Latest news with #Indivisible
Yahoo
19-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The No Kings Playbook to Confront Trump's ‘Authoritarian Breakthrough'
The 'No Kings' movement is shifting gears to counter what they're calling the 'authoritarian breakthrough' of Donald Trump's second Wednesday evening, the No Kings movement hosted a video conference call for more than 130,000 pro-democracy activists. The call seeks to build off the success of mass anti-Trump street protests — which also continued Thursday evening with more than 1,600 nationwide 'Good Trouble Lives On' demonstrations, inspired by Civil Rights icon John Lewis. The 90-minute video conference was organized to train activists in principles of 'strategic non-cooperation,' which aims to gum up the works of the increasingly dark and dictatorial Trump administration. The call was organized by the progressive grassroots organization Indivisible, and featured a trainer from Choose Democracy, Daniel Hunter, whose bio touts past work with pro-democracy activists living under authoritarian regimes, such as in Myanmar. The tone of the conference was significantly more somber than similar recent webinars organized by Indivisible. It painted United States' democracy as confronting an existential crisis — and pegged the odds of overcoming Trump's ambition at not much better than a 'coin-flip.' 'We're in a moment of authoritarian breakthrough,' said Hunter, who defined that term as a 'window in which a would-be authoritarian is attempting to rapidly consolidate power' in an effort to 'eliminate checks' that prevent them from operating with impunity. Hunter ticked through six characteristics of authoritarian breakthrough, all of which are currently in play. This dictatorial to-do list includes 'directing investigations against critics'; 'giving license to lawbreaking'; 'regulatory retaliation'; 'deploying [the] military domestically'; 'federal law enforcement overreach'; and holding tight to power, i.e. 'the autocrat won't leave.' Trump is hewing to this well-worn playbook, Hunter said, by pardoning violent Jan. 6 felons, sending masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to round up law-abiding immigrants, deploying the National Guard and Marines into Los Angeles, making 'capricious threats' to deport U.S. citizens like Rosie O'Donnell, and openly plotting an unconstitutional third pro-democracy trainer offered the encouragement that 'Trump didn't write this playbook. This is a global phenomena … the growth of autocracies.' He added that the experiences of allies across the globe offer strategies that have succeeded in turning back Trumpian figures in their own the odds of success are sobering. The training included a study of 35 countries that experienced 'democratic backsliding' in the last 30 years, and their track records for overcoming the authoritarian assault. Without a movement of mass 'civil resistance,' less than eight percent of countries were successful at righting the democratic ship of state. Active civil resistance — such as the movement that No Kings is building in the U.S. — has historically increased the odds to 52 percent. 'I don't love those numbers,' said Hunter, but he added that the payoff for victory can be profound. Successful resistance movements typically forge societies that are 'more democratic' on the other side — offering 'an advancement' rather than a return to the status quo ante. 'Our task right now is to build and activate a powerful opposition' based on 'mass defiance in a lot of places,' Hunter said, with the goal of 'interrupting the regime' by 'getting into the gears through nonviolent tactics.' He insisted that organizers and activists need to commit themselves to resistance now: 'We're in a bit of a race against time,' he said, adding more hopefully: 'We have window.'A fellow pro-democracy organizer, Maria Stephan of the Horizons Project, assured the assembled crowd that there's a rich history of successful resistance movements to take inspiration from. These include not only foreign examples, like Chile overcoming the brutal regime of the fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet, but also the all-American struggle that ended legal segregation. Stephan pointed to America's 'own civil rights activists who dismantled racial authoritarianism in the Jim Crow South using legal and legislative strategies, but also boycotts, strikes, sit-ins, freedom rides, and other campaigns of non-violent resistance.' The 'Achilles heel' of authoritarians, Stephan said, is their dependence on popular passivity — on normal people, who feel isolated, fearful, and disempowered, who choose to go along rather than taking risks and rocking the challenge for pro-democracy activists is to forge connection, solidarity, and build truly popular resistance that can offer safety in numbers and embolden other Americans to fight the democratic backslide — seeking to regain momentum for a government that serves the people's interests, not those of Trump and his cronies. For Stephan that means activating broad-based resistance across the different 'pillars' of society — from labor and faith communities; to business interests and educational institutions; to the nation's civil service workers and members of the efforts to cow big-business CEOs, oust university leaders, mass-fire civil servants, and deploy the military against the people of Los Angeles, demonstrate how each of the pillars is vulnerable to being co-opted into the administration's authoritarian project. But Stephan underscored the power of popular resistance to 'shift the incentives' and create a popular counterweight to presidential pressure. 