How To Read a Protest: The Art of Organizing and Resistance

FEATURING L.A. KAUFFMAN – The midterm elections this past November were a strong rebuke to the Trump Presidency. The wave of young, first time progressives winning office was part of a strategy of resistance two years in the making. There have been more mass protests in the US in the years since Trump became President than at any other time in the nation’s history.

Now a new book put this new wave of resistance and organizing into historical context and attempts to understand how protest works and how it can be maximized as a tool for change rather than just an outlet for collective frustration.

L.A. Kauffman has spent more than thirty-five years immersed in grassroots movements, as a journalist, historian, organizer, and strategist. Her writings on organizing and social movement history have been published in The Guardian, The Nation, The Progressive, Mother Jones, the Village Voice and more. Her earlier book was called Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism. Her newest book is How To Read a Protest: The Art of Organizing and Resistance.

**This interview was originally broadcast on December 13, 2018.