12 Protests That Changed the World

Protests are one of the most popular ways to express disapproval and effect change, and people continue to take to the streets today. In this list—adapted from an episode of The List Show on YouTube—we cover world-altering protests from across history, from the Battle of Cable Street to the more recent Jasmine Revolution to the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt. 

1. The Battle of Cable Street
2. The Storming of the Bastille
3. Stonewall
4. The Swedish Campaign to ‘Call in Gay’ to Work
5. The Peasants’ Revolt
6. The Salt March
7. Iceland’s Women’s Day Off 
8. The Women’s Anti-Pass March
9. Tiananmen Square
10. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
11. Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution
12. Earth Day

The Battle of Cable Street

On October 4, 1936, thousands of members of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) took to the streets of London’s East End to celebrate the organization’s fourth anniversary. At the time, fascism was on the rise throughout Europe. Hitler had already been appointed chancellor of Germany three years prior, and the ideology continued to gain momentum in other countries. The BUF’s leader, Oswald Mosley, had even met—and greatly admired—Mussolini.

The BUF intentionally chose an area of London with a large Jewish population for their march; they’d previously spent months distributing pamphlets in the neighborhood, hoping to intimidate the Jewish people who lived there. Though more than 100,000 people petitioned to stop the march, the Home Secretary denied their request. The BUF was even successfully able to request police protection.

A crowd of Jewish, Irish, Communist, and working-class counter-protesters clashed with the police as they blocked the march’s path. People formed barricades to halt its progression. Women supposedly dumped their chamber pots and trash over the officers’ heads as they tried to clear the way. The counter-protests grew violent as the police injured the anti-fascists.  

The police eventually forced the marchers to change their route, putting an end to the BUF’s plan to complete their march through the East End. While the protest itself probably had little effect directly, it meant new laws were brought in that heralded the defeat of fascism in 20th-century Britain.

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The Storming of the Bastille

On July 14, 1789, revolutionaries stormed the Bastille, the famed Parisian prison. Rebellion had been in the air for a while: France was in an economic crisis, and people were sick of the king’s lavish spending. The Third Estate—which represented all royal subjects except for the clergy and the nobility—were at odds with the monarchy. 

People were afraid the king would begin arresting and attacking members of the National Assembly, a newly formed organization emerging from the Third Estate that fought for individual rights and government representation. Revolutionaries first stormed a soldiers’/veterans’ hospital and seized thousands of guns and five cannons. They then set their sights on the gunpowder held within the Bastille and set out to free the people detained there. Guards shot at the oncoming mob—but it did nothing to deter their attack.

The actual storming of the Bastille didn’t accomplish much in the moment: There were only seven people imprisoned there, and the whole structure was meant to be demolished soon anyway. But the fortress was viewed as a symbol of the king’s cruel abuses of power; its downfall was a symbol of the peoples’ resistance. The storming of the Bastille quickly became one of the defining moments of the French Revolution.

Stonewall

The Stonewall Inn wasn’t the place you’d expect police to target. Yes, it was run as a gay bar in an era when such establishments were highly frowned upon. But it was also run by the mob, and its owners had a knack for bribing local law enforcement. Members of the LGBTQ+ community were usually safe there, as corrupt officers typically tipped off the bar’s owners when they knew a raid was in the works.

But that was not the case on June 28, 1969, when police raided the Stonewall Inn without warning. They arrested 13 people and confiscated the bar’s alcohol. Those in the bar, plus some local residents, fought back. The crowd swelled and tension escalated as the officers grew increasingly rough toward those they arrested. The police became so scared of the burgeoning crowd of protesters that they actually locked themselves inside the building. 

The mob outside eventually dispersed—temporarily. The riots reignited the next night when another crowd gathered to face off against the police, and the situation on both sides grew even more violent. The protests flared up yet again days later after the Village Voice used gay slurs in its coverage of the conflict. 

While not the first such clash, Stonewall—it’s often called a “riot,” but many people involved prefer “uprising” or “rebellion”—was a watershed moment in U.S. history that prompted members of the LGBTQ+ community to increase their political advocacy. Advocates in New York City honored the protests’ one-year anniversary by hosting the city’s first gay rights parade. Stonewall’s influence spread far beyond New York City: The rebellion sparked a drastic increase in activism throughout the United States, including the gay liberation movement of the 1970s and ‘80s.

