This is an opinion piece by a Hilltop columnist.
With the streets of France burning and political movements gaining momentum across countries including Italy, Portugal, Spain, Belgium and Albania, a global surge of protests brought two fundamental questions into stark clarity: What defines a revolution, and who gets to participate in one?
Rising resource costs, fueled by regional conflicts and supply chain disruptions, coupled with a lack of governmental representation, have left people increasingly unwilling to wait for election cycles or bureaucratic reforms. Instead, they are taking to the streets to demand immediate, tangible change with lasting impact.
A revolution, unlike a protest, seeks to redefine the foundational rules for governance, social hierarchy and ownership. For example, the protests currently happening in France are in response to rising fuel prices, high cost of living, overcrowded classrooms, teacher shortages and overall systemic economic inequality. These demonstrations can, and have, spiraled into larger structural and governmental change.
The question of who gets to partake in this change has been democratized by necessity and urgency. Today, participation in the revolution is defined by a shared precarity. That is, the collective realization that economic stability is no longer guaranteed for the majority.
As living costs rise and trust in government declines, the movement has increasingly included marginalized communities, working-class people and disillusioned young people who feel that decisions about their future are being made without their voices or interests in mind.
In the United States, the momentum behind protest has been gradually building, flaring with each new headline before fading from public attention. Meanwhile, media coverage can minimize large-scale demonstrations, limiting public awareness and potentially discouraging broader participation.
President Donald Trump’s approval rating has fallen to record lows, sitting between 31% and 34% across several national polls, yet demonstrations have done little to influence or sway those in power, posing the bigger question of what will truly bring change?
In 2020, a historic wave of national demonstrations against police brutality and systemic racism swept the country. The protests prompted a mix of policy changes, cultural shifts and institutional reforms, despite political backlash. During a period of national unrest, they demonstrated that mass mobilization could produce immediate, tangible change, even if those gains were not guaranteed to last.
But since then, the nation has regressed. Since 2020, conservative political forces have driven institutional rollbacks of symbolic gains made to address historical injustices.
For instance, Washington, D.C.’s iconic Black Lives Matter Plaza street mural was completely dismantled and jackhammered away by city crews after federal lawmakers threatened to cut over $1 billion in city funding if it remained. While at the federal level, the Department of Justice shifted away from the systemic police misconduct consent decrees common in the early 2020s.
Unless protests translate into lasting legislative change, progress toward civil rights and economic equity will remain vulnerable to reversal by future presidential administrations.
The effectiveness of protests in the United States faces a unique paradox. While mass mobilization can capture the national consciousness of shared struggle and oppression, the American political structure is designed to absorb and diffuse such energy through long-term legislative and executive idleness.
Unlike European systems where parliamentary coalitions are often more sensitive to immediate public pressure, the U.S. system relies on election cycles that can isolate local movements from national policy shifts.
The “revolution” in the U.S. remains stuck in a cycle of protests followed by political pushback. Without turning public demands into lasting laws and policies, demonstrations risk becoming temporary expressions of frustration rather than movements that bring lasting change.
Copy edited by Jori Johnson
