Jay Ulfelder

@jayulfelder.bsky.social

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He/him. Research project manager at Nonviolent Action Lab, Ash Center, Harvard Kennedy School. Mostly watching U.S. protest activity for Crowd Counting Consortium. Posting in my individual capacity.

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I think a lot of people would be surprised to learn how often demonstrators for all sorts of causes are met with verbal abuse, threats, and even physical violence while just standing with signs. I think many would be less surprised to hear that it's usually white men perpetrating that violence.

It Was[n’t] Bad Enoughhere4thekids.substack.com Silent solidarity leaves us all vulnerable to violence. Strength resides in our collective voice. Scream it with me: Free Free Palestine!

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Make it impossible to count the dead then brag that the number of dead counted has declined. And then get credulous media to sing along. Nobody should be fooled by any of this but people do like to be fooled when it’s convenient. apnews.com/article/isra...

Women and children of Gaza are killed less frequently as war’s toll rises, AP data analysis findsapnews.com The trend is significant because the death rate for women and children is the best available proxy for civilian casualties.

Great piece on Indigenous participation and leadership in the ongoing U.S. protest wave on and off campuses. "What Palestinians have been through, Indigenous people have lived through that, and I just strongly identified with their pain."

Indigenous College Students Join Protests In Support of Palestinewww.charkoosta.com Gwen Nicholson (Salish, Kootenai, and Coeur d’Alene) grew up learning about the history of oppression that Indigenous people have experienced in the US via firsthand accounts of her family members’

I was curious, so I tallied appearances of flags other than Palestinian ones at pro-Palestine actions since Oct. 7, per CCC data. Here are the 30 we've seen most often. Really shows the breadth of the cross-national and cross-community solidarity in this movement.

First-ever pride parade held in Mandeville, LA, this weekend. Hundreds turned out.

Northshore sees first-ever Pride parade, a “dream come true”www.wwltv.com Saturday, hundreds of people marched down the Mandeville lakefront in the Northshore’s first Pride parade.

Nice write-up on the UC Santa Barbara Liberated Zone encampment, still going strong after more than 5 weeks. Wish more of this trickled into the mainstream media to counter the BS "violent" and "antisemitic" narratives.

Five weeks into encampment, Liberated Zone has established an autonomous society | The Daily Nexusdailynexus.com Going into its fifth week, the Liberated Zone encampment, erected May 1 has become a place of community, solace and growth for participating students and community members.

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Our camp is getting raided and the police presence is insane

For the 3rd episode of our Nonviolent Action Lab podcast, I talked with two of the organizers of the weekly cycle of marches past several SCOTUS justices' homes in 2022 about the what, why, and how of those actions, and the intense blowback they got from the right.

Episode Three: The SCOTUS Marches – Ash Centerash.harvard.edu

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Often the change we want to see in the world has to start very locally The Nonviolent Action Lab Podcast invited me to talk about my community’s 1,300 days of consecutive racial justice demonstrations, how we did it and what the outcomes were! Check it out! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1...

‎Nonviolent Action Lab Podcast: 1,300 Days of BLM Demonstrations in Wooster, Ohio: The Wayne County Racial Justice Coalition on Apple Podcastspodcasts.apple.com ‎Show Nonviolent Action Lab Podcast, Ep 1,300 Days of BLM Demonstrations in Wooster, Ohio: The Wayne County Racial Justice Coalition - Apr 29, 2024

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Main takeaways: 1 movement is not primarily student or campus-centered, and has staying power 2 movement is NOT violent, and when violence has occurred it is mostly vs pro-P/anti-G protesters 3 movement’s “rhetorical core” is freedom for Palestinians and end to violence against them

Finally caught my breath for a sec and wrote a short thing about the encampments and the current state of pro-Palestinian/anti-genocide movement.

Three Things the Pro-Palestine Movement Is Notcountingcrowds.org Protest encampments have sprung up over the past few weeks on more than 100 college and university campuses across the country, and they have rightly drawn national attention to the pro-Palestinian mo...

Finally caught my breath for a sec and wrote a short thing about the encampments and the current state of pro-Palestinian/anti-genocide movement.

I've now updated our interactive dashboards of data on (shorthand) pro-Palestine and pro-Israel protests in the U.S. since Oct. 7 to include counter-protests with related claims. Here's a screenshot of the Pal one limited to encampments at schools. nonviolentactionlab.shinyapps.io/palestine-pr...

