college degrees were more likely to be repressed, and less likely to generate news coverage in the absence of repression.

1.00

0.75

0.50 0.50 ridge_prediction violent_repression

0.25 0.25

0.00 0.00

0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 college_four_years college_four_years

1.00

0.6 0.75

0.50 0.4 ridge_prediction violent_repression

0.25 0.2

0.00

0.0

0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 college_four_years college_four_years

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129 130 Chapter 6

Appendix

Coefficient Plots for Distributed Lag Models

In Figure 6-1, I repeat the plots in Figure 1 using Fixed Effects models instead.

131 Figure 6-1: The coefficient plots for protest leads and lags in three cities (and three placebo cities)

Two−Way Fixed Effects Model (NYC) Two−Way Fixed Effects Model (SEA) 2.0 2.0 1.5 1.5

● 1.0 ● 1.0 ●

●

0.5 ● 0.5 ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● Google Search Level Google Search Level ● 0.0 0.0 ● ● ● ● −0.5 −0.5 −1.0 −1.0

−10 −5 0 5 10 −10 −5 0 5 10

Days After Protest Days After Protest

Two−Way Fixed Effects Model (Chicago) 1.0 0.5

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● 0.0 ● ● ● Google Search Level −0.5 −1.0

−10 −5 0 5 10

Days After Protest

Regression Summaries

In this section, I summarize the regressions for each of the three local cities, for the fully pooled, distributed lag, and fixed effects models. I also summarize thesame regressions for the three spillover cities.

132 Table 6.1: Regression Summaries (NYC)

Dependent variable:

Google Searches (Standardized)

(1) (2) (3) protest 0.929*** 0.734*** 0.940*** (0.237) (0.237) (0.241)

Lagged D.V. (12 lags) X

Search Term F.E. X

Day F.E. X

Observations 28,548 25,740 25,740

Note: *p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

133 Table 6.2: Regression Summaries (Boston)

Dependent variable:

Google Searches (Standardized)

(1) (2) (3) protest 0.354* 0.138 0.361* (0.199) (0.175) (0.202)

Lagged D.V. (12 lags) X

Search Term F.E. X

Day F.E. X

Observations 29,768 26,840 26,840

Note: *p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

134 Table 6.3: Regression Summaries (Seattle)

Dependent variable:

Google Searches (Standardized)

(1) (2) (3) protest 0.857*** 0.685** 0.898*** (0.307) (0.291) (0.314)

Lagged D.V. (12 lags) X

Search Term F.E. X

Day F.E. X

Observations 19,086 17,214 17,214

Note: *p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

135 Table 6.4: Regression Summaries (Portland)

Dependent variable:

Google Searches (Standardized)

(1) (2) (3) protest 0.280 0.326 0.295 (0.266) (0.236) (0.269)

Lagged D.V. (12 lags) X

Search Term F.E. X

Day F.E. X

Observations 11,768 10,232 10,232

Note: *p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

136 Table 6.5: Regression Summaries (Chicago)

Dependent variable:

Google Searches (Standardized)

(1) (2) (3) protest 0.238* 0.167* 0.265** (0.123) (0.095) (0.128)

Lagged D.V. (12 lags) X

Search Term F.E. X

Day F.E. X

Observations 36,781 36,781 36,781

Note: *p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

137 Table 6.6: Regression Summaries (St. Louis)

Dependent variable:

Google Searches (Standardized)

(1) (2) (3)

protest 0.001 −0.028 0.021 (0.127) (0.108) (0.129)

Lagged D.V. (12 lags) X

Search Term F.E. X

Day F.E. X

Observations 23,811 23,811 23,811

Note: *p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

Keyword Extraction Algorithm

Below is the algorithm for extracting a keyword from a protest name.

∙ Create a list of words that refer to a particular protest tactic such as “March,"

138 “Protest," or “Rally"

∙ Create a list of words that refer to the geographic or temporal location of the event, such as “annual," “Seattle," or “New York"

∙ For each protest event name, perform the following steps:

– If the protest name has a tactic word in it, split the protest name into two separate strings, and remove the tactic word.

– If the protest name has a geographic or temporal word in it, remove it.

– Remove stopwords and punctuation

– Extract every bigram and monogram (if the event has been split in two because of a tactic word, don’t allow bigrams to cross

– For each bigram, search that term on Google Trends for the date range of the protest.

– Determine how many bigrams have a result (Google Trends doesn’t provide results below a certain threshold).

– If one bigram has a result, return that bigram as the keyword. If not, continue.