'We need to get the institutional enablers of authoritarianism to withdraw their support from the authoritarian system and to get behind a democracy based on the will of the people.' For everyday people, Stephan highlighted three main avenues for resistance: First are strategies of 'protest and persuasion' (think: street demonstrations or T-shirt ready slogans like 'Melt ICE') that communicate popular resistance. Second, is building up positive local infrastructure, whether that means supporting immigrant-friendly local businesses or providing mutual aid to neighbors in need. The third is the broad category of 'non-cooperation.' This can come from outside of institutions, as with boycotts, or from inside, as when civil servants or even soldiers refuse to carry out illegal or immoral orders. As a small-scale proof of concept, Stephan pointed to the successful pressure campaign by Annapolis alumni and retired military commanders that beat back Trump's efforts to strip the Naval Academy's library of books by black authors like Maya Angelou (while leaving, e.g. Hitler's treatise Mein Kampf on the shelves). The way that Harvard University's powerful alumni network has spurred the university administration to fight Trump's assault on academic freedom, rather than capitulate like Columbia, is another example. Stephan also pointed to ongoing consumer boycotts of Tesla (over Elon Musk's traumatizing tenure in the Trump administration) and Target (for its rollback of diversity initiatives) as 'acts of non-cooperation that are making a difference in this country' as they cost those companies webinar was not just a conceptual orientation, but a call to action. Leaders asked participants to commit to taking the evening's online organizing and make it physical by hosting a gathering with like-minded activists in their own communities. The organizers hoped to get 1,000 house-party pledges. The evening's tally soared past 5, meeting closed with an energizing message from a longtime activist Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, who encouraged new participants not to get flummoxed by the lingo or overwhelmed by the opposition. 'It's not complex, my friends,' she said. 'Don't let these evil people make you feel like it's rocket science to get to democracy — when it's actually just fingerpainting,' 'It's actually our culture,' she added. 'And the majority of the people in this country agree with us.' More from Rolling Stone Trump Claims He 'Never Wrote a Picture in My Life.' He Actually Drew Plenty of Them Team Trump Was on 'F-cking Warpath' to Kill Story About Salacious Letter to Epstein The White House's Epstein 'Hoax' Explanation Makes Zero Sense Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
The Guardian
18-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
What is the 3.5% protest rule and what does it mean for the US?
The number is frequently cited in leftwing circles, serving as a rallying cry for people who oppose Donald Trump: if 3.5% of a population protests against a regime, the regime will fail. Left-leaning content creators, activists and media have boosted the 3.5% rule as the anti-Trump resistance has grown. A Pod Save America episode in June was headlined The 3.5% Protest Rule That Could Bring Down Trump. Social media posts from protest groups broke down the rule and its limitations. In the lead-up to mass days of protest, organizers have referred to the target as a goal. After the No Kings protests in June, for instance, the progressive activist group Indivisible sent an email to its supporters noting how '3.5% is a historically important target – but not a magic number'. Another day of protests is set for Thursday, dubbed 'Good Trouble', a reference to the late congressman John Lewis on the fifth anniversary of his death. The figure stems from research of prior mass movements, though it's often oversimplified. Still, the gist is accurate: sustained mass participation in a resistance movement can topple authoritarianism. Political scientists Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan created a database of civil resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006, analyzing whether non-violent or violent movements were more likely to succeed and whether there was a tipping point in terms of size for protests to actually expel the party or person in power. As Chenoweth, a Harvard professor, has described it, they were skeptical of non-violent resistance. But the results showed non-violent campaigns were often much larger and were twice as likely to succeed than violent movements. They were more representative of the population, and, they found, active and sustained participation by 3.5% of a population meant a movement would succeed, with very few, specific exceptions. If 3.5% of people are actively participating in a mass movement, there are many more supporters who aren't active participants, underscoring broad dissent against the regime. And among those participants are often defectors, people who were once part of the regime or its support structure who have since joined the other side. Some examples cited in Chenoweth's work include the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon in 2005, the People Power movement in the Philippines in 1986, and the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003. In a 2013 Ted Talk that went viral and brought the number farther into the mainstream, Chenoweth noted that this number is 'nothing to sneeze at' – in absolute terms, for the US, it's nearly 12 million people. 