December 31, 2017

Here Are 2017’s Best Protest Posters

The good, the adorable, and the witty.

Jessica Hill/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

The year is nearly over, and politically speaking, it hasn’t been pretty. Plenty of outrageous, terrifying, shameful things have happened since Donald Trump took office, but from the very first day of his presidency, a massive contingent of the nation has taken to the streets.

The day after Trump’s inauguration, women and their allies showed up in record numbers to protest the new president and his incoming Cabinet—and it ballooned into America’s largest single-day demonstration in recorded history. More than 3 million people poured into the streets of cities across the country for the Women’s March, to push back against human rights violations affecting women, LGBT people, and immigrants.

Other protests this year included the March for Science and the People’s Climate March, and protests following Trump’s decisions to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, end the DACA program, and ban immigrants from Muslim-majority countries. At each one, there were signs—lots of signs.

Here’s our list (in no particular order) of the most striking, creative, and outright hilarious protest signs of this historic year:

1. Orange is the New Black star Uzo Aduba’s sign was inspired by Meryl Streep’s epic anti-Trump Golden Globes acceptance speech.

2. This spot-on Game of Thrones reference.

3. I feel this.

4. All the vagina signs, really.

View this post on Instagram

Women's march, NYC

A post shared by JC Garcia-Lavin (@jcgarcialavin) on

5. From the mouths of babes.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BW5dlkAgVmA/?hl=en&tagged=bestprotestsigns

6. Bigly.

Women's March on Washington
Jim West / ZUMA

7. I’m crying.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BTfQ0v0l07q/?taken-by=eatshirterryday

8. This on-point Gilligan’s Island reference.

View this post on Instagram

#trustscience #gotscience #sciencemarch #science

A post shared by Spikelberry (@spikelberry) on

9. BURN.

10. These middle schoolers aren’t holding back.

Women's March on Washington
Michael Nigro / Pacific Press/ZUMA

11. Neither is she.

View this post on Instagram

My new idol #womensmarch #notmypresident

A post shared by Ariane Ackerberg (@aackerberg) on

12. And you thought high school math would never come in handy.

View this post on Instagram

#bestprotestsigns #science

A post shared by David Dream (@ddream88) on

13. This clergyman is doing God’s work.

March for Racial Justice
Erik Mcgregor / Pacific Press/ZUMA

14. There were words of wisdom from feminist icons.

15. PERFECTION.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BPkxnXNBDXC/?hl=en&tagged=notmycheeto

16. “No comment needed.”

17. I’d vote for this kid.

Women's March on Washington
Jim West / ZUMA

18. This sign is just too real.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BYBaBxPFxC7/?hl=en&tagged=bestprotestsigns

19. I really hope Trump saw this one.

View this post on Instagram

My favorite so far. #bestprotestsign #cutestprotester

A post shared by Anne Tofflemire (@annetofflemire) on

20. And this sign pretty much sums it up.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BVNSEi8AKGN/

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate