Ramp up the pressure
Estimates are still coming in on the number of protesters who took to the streets across America for Saturday’s “No Kings” protests. Elliot Morris estimates 4-6 million. Heather Cox Richardson writes:
In a dramatic rejection of Trump’s consolidation of power, at least five million Americans turned out for peaceful protests across the country. Cities turned out huge numbers of protesters at more than 2,000 planned events, and small towns, including those in Republican-dominated states, also boasted rallies. The mood was festive as people held signs with anti-Trump and pro-American images and slogans and sang Woody Guthrie’s famous American anthem, “This Land Is Your Land.” American flags were everywhere.
MoveOn this morning reminds members that one and done is not enough:
Each week, hundreds of thousands more people are joining the movement. But this is just the beginning, and we can’t afford to slow down now.
Historians who study social movements worldwide have coined the “3.5% rule”—that throughout history, few authoritarian governments have withstood 3.5% of their population peacefully mobilized against them in a sustained way.6 The rule helps us understand just how big our movement needs to get to stop Trump’s tyranny—on the order of more than 11 million people showing up again and again.
6. “Questions, Answers, and Some Cautionary Updates Regarding the 3.5% Rule,” Harvard Kennedy School, April 2020
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr/publications/questions-answers-and-some-cautionary-updates-regarding-35-rule
The key is sustaining the pressure and ramping it up. And the volume.
Toby Buckle writes at Liberal Currents:
What I think we should take away from the last month or two is that basic, mainline liberal, anti-fascist messaging is energizing and persuasive when it is amplified. The resistance did not find some new, special, focus grouped way to talk—the messaging for No Kings was more or less what we’ve been saying for a decade now. The difference was we said it louder.
It’s not that the left lacks any good message. It’s that we lack the means for getting those messages heard in a media ecosystem largely owned by conservatives. As the saying goes, Democrats but TV ads; Republicans buy TV stations. (That’s not formal party organizations but their well-heeled supporters.) On top of that, Buckle observes, “The right pays its propagandists, we do not.”
He offers a familiar critique of the left (and its deepest-pocketed supporters) not properly funding voices and building reach.
Mainline liberalism has been pushed out of the conversation, and we need to push our way back in. Both to rebalance the anti-Trump coalition, and because those not in the fight need to hear a message that blames fascists for fascism. Cautious steps forward will not cut it. In the words of an older liberalism, our circumstances demand bold persistent experimentation.
In the short term, we have to stay in the streets. Pay attention for the next day(s) of protest.
ICYMI:
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