'I understand why people are drawn to it,' Chenoweth said on a recent episode of the podcast You Are Not So Smart. 'It looks like a magic number, looks like a number that provides people with certainty and guarantee. And it's also a surprisingly modest number.' A host of caveats play into the 'rule of thumb', as Chenoweth refers to it. The number refers to peak participation, not cumulative participation. It applies to a specific kind of campaign – a 'maximalist' effort like overthrowing a government or achieving territorial independence. Simply achieving 3.5% of peak participation doesn't mean a campaign will win every time; and in the opposite direction, not achieving 3.5% isn't a sign of failure, either. According to the research, most non-violent campaigns still succeeded with less participation, Chenoweth noted in a 2020 update on the rule. Numbers in the streets matter. They're just not the only thing that does. 'When people boil movement success down to 3.5%, they might underemphasize some of these other factors,' said Hardy Merriman, a former president of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict and an expert in the field. 'Three and a half per cent is a quantity. But there's also the question of quality. Have people been trained? Are they committed to nonviolent discipline? What is their message? What are their demands? What is their composition?' Other limitations exist in the current moment. The anti-Trump resistance is not a maximalist campaign seeking to oust a dictator or achieve independence because the US is not under a clear authoritarian regime. In consolidated authoritarian regimes, the rules of the game are clear, Merriman said, and people generally agree they are living under an authoritarian regime. In a backsliding democracy like the US, people are more disoriented – institutions that recently worked begin to fail but people put a lot of faith in elections. 'It's like organizing on quicksand,' he said. Chenoweth noted in 2020 that the figure is a 'descriptive statistic' derived from historical movements, 'not necessarily a prescriptive one', meaning it is not necessarily a guarantee to organize around, as some are explicitly doing now. The UK's Extinction Rebellion, a climate movement, has made the 3.5% figure a part of its organizing, for instance. In previous successful movements, people weren't trying to reach a specific number; they just, in hindsight, hit a tipping point, and 3.5% was an identifiable threshold. The anti-Trump protest movement is large and growing. Recent protests have drawn many millions to the streets, and many of those protesting have sought other opportunities to stand against the Trump administration beyond street protests. As Chenoweth's Crowd Counting Consortium at Harvard has quantified, the scale of protests is larger now than it was during Trump's first term. Since her 2013 Ted Talk, Chenoweth noted, authoritarian governments have caught on to the idea, too, and 'figured out how to either ignore them or subdue them, even when they've gotten pretty impressive numbers'. They concluded: 'We are in a little uncharted territory.'
Axios
17-07-2025
- Politics
- Axios
What to know about "Good Trouble Lives On" protests in Indiana
Hoosiers will be among the tens of thousands of people expected to protest the Trump administration again on Thursday, the fifth anniversary of the death of civil rights leader and former congressman John Lewis. Why it matters: Lewis was one of the most vocal critics of President Trump during his first administration. He skipped Trump's 2017 inauguration — only the second Lewis missed during his three-decade tenure in Congress including former President George Bush's inauguration in 2001. By the numbers: 56,000 people RSVP'd for more than 1,500 events across the country as of Friday, organizers said. What they're saying: "Good Trouble Lives On is a national day of action to respond to the attacks on our civil and human rights by the Trump administration," the protest website said. "Together, we'll remind them that in America, the power lies with the people." The other side: "Nearly 80 million Americans gave President Trump a historic mandate to Make America Great Again and he is delivering on that promise in record time," White House spokesperson Liz Huston said in a statement. Context: Lewis, the son of sharecroppers, grew up in rural Alabama. The civil rights leader was arrested more than 40 times and injured repeatedly but remained an advocate for nonviolent protest, per the Library of Congress. "Rosa Parks inspired us to get in trouble," he said in 2019. "And I've been getting in trouble ever since. She inspired us to find a way, to get in the way, to get in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble." State of play: Anti-Trump protests since January have retained their momentum, including Tesla Takedown in March, Hands Off! and 50501 in April, May Day, No Kings in June, and Free America on Independence Day. Indivisible, a leading protest organization group, launched a project ahead of the protest to train a million people in non-cooperation, community organizing and campaign design. Zoom out: In March 1965, Lewis led more than 600 peaceful protesters across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. What was meant to be a push for voting rights became known as "Bloody Sunday" after state troopers attacked the marchers. He was elected to the U.S. House in 1986, representing most of Atlanta, and served until he died in 2020.
The Guardian
17-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
What is the 3.5% protest rule and what does it mean for the US?