– If multiple bigrams have a result, store the resulting matrix of Google trends data (day rows by search term columns).

– Run a PCA on the matrix of terms, and select the bigram that scores most on the first dimension. Return that bigram as the keyword.

– If no bigrams have a result, then move on to monograms. Repeat that same procedure as with bigrams.

– If no monograms yield Google Trends results either, return NA.

139 New York Protests without Heath Care

In this section, I display the results of the analyses in Figure 3 without the health care data.

Figure 6-2: NYC Protests and NYT Coverage – No ACA protests

nyc_nyt_plot_no_health.pdf

140 New York City Protests

Event Name search_term date

307th infantry veterans society memorial service infantry veterans 2017-06-10 african communities rally african communities 2017-03-29 women’s march to ban the bomb ban 2017-06-17 bangladeshi rally bangladeshi 2017-05-03 black self-determination black 2017-01-20 nyc black pride event black pride 2017-08-20 nyc black pride unity picnic black pride 2017-06-18 builders & contractors rally contractors 2017-01-30 builders & contractors rally contractors 2017-01-18 building trades safety rally building trades 2017-01-31 anti-bullying rally and walk antibullying 2017-06-10 anti-bullying rally and walk antibullying 2017-06-10 burma taskforce vigil taskforce 2016-12-14 calhoun call to action call action 2017-06-05 cameroon community rally community 2017-03-03 nyc cannabis parade cannabis 2017-05-06 casa community rally and press conference community 2017-05-13 china protest rally china 2017-06-26 stop trump climate agenda stop trump 2017-04-22 compassion day compassion 2017-05-20 speaker/comptroller rally 2017-03-09 national night out against crime national 2011-08-02 nyc teen dating violence awareness walk-a-thon teen dating 2017-04-22

141 Event Name search_term date save american democracy save american 2017-04-22 democratic marathon protests democratic 2017-01-03 democratic marathon protests democratic 2017-02-07 democratic marathon protests democratic 2017-03-07 democratic marathon protests democratic 2017-04-04 democratic marathon protests democratic 2017-05-02 democratic marathon protests democratic 2017-06-06 3rd annual disability pride parade disability 2017-07-09 nyc candlelight vigil in memory the dolphins of taiji taiji 2017-03-01 community against substance abuse and domestic violence community substance 2017-07-29 anti-domestic violence gathering violence 2017-05-06 domestic violence awareness domestic violence 2017-06-03 bronx domestic violence public education domestic violence 2011-10-19 origin and development of the dominican nation origin development 2017-06-11 anti - drone strike protest drone strike 2017-04-29 international day against drug abuse drug abuse 2017-06-26 ecuadorian parade in manhattan ecuadorian 2017-05-28 the legacy eric garner left behind july 17th give back give back 2017-07-17 ethical eating day ethical 2017-01-08 races for faces 2017 faces 2017 2017-07-23

142 Event Name search_term date falun dafa rally falun dafa 2017-05-12 fighting fascism with music fascism 2017-03-17 filibuster rally filibuster 2017-04-02 gambian rally gambian 2017-06-27 gambia rally gambia 2016-12-30 rally for general strike general strike 2017-02-17 genocide remembrance genocide 2017-03-25 gentrification rally gentrification 2017-05-31 getorganizedbk’s civic festival festival 2017-07-25 god belongs in our ciy god belongs 2017-08-19 no gun smoke day gun smoke 2017-07-23 shoot hoops not guns hoops 2017-07-01 the 3rd annual cesar sanchez tribute run - a race against gun violence cesar sanchez 2017-05-13 anti gun violence celebration gun violence 2017-06-24 5th annual march to end gun violence end gun 2017-06-03 5th annual march to end gun violence end gun 2017-06-03 the 3rd annual cesar sanchez tribute run - a race against gun violence cesar sanchez lay the guns down guns 2017-07-15 anti-street harassment rally harassment 2017-04-08 hdfc coalition rally hdfc coalition 2017-06-21 die-in for healthcare healthcare 2017-06-04 healthcare information healthcare information 2017-06-25 24-hour vigil to save our health care save health 2017-06-21 aca rally aca 2017-03-11

