Left politics and labor / Crowd Counting Consortium
Crowd Counting Consortium
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/
Labor actionactive
The archive's reading. none stated. The archive reads the dataset as a holder independent of the movements and governments it counts, whose record has been used against prevailing narratives (that the 2020 uprising was violent; that there was 'no resistance' in 2025). It keeps the crowd and leaves the internal argument of the movement unrecorded.
| Kind | a public interest and scholarly project documenting protests and demonstrations in the United States, publishing an event dataset |
|---|---|
| Operator | Harvard Kennedy School and the University of Connecticut (joint project), part of the Nonviolent Action Lab at the Ash Center; begun by Jeremy Pressman (UConn) and Erica Chenoweth (HKS) |
| Unit of record | a political protest event reported in the United States, with crowd numbers |
| What it records | political protest events in the United States from 2017: rallies, marches, demonstrations, riots and acts of civil disobedience; it excludes crowds at meetings, teach-ins, workshops, panels, fundraisers and town halls |
| Whose record it keeps | the record of political crowds in the United States: occurrence, themes and scale, as publicly reported or submitted with a verifiable source |
| Who holds it | a university project (Harvard Kennedy School and UConn), funded by foundations and university centres; data published monthly on the Harvard Dataverse |
| The losing side | not recorded. The data are used to study protest, counter-protest and state response; the saved page shows nothing of the positions, splits or dissent inside the movements counted |
| Method | news-derived event coding: publicly available reports of protest events, records submitted by the public and posted only when confirmed by fact-checking, and a collaboration with countlove.org's webcrawler |
| Coverage | geography: United States; period: 2017 to the present, in three phases: 2017-2020, 2021-2024, 2025 to the present |
| Count | value: not stated as a total in the saved source; a dated subset: nearly 12,400 pro-Palestine and over 2,000 pro-Israel protests recorded from 7 October 2023 to 7 June 2024; as_of: 2026-10-31 (page read); the subset from the article of 23 October 2024 |
| Holdings | protest event data in three phases, downloadable from the Harvard Dataverse; Crowd Counting Commentary and analysis pieces; Israel/Palestine protest dashboards; more than 600 scholarly citations of the team's articles and essays since 2017 |
| Stated limits | 'We only post records that we can confirm and verify through fact-checking.'; 'We do not count crowds at meetings, teach-ins or academic workshops, panel discussions, fundraisers, or town halls.'; 'We will never post, release, or share identifying information that has not already been reported in the public domain.' |
| Data access | public download from the Harvard Dataverse (dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/crowdcountingconsortium/), published monthly; a public submission form |
| Licence | not stated in the saved source (page footer: © Copyright 2026 The President and Fellows of Harvard College) |
| Lifecycle | state: active; detail: begun with the Women's March of 21 January 2017; expanded to near-real-time information; third phase from 2025 to the present; data published monthly |
| Founded | 2017 |
What its record can settle
- how many protests on a theme occurred in the United States in a period, and where
- the size and spread of named mobilizations (the 2017 Women's March, the 2020 protests after George Floyd's murder, No Kings in 2025)
- whether protests in a wave were broadly nonviolent, as the data record
What it cannot settle
- labor action as such: it counts political crowds of all kinds
- protests that were never publicly reported or verified
- the positions argued inside a movement, or which tendency organized an event
Kept apart
- NOT a labor dataset: it records political protest of every kind, and labor action only as part of it
- NOT human subjects research, by the determinations of the University of Denver and UConn
- NOT a record of crowds at meetings, teach-ins or town halls
Evidence
- self_description (the resource's own statement):
A public interest and scholarly project to document protests and demonstrations in the United States.
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e… - operator (the resource's own statement):
The Crowd Counting Consortium (CCC) is a joint project of Harvard Kennedy School and the University of Connecticut that collects publicly available data on political protest events reported in the United States, including rallies, marches, demonstrations, and acts of civil disobedience.