The number is frequently cited in leftwing circles, serving as a rallying cry for people who oppose Donald Trump: if 3.5% of a population protests against a regime, the regime will fail. Left-leaning content creators, activists and media have boosted the 3.5% rule as the anti-Trump resistance has grown. A Pod Save America episode in June was headlined The 3.5% Protest Rule That Could Bring Down Trump. Social media posts from protest groups broke down the rule and its limitations. In the lead-up to mass days of protest, organizers have referred to the target as a goal. After the No Kings protests in June, for instance, the progressive activist group Indivisible sent an email to its supporters noting how '3.5% is a historically important target – but not a magic number'. Another day of protests is set for Thursday, dubbed 'Good Trouble', a reference to the late congressman John Lewis on the fifth anniversary of his death. The figure stems from research of prior mass movements, though it's often oversimplified. Still, the gist is accurate: sustained mass participation in a resistance movement can topple authoritarianism. Political scientists Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan created a database of civil resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006, analyzing whether non-violent or violent movements were more likely to succeed and whether there was a tipping point in terms of size for protests to actually expel the party or person in power. As Chenoweth, a Harvard professor, has described it, they were skeptical of non-violent resistance. But the results showed non-violent campaigns were often much larger and were twice as likely to succeed than violent movements. They were more representative of the population, and, they found, active and sustained participation by 3.5% of a population meant a movement would succeed, with very few, specific exceptions. If 3.5% of people are actively participating in a mass movement, there are many more supporters who aren't active participants, underscoring broad dissent against the regime. And among those participants are often defectors, people who were once part of the regime or its support structure who have since joined the other side. Some examples cited in Chenoweth's work include the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon in 2005, the People Power movement in the Philippines in 1986, and the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003. In a 2013 Ted Talk that went viral and brought the number farther into the mainstream, Chenoweth noted that this number is 'nothing to sneeze at' – in absolute terms, for the US, it's nearly 12 million people. 'I understand why people are drawn to it,' Chenoweth said on a recent episode of the podcast You Are Not So Smart. 'It looks like a magic number, looks like a number that provides people with certainty and guarantee. And it's also a surprisingly modest number.' A host of caveats play into the 'rule of thumb', as Chenoweth refers to it. The number refers to peak participation, not cumulative participation. It applies to a specific kind of campaign – a 'maximalist' effort like overthrowing a government or achieving territorial independence. Simply achieving 3.5% of peak participation doesn't mean a campaign will win every time; and in the opposite direction, not achieving 3.5% isn't a sign of failure, either. According to the research, most non-violent campaigns still succeeded with less participation, Chenoweth noted in a 2020 update on the rule. Numbers in the streets matter. They're just not the only thing that does. 'When people boil movement success down to 3.5%, they might underemphasize some of these other factors,' said Hardy Merriman, a former president of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict and an expert in the field. 'Three and a half per cent is a quantity. But there's also the question of quality. Have people been trained? Are they committed to nonviolent discipline? What is their message? What are their demands? What is their composition?' Other limitations exist in the current moment. The anti-Trump resistance is not a maximalist campaign seeking to oust a dictator or achieve independence because the US is not under a clear authoritarian regime. In consolidated authoritarian regimes, the rules of the game are clear, Merriman said, and people generally agree they are living under an authoritarian regime. In a backsliding democracy like the US, people are more disoriented – institutions that recently worked begin to fail but people put a lot of faith in elections. 'It's like organizing on quicksand,' he said. Chenoweth noted in 2020 that the figure is a 'descriptive statistic' derived from historical movements, 'not necessarily a prescriptive one', meaning it is not necessarily a guarantee to organize around, as some are explicitly doing now. The UK's Extinction Rebellion, a climate movement, has made the 3.5% figure a part of its organizing, for instance. In previous successful movements, people weren't trying to reach a specific number; they just, in hindsight, hit a tipping point, and 3.5% was an identifiable threshold. The anti-Trump protest movement is large and growing. Recent protests have drawn many millions to the streets, and many of those protesting have sought other opportunities to stand against the Trump administration beyond street protests. As Chenoweth's Crowd Counting Consortium at Harvard has quantified, the scale of protests is larger now than it was during Trump's first term. Since her 2013 Ted Talk, Chenoweth noted, authoritarian governments have caught on to the idea, too, and 'figured out how to either ignore them or subdue them, even when they've gotten pretty impressive numbers'. They concluded: 'We are in a little uncharted territory.'
