The Harvard political scientist Amy Chenowith who studies the rise and fall of dictatorial regimes says that it takes 3.5% of a country's population to actively resist in order to stop an authoritarian takeover. In the United States, that means almost twelve million people would need to rise up and vocally say no to Donald Trump's power grab. Twelve million people in the streets for protests like June's No Kings Day, twelve million attending town halls to confront a spineless Congress, twelve million writing letters, making phone calls, talking to their neighbors, selling their Teslas, cancelling subscriptions to Jeff Bezos' Washington Post, getting active with the League of Women Voters or 50501 or Indivisible or otherwise beginning to channel their patriotic concern into forms of good trouble..
Twelve million is a lot of people. Yet this morning, Saturday, June 14 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, over three thousand citizens showed up with American flags, drums, home made signs and noisemakers at the Roundhouse (the state capitol building) to protect democracy and the rule of law. That amounts to ... guess what ... almost 3.5% of Santa Fe's eighty-nine thousand residents marching in solidarity on the hottest day of the summer to express their outrage at the grift, corruption and autocratic overreach of the Man Who Would Be King.
It was just one of a least eighteen No Kings demonstrations across our state, with others occurring in Albuquerque, Socorro, Las Vegas, Silver City, Madrid, Las Cruces, Taos, Los Alamos, Valencia County, Portales, Roswell, Carlsbad, Farmington and Otero County. Over two thousand protests rallied masses of Americans in other states and cities around the country.
Twelve million sounds like a lot, but we're coming close. Have we already reached the tipping point that can safeguard the Constitution, de-politicize our military, stop the arrest of judges in their courtrooms and the targeting of lawmakers in their homes? Stop the crackdowns on free speech and the harassment of immigrants, the rape of public lands? End the goon squads and the teargas fired on peaceful assemblies? Not yet. But there's a saying that one plus one plus one makes a million. One by one, we are getting there, becoming the change we hope to see.
Join us.
"I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And just because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something I can do." Edward Everett Hale
