Why Cities Will Be Protest Hubs in 2017

In May 2012, at the height of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, the journalist Sarah Jaffe took a walk through New York City. Stopping by The New York Times building, she witnessed a protest unfold there; blocks away at Bryant Park, other demonstrators had gathered. As she walked to lower Manhattan, she encountered several more. “And I thought, ‘OK, something’s happening here,’” Jaffe says.

It wasn’t just Occupy Wall Street—Jaffe recognized the energy of unrest that had been bubbling over in the United States since the 2008 financial crisis and spread into the movement for black lives, the fight for fair wages, and clashes over environmental policies. Jaffe united these movements in a book, Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt, which came out this past summer.