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First Post
17-07-2025
- Politics
- First Post
FirstUp: US protests against Trump, German leader in UK and more... Headlines Today
On July 17, tens of thousands of people are expected to protest the US administration on the fifth anniversary of the death of civil rights leader and former Congressman John Lewis. A landmark Anglo-German treaty awaits in London, and G20 finance talks are scheduled in Durban. In India, Odisha observes a bandh over a student's death, while President Murmu prepares to confer the 2024–25 Swachh Survekshan urban sanitation awards read more Faith leaders and students stage a sit-in protest to urge the US Senate to pass the Freedom To Vote: John R Lewis Act on the steps of the US Capitol building in Washington, US, January 18, 2022. File Image/Reuters July 17, 2025 promises to be a high-profile day for global affairs. In the United States, thousands will rally in the 'Good Trouble Lives On' protests, marking five years since civil rights icon John Lewis's passing. In London, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is set to sign a landmark Anglo-German treaty with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. In South Africa, G20 finance ministers will meet in Durban to address climate-linked debt and economic disparities. Meanwhile in India, Odisha will observe a statewide bandh over a student's death, and President Droupadi Murmu will confer the Swachh Survekshan Awards. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD US civil rights flashpoint The United States will witness a coast-to-coast wave of 'Good Trouble Lives On' protests, marking the fifth anniversary of Congressman John Lewis' passing. Organised through coalitions such as Indivisible, Third Act, and John Lewis Actions, over 1,200 events are expected nationwide as of July 11, with more than 56,000 RSVPs reported. These peaceful demonstrations are intended to push back on what organisers describe as the Trump administration's rollback of civil and human rights, including voter suppression and judicial overreach. In cities like San Antonio and Miami, scheduled events include banners, sit-ins and voter registration tables — extending Lewis's legacy of non-violent civic action to demand protections for voting rights, racial justice and civic participation. White House officials are anticipated to reaffirm their view of Trump's mandate, arguing that 80 million voters support his policy trajectory. Merz in London German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is scheduled to arrive in London tomorrow for his first official state visit since assuming office in May. He is expected to meet Prime Minister Keir Starmer and sign a pivotal 'friendship treaty' — the first formal defence cooperation agreement between the two governments since World War II. The treaty will reportedly strengthen collaboration across foreign policy, national security, defence, migration, economic growth, and people-to-people ties. Analysts see this move as signalling deeper European independence from US defence dependency and a fortified transatlantic alliance . G20 Finance Ministers' summit G20 finance ministers and central bank governors will convene in Durban, South Africa (July 17-18), concluding a multi-tier Finance Track that began in nearby Zimbali. Key agenda topics include: Urgent action on Sub‑Saharan Africa's $800 billion debt burden. Expansion and reform of the G20 Common Framework for debt relief to include middle-income countries. The urgent need for climate-related finance, including re-engagement in partnerships like the Just Energy Transition (JETP). Mounting trade tensions spurred by the Trump administration's tariff threats targeting Brics nations. Notably, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will be absent for the second time this year, opting to attend the Osaka World Expo; instead, Michael Kaplan will lead the US delegation. African leaders, led by South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa and Finance Minister Godongwana, aim to conclude a joint communiqué — something the G20 finance track has failed to achieve since 2024. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Odisha bandh A state-wide bandh (shutdown) in Odisha is being carried out tomorrow following the tragic death of a 20-year-old student at Fakir Mohan Autonomous College in Balasore. The student succumbed to 95 per cent burn injuries after allegedly setting herself on fire to protest inaction on her sexual harassment complaint Key developments include: Police have arrested the college principal and department head; the UGC has formed a four-member fact-finding committee. Odisha Governor Hari Babu Kambhampati has sought an official report; Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi is visiting the hospital and has announced ₹20 lakh ex gratia for the family. Eight political parties, including Congress and BJD, are enforcing the bandh with protests, sit-ins, and public service disruptions across Balasore, Bhubaneswar, and Cuttack. Rahul Gandhi has called it 'systematic murder by the system,' while BJP leaders have accused him of politicising the tragedy. Activists and experts are demanding tighter sexual harassment standards, mandatory institutional counseling, and enhanced grievance mechanisms across India's colleges. Swachh Survekshan 2024–25 awards ceremony In New Delhi's Vigyan Bhawan, President Droupadi Murmu is set to preside over the Swachh Survekshan Awards 2024–25 — the ninth edition of this sweep of India's urban sanitation milestones. Some of the highlights include: Honouring over 78 urban local bodies for excellence in cleanliness under the Swachh Bharat Mission — highlighting the 3Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Cities from Madhya Pradesh — led by Indore, Bhopal, Jabalpur, Ujjain, Gwalior, Dewas, Budni, and Shahganj — will receive awards. Indore continues its dominance in the 'Super Swachh League.' Karnal (Haryana) and municipalities in Andhra Pradesh will also be recognised for their cleanliness initiatives . Ministers, commissioners, safai mitras and sanitation workers will attend alongside President Murmu and Union Minister Manohar Lal, recognising the foundational role of local communities. With inputs from agencies