143 Event Name search_term date healthcare rally healthcare 2017-04-01 save a child’s heart valentine’s awareness event childs heart 2017-02-14 nyc hemophilia walk 2017 hemophilia 2017-06-04 july hiv testing month event - for 7.22.2017 hiv testing 2017-07-22 bronx polar bears dip against homelessness polar bears 2017-02-11 nyc resolve walk of hope resolve 2017-05-20 this is hunger hunger 2017-04-15 community outreach ministry fight against hunger community outreach 2017-08-19 relief effort from stop hunger now hunger now 2011-06-23 immigration rally immigration 2017-03-16 rally to support immigration support immigration 2017-05-06 immigration rally immigration 2017-05-31 immigration rally immigration 2017-06-19 india day parade india 2017-08-20 community takeback for isaiah osborne takeback 2017-07-08 remembrance for victims of islamic terror islamic terror 2017-08-06 celebrate israel parade celebrate israel 2017-06-04 rally for just development and long island city development long 2017-06-22 kashmir peace rally kashmir 2017-02-05 kidney disease awareness gospel day kidney disease 2017-07-08 walk for kids growth kids growth 2017-04-09 kids march for love, unity & kindness love unity 2017-02-12 labor rally labor 2017-04-01

144 Event Name search_term date nyc lgbt rally lgbt 2017-06-16 pride tango tango 2017-06-25 pride mass mass 2017-06-22 youth pride fest youth pride 2017-07-08 equality rally for unity and pride equality 2017-06-11 bronx pride 2017 pride 2017 2017-07-15 brooklyn pride 5k run brooklyn pride 2017-06-10 front runners new york lgbt pride run 5m york lgbt 2017-06-24 we are one linedancers in unity unity 2017-08-12 siren - marriage equality usa marriage equality 2017-06-24 missionary rally missionary 2017-06-24 moms demand action photo booth demand action 2017-04-29 rally to get money out of politics money politics 2017-04-20 march against monsanto monsanto 2017-05-20 muslim & immigrant rights rally immigrant rights 2017-01-25 i am a muslim too muslim 2017-02-19 nyc loves muslims rally muslims 2017-06-10 no ban no wall ban wall 2017-02-01 nyc student walkout: no ban no wall out ban 2017-02-07 muslim ban rally muslim ban 2017-02-11 no ban no wall vigil ban wall 2017-04-09 nigerian community annual picnic community 2017-08-05 juvenile obesity walk obesity 2017-06-18 light for orphans orphans 2017-06-03 fourth oscar - mandela march in nyc mandela 2017-06-19

145 Event Name search_term date pakistan day festival festival 2017-08-06 women’s peace walk womens peace 2017-03-25 persian parade persian 2017-04-30 pertussis awareness day pertussis 2011-08-11 planned parenthood rally planned parenthood 2017-02-11 planned parenthood rally planned parenthood 2017-06-21 prayer for peace prayer peace 2017-07-15 pre-k for all rally prek 2017-04-30 national puerto rican day parade national puerto 2017-06-22 the bronx puerto rican day parade puerto rican 2017-06-03 rally for raise the age raise age 2017-03-25 world refugee day- closing rally world refugee 2017-06-20 jewish community vigil for refugees jewish community 2017-02-12 rally in support of ronnie cho ronnie cho 2017-05-31 together in ny is an annual community festival part of annual russian heritage month festival part 2017-06-11 safe shape nyc shape 2017-04-29 walk for a scholar scholar 2017-04-29 march for science nyc science 2017-04-22 sci awareness 5k run roll walk sci 2017-05-07 stepping out to cure scleroderma scleroderma 2017-06-11 stepping out to cure scleroderma scleroderma 2017-06-25 32bj rally 32bj 2017-01-24

146 Event Name search_term date self esteem awareness self esteem 2017-06-04 a memorial ceremony for sewol ferry tragedy sewol ferry 2017-04-16 march for sex trafficing- bowling green sex trafficing 2017-04-09 march for sex trafficing - marcus garvey sex trafficing 2017-04-09 march against sharia sharia 2017-06-10 sikh day parade-2017 sikh 2017-04-22 slut walk rockaway beach rockaway beach 2017-08-19 south sudan rally south sudan 2017-03-03 south yemen rally south yemen 2017-05-19 sports and helmet safety celebration sports helmet 2017-06-10 annual walk for st. mary’s kids st. marys 2017-04-23 change ny statute of limitations law limitations law 2017-06-04 change ny statute of limitations ny statute 2017-06-04 community meeting against substance abuse and domestic violence substance abuse 2017-08-05 sudanese rally sudanese 2016-12-20 suffragist vigil 2017 suffragist 2017-03-08 bkmscc walk for sustainability sustainability 2017-07-23 press confrence for a moratorium on sale of tax bills tax bills 2017-05-09 tibetan women’s uprising day tibetan 2017-03-12 togo rally togo 2017-08-19 tourette association national awareness walk association national 2017-05-21 townsend harris hs seniors want to remove the interim principal harris hs 2017-02-24 transgender solidarity rally solidarity 2017-03-26 trans support rally trans support 2017-04-26