The Swedish Campaign to ‘Call in Gay’ to Work

Being gay was considered a mental illness, health disorder, or even a disease throughout much of the 20th century—even in Scandinavia, which tends to be one of the world’s more LGTBQ+-friendly places.

In 1979, people in Sweden sought to change that. Workers throughout the country began calling in gay to work. Not sick, but gay. Because the country classified gayness as an illness, one woman was even able to get Social Security benefits for the “condition.” 

The many people who called in gay were part of larger protests spearheaded by this group. In August 1979, in addition to calling into work saying they felt gay, protesters blocked the stairwell of  the National Board of Health and Welfare, which classified non-heterosexuality as a disorder. Their efforts eventually paid off. In October 1979, Sweden became the first European country to stop classifying being gay as a disease.

The Peasants’ Revolt

British taxes have sparked a number of influential protests throughout history. A 14th-century poll tax set off the Peasants’ Revolt, which is often referred to as England’s first major popular rebellion. Rural rebels, facing years of economic pressure after the Black Death led to a labor shortage, rebelled against the existing class system. Their movement wasn’t an outright victory—more than 1000 rebels were killed in the ensuing skirmishes, and King Richard II was able to restore order after just a few weeks. But the following decades did slowly see an increase in rural wages, and more and more peasants were able to “buy their freedom” and become independent farmers rather than continue to serve as serfs under the feudal system. 

The Salt March

The East India Company imposed taxes on and restrictions on salt after Britain colonized India. Under the Salt Act of 1882, Indians were banned from being able to collect or sell salt, and instead had to buy it from the Brits. It was an extremely unpopular law, as most people could not afford the salt they needed.

Mahatma Gandhi led a nonviolent protest against the then-decades-old salt tax on March 12, 1930. He and a few dozen followers began their 240-mile walk to a town on the Arabian Sea, where they intended to get their own salt. Gandhi’s crowd of followers grew as his journey progressed; by the time he reached his final destination, thousands of people had gathered.

Gandhi and his followers simply plucked bits of salt off the beach, violating the law that prohibited them from doing so. No one was arrested that day, though as the movement progressed and civil disobedience spread across India, even Gandhi himself was detained. 

Britain’s policies in India came under global scrutiny after thousands of people were attacked for marching on the Dharasana Salt Works in May 1930; by the end of the year, more than 60,000 Indians were jailed for their peaceful protests. Gandhi and the British Viceroy, Lord Irwin, eventually came to an agreement in March of 1931 that allowed people who lived along the coasts to produce salt for personal use. The British monarchy, however, still maintained an overall monopoly on the mineral.

Iceland’s Women’s Day Off 

The United Nations declared 1975 International Women’s Year. But while women had made strides toward gender equality, in many places, they still faced a hefty wage gap and lacked equal rights in society.

On October 24, 1975, 90 percent of Icelandic Women staged a one-day strike to raise awareness of their worth both in the workplace and at home. The Women’s Day Off was exactly what it sounded like: Women took a day off from work, and also refused to do any housework or childcare. 

Twenty-five thousand people—a bit over one-tenth of Iceland’s entire population—rallied in Reykjavik while the country’s men had to figure out both work and household and family duties.  

The one-day protest had worldwide effects that linger to this day. Iceland’s parliament passed a law regarding equal rights the next year, and the movement also helped Iceland’s first woman president take office just five years later. Recent protests, like Poland’s 2016 Black Monday and the International Women’s Strike of 2017 and 2018, were inspired by Iceland’s Women’s Day Off.

The Women’s Anti-Pass March

Most people are familiar with Nelson Mandela’s years-long struggle to end apartheid and racial segregation in South Africa. His work spanned decades, finally culminating in victory in the 1990s. But there are several other anti-apartheid individuals and groups whose names often don’t appear in the history books.

South Africa had a long history of pass laws, a domestic passport system that severely restricted the movements of Black South Africans. People had to have the correct documentation if they wanted to pass through places deemed “white” areas. Anyone without the proper papers would be arrested. Most iterations of the pass laws over the decades applied to men. White South Africans had unsuccessfully tried to enact pass laws for women in the 1910s, but enforcing them sparked widespread protests. Additional attempts in the 1950s were yet again met with dissent.

