Omar Wasow

I’ve been studying civil rights protests for 20 years. With new mobilization against Trump’s agenda, I’m sharing a thread summarizing my research on how nonviolent & violent actions by 1960s activists and police influenced media, elites, public opinion & voters. 1/ www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Serbia’s students have won. When we interviewed them for our @democratization.bsky.social article with @pelinamus.bsky.social they told us they would stay away from opposition parties ("they are all the same") and build their own list to beat Vučić. And they just did it! 🔗 doi.org/10.1080/1351...

Can sustained nonviolent protest defeat corrupt, autocratic regimes? www.bbc.com/news/article...

whoa www.nytimes.com/2026/10/26/w...

Today was the best day for global democracy in quite a while.

The Student List had no party machinery. It operated through university assemblies, protests and hiking between cities & towns. They had 2% of national TV political advertising airtime vs 93% for Vučić. This is one of the most remarkable grassroots democratic victories in modern European history.

The achievement of Serbian students overthrowing Aleksandar Vučić can't be overstated. In 2024, they began protesting. In 2025, they transformed a protest movement into civil dissidence. In 2026, they became a political party — and two months later, crushed a corrupt state-entrenched authoritarian.

For almost 150 years, white supremacists argued that letting Black people free from slavery or apartheid would result in the demise of American civilization. Then, integration came and society didn't end. It got better for almost everyone. But the value of the psychological wage depreciated.

Early this year, I visited Ingram, a TX town of ~1,900, to check out a tip. The area was starting to recover from its worst flood in a century. But as Latino workers drove to jobsites to help rebuild, the tipster said, a cop in a black Dodge Charger kept stopping them ... 🧵

The Secret Life of Prepper Mitty

“He should be on HGTV,” Mr. Obama said, ridiculing Mr. Trump’s focus on applying gold trimmings to the White House. “He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. Just gold everywhere.” www.nytimes.com/2026/10/24/u...

So glad this is out in the world! Idea for this paper first came from public convos back in 2015 about Rachel Dolezal and why she couldn’t be Black in the public eye. Lots of folks had lots to say about the social construction of Blackness. This is our attempt to say lots of something about that.

3X: “At birth, Mr Vance was named James Donald Bowman, after his father, Donald Bowman.” After his mother remarried, “he became James David Hamel…After law school, J.D. married a classmate, Usha Chilukuri, and they both changed their last name to Vance” Gift link www.nytimes.com/2024/07/15/u...

attracting media attention with "stunts" was literally the entire core of the civil rights movement. visuals of cops and other officials harassing, beating, killing organizers was pivotal. the civil rights movement would have gone wild for selfies and tweets.

As a young grad student, I read an article by @micheldegraff.bsky.social that put words to an injustice I was witnessing: suppression of the Cabo Verdean Kriolu language and its speakers. Prof DeGraff's meticulous documentation of "Creole exceptionalism" in sociolinguistics lit my mind on fire.

Mega-donors giving $1M+ make up 54% of GOP fundraising so far this cycle. It’s not just billionaires lining up for Trump’s open air auction of federal policy and contracts. The GOP also spammed and grifted its own small-dollar base into oblivion.

Teaching The Act of Killing today and thinking about this quote: “I had this feeling that I had wandered into Germany forty years after the Holocaust and found the Nazis still in power.” — Joshua Oppenheimer, director of The Act of Killing thecresset.org/2013/Michael...

This is an insane thing to say, not because the prescription for pedestrians is wrong, but from policy standpoint of not mentioning distracted drivers traveling in a mini-tanks.

It took 20 years of county vs city fights, but we got a couple dedicated, painted and lit crosswalks near my house in Minneapolis and it has been an absolutely transformative boost in my quality of life. Crosswalks are a pure civic good.

“American roads are becoming deadlier for walkers. Between 2009 and 2024, pedestrian deaths increased 72% across the U.S., federal data show. Over the same period, such deaths declined in most other developed nations, according to United Nations data. In road safety, the U.S. is an outlier.” 🎁

i will be the judge of that

Should open rallies with Sir Mix-a-lot

It's also impressive that in 2025, total reported violent crime fell below what it was in 1979 (1.12 million, vs 1.20 million), despite the total population growing by 55% (220 million, vs. 342 million). Since peaking in 1992, violent crime is down over 40%, the rate down 55%.

Democrats are more likely to vote early than Republicans, so I'm not looking at total turnout; I'm looking for shifts in the PACE of turnout. In recent elections, shifts in pace were early hints of final patterns. Democrats ought to be pretty happy thus far.

Based on some 2018 data, I’d expect lower Republican turnout to be a widespread pattern. Many GOP voters are unhappy too, but voting for Democrats is a bridge too far. What to do? Stay home.

“The Tesla Roadster is vaporware. But Elon Musk is very good at distracting from unshipped vaporware by delivering on stunts.” daringfireball.net/2026/10/real...

It’s Columbus Day, as Trump keeps saying. What to make of it, given Indigenous peoples’ wholly merited dislike of it? In general, it's a problem when a national holiday angers millions in that nation--especially when the reason for the anger has nothing to do with the reason for the holiday. 1/14

“When the investors did fund us” Kimbal Musk recalled, “they realized that we were illegal immigrants.” “Well…” Elon Musk interjected “Yes, we were” Kimbal Musk pushed back Elon Musk laughed as he jumped in with a different interpretation: “I’d say it was a gray area.” www.cnn.com/2024/09/29/u...

“Melania Trump was paid for 10 modeling jobs in the US worth $20,056 that occurred in the seven weeks before she had legal permission to work in the country, according to detailed accounting ledgers, contracts and related documents from 20 years ago provided to The Associated Press.”

I took the Turing Podcast Test and, for first 30 minutes, failed 😭