Protesters have taken to the streets to make their voices heard in huge numbers across the globe this year. According to data published by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) project, June 2025 had the second-highest number of demonstrations in a single month within the United States, topped only by June 2020, at the peak of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The United States is not the only country where protesters have mobilized on a massive scale. The Global Protest Tracker notes that in a range of countries, from the United Kingdom to Turkey to Bangladesh, there have been 150 significant antigovernment protests in the last year.
The rising tide of protesters has increasingly run up against new restrictions and crackdowns on the ability to assemble in peace. From Donald Trump threatening universities that permit what he calls “illegal protests,” to mass arrests of those demonstrating in support of Palestine Action in London, governments are making it progressively more difficult for protesters to exercise their civil liberties.
Disputes over the freedom to assemble are not a new development. We can find an important precedent in the history of Ancient Rome, where fear of popular protest unnerved the state over the course of several centuries.
After Rome’s founding by Romulus in 753 BCE, the city had six more kings. A popular coup led by a legendary man named Lucius Junius Brutus overthrew the last, Tarquinius Superbus. Rome then became a res publica — a Republic — in 509 BCE. But even without kings, social conflict…
Auteur: Sarah Bond