The Federation of South African Women, an anti-apartheid group, formed in 1954 to advocate for women’s rights and were the driving force behind the 1956 Women’s March. On August 9 that year, upwards of 20,000 women from across South Africa marched in Pretoria, the country’s administrative capital, to petition the prime minister to abolish pass laws. The prime minister was not there, and after delivering their papers to his secretary, the women broke out into a protest song. 

Pass laws didn’t end until 1986 and the years between the 1956 Women’s March and their abolition grew increasingly violent. But the march is still remembered as a monumental movement in South Africa; the country now honors National Women’s Day every year on its anniversary.

Tiananmen Square

People in cities across China—mainly university students who had recently been exposed to Western ideologies—had been pushing for political and economic reform throughout the spring of 1989.  It started in April, when students began assembling in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square after the death of Hu Yaobang, a former Chinese Communist Party General Secretary who had previously been forced to resign during a crackdown on pro-reform leaders. It wasn’t long before non-students joined in the movement and the crowds grew to include tens of thousands of people. 

The Chinese government could not disperse the crowd—despite declaring martial law by the end of May. It all came to a head on the night of June 3, when tanks and armed soldiers rolled into Tiananmen Square, bulldozing and shooting anyone who dared block their path. Most of the protesters finally left the square by the next morning, though on June 5 one protestor’s face-off with the oncoming tanks gained international attention. We don’t know how many people died during the conflict, but estimates range from between a few hundred to up to 10,000. 

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

The March on Washington was one of several protests during the 1950s and 1960s Civil Rights Movement. On August 28, 1963, roughly 250,000 people assembled at the Lincoln Memorial to rally for equality for Black Americans. 

The march was years in the making. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had previously fended off a planned 1941 march by signing an executive order that outlawed discrimination against workers in the defense and government sectors. He also established the Fair Employment Practice Committee and tasked it with investigating claims of racial discrimination, but that organization quickly ran out of funding and dissolved in 1946.

The Civil Rights Movement continued to gain traction throughout the 1950s, and relatively smaller marches on Washington started to take place. Momentum grew as violence against peaceful Civil Rights protesters escalated in the early ‘60s.

Along with many others, A. Philip Randolph, the man behind the earlier marches, and Martin Luther King, Jr., joined forces for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Randolph was the event’s first speaker, and King ended the day with his now-iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. The peaceful protest was an enormous success, and it helped prompt the government to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 the following year.

Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution

On December 17, 2010, a 26-year-old Tunisian street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi self-immolated after police seized his equipment because he didn’t have a permit. The police were corrupt, and often demanded bribes from him. Bouazizi unsuccessfully tried to complain to his local governor about yet another run-in with the officers. But when the governor refused to meet with him, the young man set himself on fire. 

Bouazizi’s self-immolation set off a wave of protests in Tunisia. The movement, known as the Jasmine Revolution, spread throughout the country and eventually led the president to step down and flee, clearing the way for the country’s first free election in 2011.

Bouazizi’s self-immolation also inspired other Middle Eastern countries to fight their own oppressive regimes in what’s known as the Arab Spring. Several countries were successful in overthrowing their governments.

But not all countries involved in the Arab Spring saw positive outcomes. After peaceful transitions of power and periods of democracy, Tunisia is once again under authoritarian rule. And protests against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad prompted a horrifically violent government crackdown against the citizens that led to both a civil war and a refugee crisis.

Earth Day

Today, Earth Day is viewed as a celebration of the planet we call home. People may organize park cleanups or plant trees to mark the occasion. But the first Earth Day was actually a protest—and it launched the biggest environmental movement in history.

The 20th century saw its fair share of environmental advocacy. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring famously rallied people against the use of the pesticide DDT and put environmental concerns in the forefront of many people’s minds. But when it came to protecting the planet, there was still more work to be done.

Wisconsin senator Gaylord Nelson, inspired by the anti-Vietnam War movements that took place in the 1960s, encouraged people to organize their own Earth Day peaceful protests and teach-ins. His idea snowballed into something far greater than he anticipated. 

On April 22, 1970, around 20 million people participated in local events throughout the United States. It was one of the biggest movements in the country’s history. Earth Day didn’t herald any sort of fairytale ending to pollution and environmental abuse, but it was a solid start. The Environmental Protection Agency was established later that year, and millions of people around the world now celebrate April 22 as Earth Day.