Monthly regional updates
Update
United States and Canada Overview - October 2024
Regional Overview: Political and protest activities in the US and Canada, including various trends and group spotlights.
Demonstration trends
This section provides key figures on demonstration events, which includes incidents categorized as 'Protests,' and 'Violent demonstrations' as recorded by ACLED. For more information on event and sub-event types, see the ACLED Codebook
compared to last month
compared to last month
Radical group trends
This section provides key figures on far-right and white nationalist groups.
Far-right groups:
ACLED uses this term to refer to a variety of actors, from 'traditional' militias to militant street movements. Though they are also analyzed separately, this figure also accounts for white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups.
White nationalists:
ACLED uses this term to refer to groups that openly describe themselves as white nationalist, white supremacist, or neo-Nazi.
- 65 events, of which 47 involve white nationalist groups
- 19 radical groups active, of which 7 are white nationalist
- Radical groups were most active in Arizona and Michigan
- White nationalist groups were most active in Michigan
Group Spotlight: Yavapai County Preparedness Team
On 12 and 26 October, the Yavapai County Preparedness Team (YCPT), an Arizona militia, held its first recruitment and informational meetings of 2024, following a full year of inactivity.
The YCPT is an Oath Keepers splinter group led by Joe Arroyo, the former vice president of the Arizona chapter of the Oath Keepers. In the aftermath of the 6 January Capitol riot, Arroyo severed ties with national Oath Keepers leadership to create the YCPT, as well as its political arm and sister organization, the Lions of Liberty.9 Though these groups are ostensibly separate and Arroyo claims they are registered as separate entities, they are hosted on the same website, attend each others’ meetings, and for all intents and purposes operate as a single group. YCPT’s ideology includes election denial, anti-government sentiment, conspiracy theories about weather control, and preparing for catastrophes such as natural disasters (hence their name). The group has repeatedly and recently highlighted a perceived threat of civil war in the US. In many of these respects, the group still has a similar ideology as the Oath Keepers, forecasting a civil war and preparing a paramilitary response to it.10
In Arizona, the YCPT has organized a series of other ‘preparedness teams,’ founding the Chino Valley, Verde Valley, McHenry County, and Maricopa County preparedness teams.11 Arroyo has also sought to export the preparedness team model to other states and claims to be in contact with individuals across the country setting up similar organizations.
During the 2022 midterm elections, members of the YCPT, in coordination with Lions of Liberty and an election denialism group called Clean Elections USA, organized ‘Operation DropBox,’ which involved taking pictures of voters and their license plates at ballot drop boxes in Maricopa County, Arizona. In some cases, the self-appointed poll watchers were armed.12 These groups believed that there were voters stuffing ballot boxes, among other election conspiracy theories. Multiple groups that were alarmed by these actions, including the League of Women Voters, launched a lawsuit in response. The YCPT and the Lions of Liberty publicly disavowed the operation and denied involvement. In their most recent meeting, YTPT’s leadership again warned of a forthcoming civil war, referring to members of Congress as “domestic enemies.”13
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Methodology
See the Codebook and the User Guide for an overview of ACLED’s core methodology. For additional documentation, check the Knowledge Base. Region-specific methodology briefs can be accessed below.
Links:
Regional Special Projects
For additional resources and in-depth coverage of demonstration and political violence trends across the US, check our dedicated US Crisis Monitor.