147 Event Name search_term date turkish americans in new york will protest armenian allegations americans new 2017-04-24 turkish day festival festival 2017-05-20 we stand united stand united 2017-01-19 unity walk 2017 unity 2017-01-16 veggie pride parade post parade rally expo expo 2017-04-02 solidarity for venezuela venezuela 2017-05-12 veterans march on: america veterans 2017-05-20 american veterans for the neh: voices of democracy american veterans 2017-02-25 iraq and afghanistan veterans iraq afghanistan 2011-11-11 equal vote for all americans vote americans 2017-03-17 voting rights demonstration voting rights 2017-03-19 warsaw ghetto uprising commemoration ghetto uprising 2017-04-19 global walk for water global 2017-05-06 ngo csw61 rally csw61 2017-03-16 rally for women’s rights womens rights 2017-03-26 youth campaign youth 2017-06-24 youth campaign youth 2017-07-29

148 149 Seattle Protests event_name Organization search_term_automated event_date Giddens Student March for Peace and Justice Giddens School giddens school 2014-01-17 March for $15 on March 15 15 Now 15 now 2014-03-15 May 1st Rally and March El Comite el comite 2014-05-01 Prayer Walk for Our Hood N/A hood 2014-05-03 Oromo Community Protest Rally to Denounce Killing of Oromo Students by Ethipoian Government Oromo Community of Seattle oromo 2014-05-07 Cannabis Freedom March/Rally Cannabis Defense Coaltion coaltion 2014-05-10 March Against Monsanto March Against Monsanto monsanto 2014-05-24 Vietnamese Community Protests Against China Infringing on Vietnam’s Vietnamese American Community Water Territory of Seattle & Sno-King Counties vietnamese american 2014-05-24

Iraqi Community of Washington Iraqi Community of Washington community washington 2014-06-23 150 RALLY to Save Public Education WA Badass Teachers Association teachers association 2014-06-26 Trans Pride Seattle 2014 Gender Justice League gender justice 2014-06-27 Seattle Dyke March Seattle Dyke March dyke 2014-06-28 RVNAF Day 2014 Parade RVNAF Veterans Confederation in Washington State washington state 2014-06-28 Seattle Pride Parade and March Seattle Out and Proud pride 2014-06-29 Men’s March and Stand Against Demand Seattle Against Slavery slavery 2014-08-09 Faith March to the Ballot Box to Support Yes on I-594 Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle jewish federation 2014-10-19 National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality October 22 Coalition police brutality 2014-10-22 Protest Against Police Brutality N/A police brutality 2014-12-04 Seattle Protests event_name Organization search_term_automated event_date Protest for Police Accountability Women of Color for Systemic Change women color 2015-01-10 World Love For Dolphins Day Sea Shepherd Conservation Society sea shepherd 2015-02-13 National Adjunct Walkout Day SEIU Local 925 925 2015-02-25 Day of Action Working Washington working washington 2015-04-15 Shell No: Seattle Draws the Line Greenpeace draws 2015-04-26 May 1st March and Rally for Immigrant and Worker Rights May 1st Action Coalition action coalition 2015-05-01 Cannabis Freedom March Cannabis Defense Coalition coalition 2015-05-09 Shell No Flotilla - Paddle in Seattle Greenpeace flotilla 2015-05-16 Educator March and Rally Seattle Education for Education Funding Association (SEA) education funding 2015-05-19 MARCH AGAINST MONSANTO - SEATTLE 2015 March 151 Against Monsanto - Seattle 2015 2015-05-23 Check your Privilege Rally UW Black Student Union black student 2015-05-30 United Hood March Seattle United Hood Movement movement 2015-06-19 Trans* Pride Seattle 2015 Gender Justice League gender justice 2015-06-26 Seattle Dyke March Seattle Dyke March dyke 2015-06-27 Capitol Hill Pride March 2015 NW Museum of Legends and Lore nw museum 2015-06-27 Capitol Hill Pride Festival Northwest Museum of Legends and Lore pride festival 2015-06-27 Seattle Pride Parade Seattle Out and Proud (dba Seattle Pride) pride 2015-06-28 SEIU Healthcare 1199NW Informational Picket and Rally SEIU Healthcare 1199NW seiu healthcare 2015-07-01 Peace Vigil for Benito Enriquez N/A benito enriquez 2015-07-10 25th Anniversary of the ADA, Looking to our Past to Move Toward our Future Seattle Office for Civil Rights move toward 2015-07-22 Unite Pike Place Pike Place Market Crafts People & Employees pike place 2015-07-25 Women Betrayed Rally Students for Life of America students life 2015-07-28 Birthday Party for Social Seattle Protests event_name Organization search_term_automated event_date Security & Medicare Social Security Works Washington security works 2015-08-08 March to Support Our Teachers Jennifer Monahan deMella monahan 2015-09-15 Falun Dafa Association of WA Protest Falun Dafa Association of WA falun dafa 2015-09-22 Gasoline Processional Coltura processional 2015-10-04 SEIU Healthcare 1199NW Picket SEIU Healthcare 1199 NW seiu healthcare 2015-10-07 March Against the Trans Pacific Partnership 350 Seattle trans 2015-10-14 Seattle Rally: Stand for Safety NOW Seattle Rally: Stand for Safety NOW stand safety 2015-10-23 Humanitarian Crisis Peaceful Walk for Nepal Nepal Seattle Society humanitarian 2015-11-22 Oromo Community Rally Against Ethiopian Government Oromo Community Services of Seattle oromo 2015-12-10 Justice for Hamza Americans for Refugees and Immigrants refugees immigrants 2015-12-10 Oromo Community Rally

