Evidence from 2022–2025 shows that social‑justice‑oriented or “woke” currents in criminal justice and education did not disappear quickly after early backlash in places like San Francisco; instead, they persisted amid an ongoing tug‑of‑war.

On the criminal‑justice side, San Francisco’s progressive DA Chesa Boudin was recalled in 2022 and replaced by Brooke Jenkins, who has since pursued more punitive policies, including sharply increasing misdemeanor prosecutions and reducing diversion to treatment programs. This reflects a local backlash against progressive prosecution. (en.wikipedia.org) However, analysis of the broader progressive‑prosecutor movement in 2024–2025 notes that, despite high‑profile recalls in California (Boudin in San Francisco and Pamela Price in Alameda County), reform‑minded prosecutors have continued to win races in other jurisdictions (e.g., Orlando and Austin). Leaders of the movement explicitly describe it as “alive and well” and focused on regrouping rather than ending, indicating a continued national reform current rather than a short‑lived fad. (law360.com)

In education, there has been a pronounced conservative backlash against DEI and equity initiatives (e.g., federal policies cutting funding to schools with DEI programs and state‑level measures like Florida’s Stop WOKE Act). (reuters.com) Yet these policies have triggered sustained resistance and litigation from civil‑rights groups such as the NAACP, and courts have begun to strike down some anti‑DEI guidance as unlawful, which presupposes that schools and universities still maintain or seek to maintain DEI efforts. (reuters.com) Academic work on the DEI backlash in industry similarly finds that, even where companies scale back or rebrand DEI, core inclusion practices and values tend to persist in adapted forms rather than vanishing. (arxiv.org) Together, these strands show an ongoing, evolving social‑justice/"woke" movement in criminal justice and education several years after 2022, consistent with Friedberg’s prediction that it was “not a movement that’s going to go away overnight.”