What's Next? One Million Rising

Many of us have been wondering, “after No Kings, what’s next?” Last Wednesday’s webinar “One Million Rising”—the first of a three-part series sponsored by Indivisible—sketched a very clear answer. If you missed the webinar, you can find a replay online below. Please do watch it, it was excellent.

I found it helpful to hear our current situation described as a period of authoritarian consolidation, a time when the would-be tyrant seeks to weaken and undermine sources of criticism and dissent in order to be allowed to exercise his rule without restraint.

Even more interesting, however, was the section led by Maria Stephan. She and Erica Chenoweth are the co-authors of the study which identified “the 3.5% rule,” the idea that historically, no resistance movement that mobilized at least 3.5% of the population has failed to bring about political change.

By now, we’ve all heard about the 3.5% rule. And so we get excited on a day like No Kings when it was variously reported that three thousand, five thousand, or even seven thousand people participated in the events at Santa Fe’s Roundhouse. Any of those numbers, if correct, would surpass that magical 3.5% of Santa Fe’s official population. So let’s do it again, and do it even bigger! Or so we might think.

What I learned from Maria Stephan is that mass protests are just one step, indeed the first step, in mounting what we all hope to be effective resistance to tyranny. Protest and persuasion are important; they raise public awareness of the danger of our current situation, and they make visible the fact that many people are not okay with it. But, Stephan argues, we also need organized non-cooperation, weakening the authoritarian status quo by withdrawing the pillars of support for their illegal and unjust policies and actions.

To be effective in this will require consistent strategic effort over time, and it will require us to draw more people into the effort. It will require us to work on at least four things: building connection with others, building knowledge about what is effective and what is not, building readiness to follow through with action, and building resilience to the inevitable response of the regime.

That all sounds like hard work! But that hard work—steady, strategic work— is exactly “what is next” after No Kings. Can we commit to that? Personally, I find that pouring myself into this type of work is about the only relief that I can get from the daily—hourly—outrages emerging from DC. I think we all want to look back on this period and think that we were able to “do something” that actually made a difference.

So let’s all make a commitment to at least watch this series of webinars. Go back and replay the first one. The next two will be broadcast on July 30th and August 13th. Make sure to register for both events on Mobilize. Why not host a watch party so you can discuss your responses and best ideas with fellow Indivisible members? Then after the series plan on hosting a resistance gathering so we can spread the news and start building power in the broader community.

Find more information about One Million Rising here.