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e… - part_of (the resource's own statement):
Part of Nonviolent Action Lab
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e… - founded (the resource's own statement):
The CCC first emerged from a collaborative effort by Jeremy Pressman (UConn) and Erica Chenoweth (HKS) to estimate the number of participants in the Women’s March on Washington (and its affiliated sister marches nationwide) on January 21, 2017.
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e… - expanded (the resource's own statement):
Since then, the project has expanded to provide near-real-time information on trends in the occurrence, themes, and scale of American protest activity.
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e… - data_access (the resource's own statement):
CCC data are published monthly on a publicly accessible Dataverse, for use by scholars, journalists, movement leaders, and others.
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e… - phases (the resource's own statement):
Protest event data from CCC’s three phases — 2017-2020, 2021-2024, and 2025 to the present — can be downloaded from the project’s Dataverse.
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e… - dataverse (the resource's own statement):
https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/crowdcountingconsortium/
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e… - unit (the resource's own statement):
We collect publicly available data on political crowds reported in the United States, including marches, protests, demonstrations, riots, and other actions.
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e… - limit_excluded (the resource's own statement):
We do not count crowds at meetings, teach-ins or academic workshops, panel discussions, fundraisers, or town halls.
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e… - limit_verified (the resource's own statement):
We only post records that we can confirm and verify through fact-checking.
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e… - limit_identity (the resource's own statement):
We will never post, release, or share identifying information that has not already been reported in the public domain.
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e… - goal (the resource's own statement):
Our goal is to make the aggregate data on crowd numbers publicly available for each event.
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e… - countlove (the resource's own statement):
We have collaborated with countlove.org , a volunteer group that developed a webcrawler to identify protests and demonstrations on a daily basis.
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e… - irb (the resource's own statement):
The University of Denver’s Office of Research Integrity and Education determined that the project does not qualify as human subjects research
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e… - counter_protest (the resource's own statement):
Academics routinely turn to the CCC data to study protest, counter-protest, and state response.
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e… - citations (the resource's own statement):
Articles and essays published by the CCC team since 2017 have collectively garnered more than 600 scholarly citations so far.
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e… - count_subset (the resource's own statement):
From 7 October 2023 to 7 June 2024, the Crowd Counting Consortium recorded nearly 12,400 pro-Palestine protests and over 2,000 pro-Israel protests in the United States.
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e… - count_subset_date (the resource's own statement):
Oct 23, 2024
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e… - no_resistance (the resource's own statement):
Most recently, the CCC data have been used to rebut the narrative that there is “no resistance” to the second Trump administration.
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e… - peaceful_2020 (the resource's own statement):
CCC data support the claim that the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprising was overwhelmingly peaceful
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e… - no_kings (the resource's own statement):
The CCC data also demonstrated that the No Kings protests in June and October of 2025 were among the largest single-day demonstrations in US history.
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e… - latest_commentary (the resource's own statement):
Aug 15, 2025
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e… - funding (the resource's own statement):
Funding is made possible in part by the Freedom Together Foundation, New Venture Fund, Humanity United, the John T. and Catherine D. MacArthur Foundation
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e… - aka (the resource's own statement):
Crowd Counting Consortium, crowdcounting.org, accessed September 17, 2021.
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e… - copyright (the resource's own statement):
© Copyright 2026 The President and Fellows of Harvard College
https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ · read 2026-10-31 · http 200 · sha256 bd7b38580b7baa3e…
Unchecked
the dataset on the Harvard Dataverse and its codebook; the dataset's licence (not on the saved page); the crowdcounting.org site named in the citation form; the commentary and articles listed on the page
Cite: Lee Sharks, ed. "Crowd Counting Consortium." Mary Lee Labor meta-aggregator: left politics and labor, maryleelabor.org, compiled 2026-10-31. https://www.maryleelabor.org/aggregators/crowd-counting-consortium