Against Ethiopian Government Oromo Community Services of Seattle oromo 2015-12-29152 Support Indicted nYPD Officer Liang Seattle Chinese Volunteer Association indicted 2016-02-20 March for Bernie Movement 4 Bernie movement 4 2016-02-27 57th Tibetan Uprising Day Tibetan Assocation of Washington Seattle Chapter washington chapter 2016-03-10 Oromo Community Rally Against Ethiopian Government Oromo Community Service of Seattle oromo 2016-03-11 Fight Back Islamophobia & Dump Trump Americans for Refugees and Immigrants dump trump 2016-04-09 Fast for Justice SEIU Local 925 925 2016-04-14 Raise the Alarm Route 1: Capitol Hill to Downtown Working Washington 1 capitol 2016-04-14 Raise the Alarm Route 2: Pike Place to Downtown Working Washington pike place 2016-04-14 Protest anti Barnevernet CPA in Norway First Romanian Pentecostal Church pentecostal church 2016-04-16 Indigenous People Standing Against Disenrollment Indigenous People Standing Against Disenrollment indigenous people 2016-04-18 Seattle Protests event_name Organization search_term_automated event_date Homeless Rally and March Lisa Sawyer/Sharon Jones homeless 2016-04-23 Cannabis Freedom March/Rally Cannabis Defense Coalition coalition 2016-04-30 Democracy Spring Across America! Democracy Spring Across America across america 2016-05-14 Protest Patty Murray Kelley Whitty-Sandaker patty murray 2016-05-20 March Against Monsanto - Seattle 2016 March Against Monsanto - Seattle 2016 2016-05-21 Seattle U / Matteo Ricci College Rally to Support Dean Kelly Alumni of Seattle University dean kelly 2016-06-09 Trans Pride Seattle 2016 Gender Justice League gender justice 2016-06-24 Capitol Hill Pride Festival March & Rally Northwest Museum of Legends and Lore pride festival 2016-06-25 Seattle Dyke March Seattle Dyke March dyke 2016-06-25 Carpenters 4 Carpenters 153 Rally and March to Trust Office Carpenters 4 Carpenters trust office 2016-08-04 Ethiopian Community Public Protest Ethiopians in Seattle community public 2016-08-16 Oromo Community Rally Against Ethiopian Government Oromo Community Service of Seattle oromo 2016-08-18 Washington State Nurses Association Informational Picket - Seattle Children’s Hospital Washington State Nurses Association state nurses 2016-09-13 Water is Life - "Mni Wiconi" Ndns for Justice water life 2016-09-16 Global March for Elephants, Rhinos and Lions Emerald City Pet Rescue city pet 2016-09-24 Grand Protest of Ethiopians in Seattle Ethiopians Public Forum in Seattle public forum 2016-10-11 Seattle Women March Against Hate hate 2016-12-03 Seattle Protests event_name Organization search_term_automated event_date March for Aleppo Americans for Refugees and Immigrants refugees immigrants 2016-12-16 Our First Stand: Save Health Care Rally Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal save health 2017-01-15 Immigrant Rights March 154

Defend Our Rights El Comite/May 1st Action Coalition action coalition 2017-01-20 Womxns March on Seattle Womens March on Washington womens 2017-01-21 Stand With Immigrants Rally Americans for Refugees and Immiagrants americans 2017-01-29