In Cary, NC, we have a weekly protest as part of a bunch of protests known as Freedom Friday. It is held at our downtown (intersection of Academy Street, Kildaire Farm Road, and Dry Avenue) by the Cary Arts Center, the Cary Downtown Park, and the Cary Regional Library. I’ve been going when I can, meaning when I’m not staying late at work because I am teaching.

Someone…I don’t know who…brings a song system so we have music to support our protest. So I’m always out there dancing with my sign of the week. It’s really a blissful experience for me, because I have music and community and feel like I’m defending democracy, which is something I love.

I’ve been to all the big protests as well. And I really LOVE those as well! There are tons of people, and SO MANY wonderful, original, and artistic protest signs. The energy is terrific. People are empowered and positive and non-violent…and to my eyes, blissful. Because we are with like-minded folks fighting for the country, the people, and the system we love. And at least in our area, anyone who disagrees has been respectful, as far as my experience goes.

In October, it is believed that there were around 7 million Americans across the country who participated in the No Kings Protest 2.0. That would be around 2 % of our entire population. That might seem low, but it was one of the largest protests we’ve ever had in terms of live participants. The majority of Americans do not partcipate in protests like this, even if they support the cause.

HOWEVER…there is this thing among political and historical researchers called the 3.5% rule. This rule is primarily advocated by Erica Chenoweth (a non-binary professor and dean at Harvard University), who wrote a book on it with Maria Stephan (who worked at the US Institute of Peace at the time), and is based on the work of political scientist Mark Lichbach in his 1995 book The Rebel’s Dilemma: Economics, Cognition, and Society. All three examined examples of civil resistance to authoritarian governments from 1900-2006. They discovered that once about 3.5% of a country’s population engaged in protests against the regime, the authoritarian government were defeated.

In the current US population, 3.5% represents about 12 million Americans. So that is the goal of the No Kings Protest this weekend–to draw out enough of the people who oppose the Trump Administration’s policies to reach that 3.5%.

I actually got to hear Dr. Chenoweth speak live during a webinar sponsored by the fabulous activist group, Red White and Blue. This was last year, but here are some things I remember (supplemented with some facts from the Internet, since I don’t remember specific numbers from that webinar):

1. Non-violent protests were twice as likely to be successful compared to violent ones. Wikipedia tells me that their data shows that 26% of violent revolts were successful, whereas 53% of nonviolent campaigns were successful. (Success in this context means that the group’s aims were achieved within one year of that percentage of protesters showing up for a SINGLE event, not an accumulation of people in different events.)
   
2. Nonviolent protests drew about four times as many participants, so that 20 of the 25 largest protests were nonviolent.
   
3. They also found that the successful nonviolent protests tended to result in more democratic replacements than did the violent protests.
   
4. I have not found data on the Internet to confirm this, but I KNOW Dr. Chenoweth said this: that female-driven protests had a higher level of success, again based on reaching that 3.5% level, than male-dominated ones. Dr. Chenoweth said you didn’t need a PhD in Political Science to figure that out. They said that in general, women brought many more of their community to protests than men do. Men are much more likely to either just protest on their own, or with their partners, and/or not to have as many friends to join them. This was one of the reasons Dr. Chenoweth was talking to Red Wine and Blue, which is not exclusive, but is definitely a female-oriented organizations. Fox News recently tried to minimize the impact of this group by calling us “an organized gang of wine moms.” But moms, like immigrants in Lin Manuel Miranda’s immortal words, “Get the job done.” With or without wine…

So gentlemen, I urge all of you to be part of this resistance. But I particularly call out to my sisters-in-spirit. If you disagree with current policies but you’ve been reluctant to attend one of these large protests, I hope you will come…and will come with friends and family. At least at the ones I’ve attended or heard about in the Triangle NC area, it has felt very safe and fun and uplifting. The police are respectful and pretty chill, mostly there to keep everybody safe. Those who disagree with us either avoid us or keep their comments civil. I usually go with either a group of people from our spiritual center or with friends and neighbors who live with me in Cary. So for me, it is a celebration of community as well as a public act of defending democracy.

If you are interested in joining us, find a protest close to you at: https://www.mobilize.us/nokings/map/?utm_source=50501. The organization, 50501, stands for (a minimum) of 50 protests in all 50 states for 1 cause–overcoming autocracy. I don’t know how many protests are currently scheduled, but I counted over 70 in North Carolina alone. In the extended Research Triangle area, there are 2 in Raleigh, 2 in Durham, 1 in Chapel Hill, 1 in Cary, 1 in Wake Forest, 1 in Clayton, 1 in Apex, and 1 in Pittsboro. Please come, and bring a friend or two.

Centers of Spiritual Living (the collective group of which my Triangle Center of Spiritual Living is one ministry) has a monthly theme. The theme for this month is: What If? What if we could attract 12 million people to the rallies this weekend? What if that mathematically small group–3.5%–changed the tides of our current politics? What if it is millions of average American citizens with no governmental roles or titles that causes our country to return to its democratic foundation? What if that is enough people to stop the war in Iran, to restore legal processes for immigrants in our country, to bring back funding for health care and food programs and education?

And if so…wouldn’t you want to be a part of it?