Protest and Defend: No Kings, No Excuses and 3.5%

More than  2,000 protests through out the United States with more than 5 million  participants. Yahoo. Now what? What’s next? Think of Saturday’s “No Kings” protest as a graduation ceremony. A lot of work was done to organize, a beautiful march of goodwill and solidarity. Now, it’s off into the real world to do or continue the work. The reality is our current president is in severe cognitive decline with a profound tendency for duplicity.  If he is even told or shown the millions of protestors, he won’t remember or spin a new narrative as evidenced with his recollection of his phone call with Gavin Newsom.

Trump insists he spoke with Governor Newsom, the day before he sent the National Guard to LA. Newsom disputed the day and the conversation. Newsom said Trump never mention the protests or deployment of the National Guard and the call was 3 days prior, not the night before. Trump doubled down on his account and posted a screen shot of his outgoing calls and duration. The screenshot contradicted Trump’s timeline and supported Newsom’s. To be fair, since Trump used the pejorative of “New Scum,” in his recollection, maybe he had a hallucinatory conversation? Trump slept¹ thru part of his army/birthday parade. The parade had about 10,000 attendees, far from the projected 250,000. When Trump recalls the Saturday, we’ll probably hear his dream versus reality. Oh lawd help me, did I just try to sane wash crazy?

Saturday showed with certainty the US has surpassed  the 3.5% threshold. Huh? Well, the numbers indicate there were over 5 million protestors. The US population is 340 million people. The math shows, that is 6.8% of the population. The threshold for change is 3.5%.

There are, of course, many ethical reasons to use nonviolent strategies. But compelling research by Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, confirms that civil disobedience is not only the moral choice; it is also the most powerful way of shaping world politics – by a long way.

Looking at hundreds of campaigns over the last century, Chenoweth found that nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to achieve their goals as violent campaigns. And although the exact dynamics will depend on many factors, she has shown it takes around 3.5% of the population actively participating in the protests to ensure serious political change.

The ‘3.5% rule’: How a small minority can change the world

It’s not all puppies and rainbows now. The 3.5% is guidance and that figure requires sustained action. Like graduation, you haven’t done much except satisfy your intellectual curiosity if do absolutely nothing next.. So what does follow up look like?

• Contact your local, state and federally elected officials with your desired outcomes.
• Become knowledgeable and/or involved with your local politics or advocacy groups. Be open to conversations.
• Don’t be a one issue voter. Nothing is going to be perfect. Get informed.

This is not a left versus right situation. It’s about recklessness and disregard, it’s right versus wrong. I associate MAGA with racism, misogyny and low information; a movement started by the current red hat and chef. Republicans I know differentiate themselves from “MAGA” as some moral compass. OK…..but the insistence on a straight party ticket in these times, is like a Salmonella, E. coli, or Listeria outbreak. When you know the list of suspected products, you throw them out. If you are served the tainted product, you refuse. You don’t risk contamination, sickness and death because you have always used the product and like the company. Products get recalled. After the danger is over and the problem is fixed, you can go back to business as usual. On June 6th, there was a recall for Perdue chicken. I’m a vegetarian, I don’t eat chicken. If you love chicken, I’m still cool with you. But, until the recall is done, throw out any Perdue chicken you have. Trust and believe, this action will not make you a vegetarian, but it will keep you safe. No excuses.

A recent example of Trump’s unlawful action is the use the military against American people as mentioned. The police enforce the law and protect citizens while the military focus on defense and national security. No one should be ok with the deployment of the National Guard and the Marines to LA. The anti ICE protests, are restricted to 6 blocks in LA. The city of LA is over 500 square miles, the protests are within 1 square mile. LA was not and is not burning, being taken over or destroyed. If you were not fully aware of this, but, ok with the deployment of the US military, please, please, please stay informed. Because the deployment was done without the governor or police, there were no provisions for the National Guard. No where to even sleep.

The reality is, to believe truth about one thing, requires the questioning everything. To market the idea of the enslavement of Africans in the United States required dehumanization. The concepts that European immigrants had to embrace to forsake their humanity to believe buying and selling humans, chaining and stacking persons for a trans-atlantic voyage, forced labor with threat of violence and no pay and the simple recreational cruelty of rape cabins under the guise of “breeding house to increase stocks” is unfathomable to many. However, the recognition that this has been a fight and plight for over equality for over 400 years. The first save ship was 1619, the civil war ended in 1865, but not the plight of the enslaved. Because to many people still want to believe in a superiority and others struggle to admit the inhumanity, the atrocities and beliefs that still loom large today.

This is not a history spiral, but context for when people ask, how can all this happen? Because it’s part of a pattern since the founding of the US that has yet to be reconciled. The concept Isabella Wilkerson presented in Caste² is America as an old house.You were not responsible for the decay of the house, the neglect, but you are living in that house now. Juneteenth is this Thursday, June 19th. This can be a reminder to continue the repairs for this house, united.

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¹ I watched a video, the photo wasn’t just that a moment. Trump was asleep. By comparison, US Senator representing Massachusetts Ed Marky – Marched as Trump slept. In all fairness, Trump is one month older, Markey will not be 79 until July 11th.

²

We in the developed world are like homeowners who inherited a house on a piece of land that is beautiful on the outside, but whose soil is unstable loam and rock, heaving and contracting over generations, cracks patched but the deeper ruptures waved away for decades, centuries even. Many people may rightly say, “I had nothing to do with how this all started. I have nothing to do with the sins of the past. My ancestors never attacked indigenous people, never owned slaves.” And, yes. Not one of us was here when this house was built. Our immediate ancestors may have had nothing to do with it, but here we are, the current occupants of a property with stress cracks and bowed walls and fissures built into the foundation. We are the heirs to whatever is right or wrong with it. We did not erect the uneven pillars or joists, but they are ours to deal with now.

And any further deterioration is, in fact, on our hands.

Unaddressed, the ruptures and diagonal cracks will not fix themselves. The toxins will not go away but, rather, will spread, leach, and mutate, as they already have. When people live in an old house, they come to adjust to the idiosyncrasies and outright dangers skulking in an old structure. They put buckets under a wet ceiling, prop up groaning floors, learn to step over that rotting wood tread in the staircase. The awkward becomes acceptable, and the unacceptable becomes merely inconvenient. Live with it long enough, and the unthinkable becomes normal. Exposed over the generations, we learn to believe that the incomprehensible is the way that life is supposed to be.

America is an old house’: Isabel Wilkerson on race and caste in America