12:30 – The Success of Non-violent Protests – Erica Chenowith

When I hear tv newsers and read posts on the internet that repeat a number that 7 million turned out for the No Kings 2 protest last Saturday, I just kind of shake my head in disbelief. No one gives any source for where they got that number – they just repeat it as if it were handed down from Gawd.

I am skeptical. It was bothering me all week until I was listening to the Stephanie Miller Show earlier this week. During a discussion with Glenn Kushner, Stephanie questioned that sacrosanct ‘7 million’ number also. She then said that her understanding that that number was the number who SIGNED UP online.

Good grief, most of the people I know didn’t sign up online. If people did anything online, they may have looked to see what the closest town to them that was holding a gathering. So if 7 million bothered to sign up online I think we could easily estimate that probably twice that actually showed up.

So that 7 million number has about as much validity as the “George Soros paid these protestors” meme does. But this is number that the extremist right that is in power in this country is very determined to have stick as the official number. In recent years the magic number for protests has become the frequently cited 3.5%.

Erica Chenowith is the researcher who discovered that number as the magic number for the success of non-violent uprisings is 3.5%. In the above video, Chenowith discusses how she discovered that number and why it is reliable.

Chenowith has plenty of examples of how that number has been tide turning number time after time. Thus those in power have a big stake in reporting a number lower – much lower if they can make it believable – than Chenowith’s 3.5%. If those in power can make a much lower number seem to be the “real” number and they can hammer it home through constant repetition it will become the accepted norm number.

More importantly, it will make a movement or an action seem to be a failure.

So if we do the math: America has about 340,000,000 people. 3.5% of that is about 11,900,000 or let’s say 12 million people. Therefore the continually hammered home number from corporate media of 7 million falls way below 12 million – only a bit over half of the “goal.”

Now when I looked in on some of the major protests around the country on Youtube Saturday, the crowds were humongous. HUMONGOUS! In cities like NYC, Chicago, Washington DC, San Diego, Dallas, Los Angeles and San Francisco the crowds seemingly had no end. Boston, Philadelphia and Atlanta the same.