Tag: Critical Mass 3.5 Percent

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3.5% Rule’: The Anti-Trump Movement Is Nearing an Important Threshold

MSNBC by The Rachel Maddow

An excerpt from The Rachel Maddow Show highlights how the recent No Kings rallies signal a new stage of organized, nonviolent resistance. Seven million people took part nationwide — one of the largest single-day protest turnouts in U.S. history — as thousands of local events replaced the old model of single-city marches. Drawing on new research from Harvard’s Kennedy School, Maddow connects this decentralized momentum to political scientist Erica Chenoweth’s “3.5 percent rule,” which shows that when roughly 3.5 percent of a population engages in sustained, peaceful protest, movements almost always prevail. With participation expanding into traditionally pro-Trump counties, the data suggest that the U.S. is edging closer to that historic threshold where disciplined, nonviolent action can deliver real change.

➜ Read the full article at MSNBC

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The Founders Would Have Been on the Front Lines of No Kings Day

The Fulcrum, Oct. 19, 2025 — by Ronald L. Hirsch

Hirsch effectively argues that No Kings Day stands firmly in the American tradition of resisting concentrated, unaccountable power. He revisits the Declaration of Independence’s bill of particulars against King George—dissolving representative bodies, subordinating courts, swelling patronage and enforcement—and maps those warnings onto today’s executive overreach and contempt for checks and balances. Despite attempts to smear the protests as extremist, the piece frames them as a civic duty: a peaceful defense of constitutional balance through participation, not violence. The takeaway: opposing would-be monarchy isn’t anti-American—it’s the point of the American experiment.

➜ Read the full story at The Fulcrum

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Why Nonviolent Protest Can Work When We Actually Try It

Nick Allison challenges the fatalism that says peaceful protest has “already been tried.” Drawing on data from Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, he argues that disciplined nonviolent movements succeed far more often than violent uprisings—and that no campaign reaching even 3.5 percent of a population’s active participation has ever failed. From Gandhi to King to Havel, history shows the power of organized nonviolence, and Allison contends Americans have yet to test it at scale. His call isn’t for revolution but for civic discipline: fill the streets, stay peaceful, and defend democracy without surrendering the moral high ground. Violence, he warns, only feeds authoritarianism; sustained, visible nonviolence erodes it.

➜ Read the full essay at The Fulcrum.

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American Spring? How Nonviolent Protest in the U.S. Is Accelerating

Waging Nonviolence — Erica Chenoweth, June 2025

Political scientist Erica Chenoweth reports that protest activity during Trump’s second term has surged far beyond 2017 levels — and remained overwhelmingly nonviolent. Drawing on data from the Crowd Counting Consortium, she finds that April and May 2025 alone saw nearly 5,000 anti-Trump demonstrations nationwide, with participation exceeding a million people on single days. From Hands Off to No Kings, the actions spanned all 50 states, including rural and conservative areas. Remarkably, over 99.5 percent of events recorded no injuries, arrests, or property damage. Chenoweth calls this an unprecedented level of discipline for a movement of such scale — evidence that large-scale, peaceful resistance is not only possible but accelerating across the country.

➜ Read the full article at Waging Nonviolence