What were the main issues that sparked protests during the Obama administration?

1. Economic policy and the Tea Party backlash

Large-scale conservative protests erupted over government spending, taxation and the stimulus package, crystallizing in Tax Day rallies and the Taxpayer March on Washington as part of the Tea Party movement that mobilized tens of thousands to oppose what they saw as an expansion of federal power under Obama ^[1].

2. Health care and the Affordable Care Act as a mobilizing grievance

The passage of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) became a persistent lightning rod: opponents organized sustained protests framing the law as an overreach of government into health care and finances, and those same concerns were often folded into broader Tea Party demonstrations against perceived fiscal irresponsibility ^[1].

3. Immigration enforcement, deportations, and faith-based civil disobedience

Immigration policy was a major site of contention: activists criticized the Obama administration’s record on deportations and pressed for reform, staging mass marches against state laws like Arizona’s SB1070 and organizing arrests in front of the White House — including clergy-led civil disobedience protesting what faith leaders called “record deportations” and family separations ^{[5] [4] [2]}.

4. Racial backlash, police violence and the limits of presidential response

Obama’s election and later high-profile police killings of Black men produced both racist backlash and mass protest; documented incidents of hostility — including effigies, hate crimes and arson reported after his election — accompanied persistent demonstrations over policing and justice, and the administration’s responses to unrest in places like Ferguson were criticized from multiple directions for emphasizing law and order while promising federal investigations ^{[6] [1] [3]}.

5. Climate activism and environmental campaigns

Climate advocates mounted major demonstrations demanding stronger action, most visibly the 40,000-strong “Forward on Climate” rally urging the president to reject the Keystone XL pipeline and press for a more aggressive climate agenda, showing how environmental groups used mass mobilization to push administration policy on energy and emissions ^[1].

6. Foreign policy, drone strikes and detention policy protests

U.S. counterterrorism tactics and detention policy provoked protest and high-profile heckling of the president; critics objected to the use of targeted killings by drones and to the failure to close Guantanamo Bay, with activists like Code Pink confronting Obama at public events and commentators framing parts of his foreign policy as a divisive shift from campaign promises ^{[1] [7]}.

7. The political and cultural context: backlash, symbolism and long-term effects

Many protests reflected deeper cultural and political currents: some opposition was explicitly partisan and policy-driven, while other episodes were suffused with racial backlash and symbolic acts — from nooses and burned effigies to large peaceful mobilizations — and scholars later linked white backlash to broader political realignments that shaped subsequent elections ^{[6] [8]}.

8. What reporting shows — and what it does not

Contemporaneous reporting and later commentary document the main protest drivers described above, but the assembled sources do not provide a comprehensive dataset of every protest’s size, demographic composition or local dynamics; assertions here rely on available summaries of national rallies, documented incidents of racial backlash, organized civil disobedience over immigration, climate marches, and critiques of counterterror policies ^{[1] [4] [2] [3] [7]}.