On Thursday, I, along with some 4,500 others, tuned in to one of Indivisible’s weekly Zoom meetings led by Indivisible founders
#Ezra #Levin and
#Leah #Greenberg. There are about 1,600 local Indivisible groups scattered around the country
-- and more are springing up each day.
“Throughout history,” said Levin, “there has been no solution to creeping authoritarianism other than all of us — mass, broad-based organizing from people all over the country, from all walks life.”
“If your ideas are popular and you have a mandate for change,” Greenberg said
“you do not hide from your constituents.
We are the ones who are out there,
who are unafraid and organizing and showing up in public because our ideas are popular.
When people hear what we have to say, they want that, not them.”
The April 5 protests are meant to be a show of strength.
“‘Hands Off,’” said Greenberg, “is a message about everything that is happening, right?
It’s hands off Medicaid,
hands off our democracy,
hands off Social Security,
hands off our environment,
hands off veterans benefits.”
Now, for those who think that firebombing Tesla dealerships is a better tactic than nonviolent protests,
I would remind you of the world-changing work of Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
And I would also tell you about the work of Harvard political scientist #Erica #Chenoweth and her colleagues.
To Chenoweth’s surprise — shock, actually — she discovered that over time, nonviolent protests are far more successful than violent ones.
Between 1900 and 2006, she says, campaigns of nonviolent civil resistance were twice as successful as violent campaigns.
She also came up with the so-called 3.5% rule:
No government can withstand a challenge from around 3.5% of its population without accommodating the movement.
