According to @chenoweth.bsky.social’s work, regimes change or collapse when 3.5% of the population takes to the streets. Yesterday was just shy of 1%.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world
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Buy secondhand, buy local, refurbish, or try to do without.
There's a lot of information there and you will likely be pointed to other subreddits as well!
Every Saturday.
And add a General Strike to the mix for as long as it takes to drive them all from power.
The Anit War protests of the 60's grew and grew and grew as tie went on. Our Trump protests will grow too.
And even when it did, that was a policy change, not authoritarian regime change.
With 1 or 2 exceptions, Fascist regimes only fall by war or military coup.
civil rights, women’s rights, policy fights apples & oranges to authoritarian regime change.
I notice there's not a timetable on that.
Aside from not being based on a power analysis of the US, the 3.5% figure is an historical observation that’s biased *toward* efforts that succeeded—what about those that didn’t?
Also, IIRC the movements Chenowith looked
12 million people. That’s all.
It can't be crowds of only seniors, though, or the administration's next move will be to widen the wedge between young and old.
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=HasaQvHCv4w&si=pBAxM9X2w6UVRWKs
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/declaring-a-national-emergency-at-the-southern-border-of-the-united-states/
And peaceful.
This can be done.
One day won't make fuck-all difference. It has to be a steady, ongoing push. People have to be ready to GET UNCOMFORTABLE and not just virtue signal for a day and pat themselves on the back and then wonder why nothing changed.
MAGAts are scared. This is only the beginning of citizen-led protests. We've only just begun.
Color me . . . deeply skeptical.
Let's say 100,000 in DC, 100,000 in NYC
You'd need 48 more gatherings that size to get to 5 million. While I'm deeply grateful and impressed with the sizes & number of locations, that's not a credible number.
A false flag attack by the Trumpies is a real possibility.
“..peaceful resistance still failed 47% of the time. As Chenoweth and Stephan pointed out in their book, that’s sometimes because they never really gained enough support or momentum to “erode the power base of the adversary…”
Fortunately, his opinion doesn't matter. Ours does.
They don’t seem terribly concerned about getting votes—why sweat the small stuff when you suppress the vote, count the ballots, claim any loss is illegitimate, threaten political opponents and say things like ‘we don’t really need
elections anymore…’
There is a lot of noise on social media, but there are also a lot of bots/trolls.
I hope you're able to make it and have a productive time!
I appreciate the HANDS-OFF protest, but we should have learned during Trump's FIRST term is that TO TRUMP, PROTESTS DO NOT MATTER. He went golfing. He doesn't care if 10 or 10 billion people turned out.
What DOES matter now is HOW WE HELP EACH OTHER.
Period, end of sentence.
So how do we do that?
- Donate to food banks
- Volunteer to DRIVE DELIVERIES of food to people who can't get to food banks (elderly, disabled, overworked, no transportation)
- Donate to locations that give out clothing, toys, toiletry products, etc.
- Volunteer to at a soup kitchen/food bank
- Provide transportation to the elderly to doctor's appointments and medication pick-ups OR help them set up mail-to-home prescription refills
- Volunteer at a nursing home
- Volunteer at a local hospital
- Join your local Neighborhood Association
- Volunteer at a library
- Even if you're a non-believer (like me), volunteer for church-sponsored community programs
- Volunteer to help with an after-school program
- Volunteer to work at a local school as a teacher's aide or with a special needs program
- Volunteer at your local community center
- If you can't volunteer, DONATE, DONATE, DONATE. As little or as much as you can, it ALL makes a difference.
- Also DONATE LOCALLY. Know where your money goes and make sure it GETS there.
- Volunteer at a special needs facility
- Volunteer at a senior center
- Volunteer at a homeless shelter
“a researcher at the ICNC, Chenoweth performed an extensive review of the literature on civil resistance and social movements from 1900 to 2006 – a data set then corroborated with other experts in the field.”
That was a far different time than post-Covid.
See below:
You take my breath away✨️
Remember:
Contact
Call
Text
Mail a postcard
Fax
Show up
Post, repost, share
Register to vote
Protest & march, peacefully
https://www.congress.gov/contact-us
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse Click on 1st Amendment
We are stronger when we march together 🦋✌️
Let's make it happen.
IT HAS TO BE A SEIGE TO TO CHANGE THE CURRENT OF THE SEA
- Strikes
- Boycotts
- Community activism as in HELPING WITHIN THE COMMUNITY. See 10 point comment post below about that.
- More **politicians**(Booker, AOC, Sanders)
AND MORE
And next time it can't be enough to say "I did that once." Do it until we reach these numbers - then we'll evaluate.