Americans like to romanticize protest. As a scholar of the Andijon massacre in Uzbekistan and a firsthand witness to the brutality of Ferguson, I tend to do the opposite and emphasize that demonstrations rarely achieve an instantaneous result and are often dangerous. But the way in which the mass protests of 2017 and 2018 have been dismissed is disturbing, particularly since most participants and organizers were women. Women also comprised the grassroots efforts behind the 2018 Democratic wins, organizing while dealing with the endless agonizing revelations of the #MeToo movement. In the years
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