Opinion: The post-pandemic future of public protest

During a protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Hartford, Connecticut April 2. — Chris Ehrmann/AP

So in light of the coronavirus pandemic, what is the future of public protests? In the 1960s, the United States seemed almost defined by the mass demonstrations against Jim Crow and the Vietnam War.

In recent years, people have marched through the streets so often, and on behalf of so many different causes, that no one could possibly keep track. In an essay published just before the emergency began, the legal scholar Richard Thompson Ford warns that public demonstrations have become so commonplace that we’re suffering from "protest fatigue”.