The most influential protests of 2017

Immigrant groups planned rallies nationwide on this year's May Day. The rallies and protests in major cities, including New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, drew tens of thousands of people.

The goal was to stand up against President Donald Trump's anti-immigration platform and policies.

The day after Trump's inauguration, an estimated 500,000 people attended the Women's March on Washington. Several other cities around the US and world held their own marches.

According to the DC organizers, the march's goal was to stand up for equality for all groups, especially women, LGBT folks, people of color, immigrants, and those with disabilities.

Venezuela is facing ongoing protests, which began in early 2017 after the arrest of multiple opposition leaders and after the country's Supreme Court dissolved Parliament and transferred all legislative powers to itself. 

Protestors (known as opposition activists) argue that the move signals the erosion of democracy in Venezuela. They also attribute the country's high levels of inflation and chronic scarcity of basic resources to corruption in Venezuela's government, led by President Nicolas Maduro.

As the nation's capital, DC is a natural place for people to demand political change.

In 2017, people often Googled "DC protest" to learn more about the various political groups that organized there. Some of these protests included an LGBT equality march, a series of DACA marches, a pro-Trump rally, and the March for Black Women (aka the March for Racial Equality).

In late January, tens of thousands of people in over 80 US airports protested Trump's first travel ban, which would have temporarily barred refugees and immigrants from seven majority-Muslim countries.

Two federal judges blocked Trump's second iteration of the ban on March 15.

In September, Jason Stockley, a white police officer on trial for murder in the shooting death of 24-year-old Anthony Lamar Smith, was acquitted in St. Louis, Missouri.

On the third of 16 days of protests, more than 120 people were arrested when a small group attacked police, broke windows, and flipped over trash cans, according to authorities. The next day, peaceful protesters locked arms on Market Street, a few blocks from the site of the previous night's violence.

The rallies continued throughout October and then again on November 24, when around 50 protestors attempted to disrupt Black Friday sales at the St. Louis Galleria mall.

On 11 instances in February, March, April, August, and September, there were clashes between pro-Trump demonstrators (including the alt-right, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis) and anti-Trump counter-protestors (including socialists, anarchists, and Antifa members) in Berkeley, California.

The first protest happened when media personality and Trump supporter Milo Yiannopoulos was set to deliver a speech at the University of California, Berkeley. Further protests occurred due to pro-Trump rallies, after conservative commentator Ann Coulter pulled out of a planned speech, and after a student group cancelled a "Free Speech Week."

In August in Boston, Massachusetts, a group planned a rally that aimed to "defend freedom of speech." The ralliers identified as members of the "alt-lite," a loosely organized, far-right group comprised of people who oppose mainstream conservatism to varying degrees.

The event ended up attracting fewer rally attendees than counter-protestors, who argued that hate speech should not be tolerated. 

Another far-right protest, met by over 100 counter-protestors, was held in the same location in November.

In August, a group of white nationalists held a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. It turned violent when a driver plowed into a crowd of counter-protesters and killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer.

Four days later, a crowd held a peaceful vigil in the wake of the violence.

Carrying lit torches, a white nationalist group later reappeared in Charlottesville in October. Just like the summer before, demonstrators chanted "You will not replace us!" and that the South would "rise again."

Colin Kaepernick, an NFL quarterback who doesn't play for a specific team, spurred a wave of protests that prompted a series of reactionary tweets from President Trump. In September 2016, instead of putting his hand over his heart during the national anthem, Kaepernick kneeled to protest police brutality against people of color and to promote racial equality. 

Throughout the 2017 season, other NFL players did the same.