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the DC camp had tables of free food for anyone who needed it, a community garden w plants & flowers ("if dry, please water me!"), and tables of crafts for anyone who felt like making art

So much talk of violent protests, but as I wade through 1,000s of news stories and social media posts, virtually all of the violence I'm seeing is directed at the people protesting against genocide and calling for Palestinian liberation.

Do normies know that there've been at least 4 attempted vehicle rammings against pro-Palestine demonstrators in the past week, one of them successful? A knife brandished at student campers at Chapman U last night? Scores of students hit by cops with pepper spray and batons in past 24 hrs?

Solid piece on recent campus protests and the ethics of administrative and police responses to them, from Ash Center head Archon Fung.

Campus Protests and Police Force: An Ethical Framework – Ash Centerash.harvard.edu

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What if the central factor of the campus protests isn't liberal money or shadowy conspirators or TikTok algorithms but that young people are angry about Gaza? www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Analysis | Why is the simplest explanation of campus protests so hard to accept?www.washingtonpost.com And why is the New York Police Department so invested in promoting the idea of a conspiracy?

WaPo ran a viz today using our data on current wave of encampments and other protests on college campuses. Here's a gift link.

How pro-Palestinian college protests have grown, visualizedwapo.st Student groups have led a pro-Palestine protest movement across the country amid the war unfolding in Gaza.

Die Zeit used our data for a piece on Friday about the swelling anti-genocide divestment movement on U.S. campuses. Lots of new activity since then.

US-Universitäten: Wo US-Studierende für Palästina demonstrierenwww.zeit.de Dutzende Demonstrationen binnen einer Woche: In den USA protestieren an vielen Unis Studenten für mehr Solidarität mit Palästina. Wir zeigen wo.

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Eileen Clancy

Gift WSJ: "The Growing Pro-Palestinian Protest Movement, Visualized" This work is from the lab of @jayulfelder.bsky.social, "a political scientist who has been tracking them [pro-Palestinan protests] for the Harvard Kennedy School’s Nonviolent Action Lab." Gift link! www.wsj.com/politics/col...

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How close or far is the US from a #civilwar? Listen to another episode of my #podcast #TheGlobalAgora. I talked to @jayulfelder.bsky.social. podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/and... #politics

How close or far is the US from a civil war? by The Global Agorapodcasters.spotify.com How close or far is the US from a civil war? This was my question for Jay Ulfelder, a political scientist who works as a Research Project Manager at the Nonviolent Action Lab at the Harvard Kennedy Sc...

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“the largest single day of deliberately disruptive protest activity in the United States since at least 2020” — truly impressive, and inspiring, to read through this list of direct actions; resistance is spreading

Blogged overview of of all the direct actions and acts of civil disobedience we saw yesterday in the U.S. as part of the A15 Day of Action for Palestinian liberation. At least 23 events across 21 cities with more than 260 arrests.

A15 Day of Action for Palestinian Liberation Delivers Intended Disruptionscountingcrowds.org In the largest single day of deliberately disruptive protest activity in the United States since at least 2020, activists responded to the call for a global "coordinated economic blockade to free Pale...

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The best time to urge for a ceasefire was immediately but the second best time is always the present. Here's five actions, starting with "use US leverage to press for a ceasefire" that the US can do right now towards an end to the killing in Gaza internationalpolicy.org/publications...

The Gaza War at Six Months: Five Recommendations for Ending the Fighting and Ensuring Human Security in Israel-Palestine - CIPinternationalpolicy.org Our recommended steps for the Biden Administration to take to stop the fighting, end the nightmare faced by Palestinian civilians and Israeli hostages, and ensure the security, rights and well-being o...

New union dropped! Today, I am a BBIU stan account because a) unions are great and b) the shift lead quoted in this Globe story about the announcement is my (adult) kid.

Five Blue Bottle Coffee locations in Greater Boston unionize - The Boston Globewww.bostonglobe.com Employees claim to be the first local baristas to organize independently, rather than joining forces with an established union.

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US changes how it categorizes people by race and ethnicity. It’s the first revision in 27 years

US changes how it categorizes people by race and ethnicity. It's the first revision in 27 yearsapnews.com For the first time in 27 years, the U.S. government is changing how it categorizes people by race and ethnicity.

Short new post on the CCC blog spotlighting increasing references to hunger and starvation at pro-Palestine protests in the U.S. as famine looms in Gaza.

U.S. Protest Rhetoric Tracks Looming Famine in Gazacountingcrowds.org As Refugees International president Jeremy Konyndyk wrote in a post this week on NYU School of Law's Just Security blog: Three months ago the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) proces...