that's my entire reasoning for being so insistent. it takes all of us. don't waste that energy.
one of us will get to come back here and say "i told you so". i don't care how it gets done, but from my years of observation, it's not going to be protests. not unless they become riots, which is a different beast than carrying signs.
but the problem is, once it becomes riots, then we're sitting ducks, unorganized and mostly still ineffective. i'm just trying to save us from that pain. if you're willing to riot, then you're willing to take a calculated approach.
Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.
There are, of course, many ethical reasons to use nonviolent strategies. But compelling research by Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, confirms that civil disobedience is not only the moral choice; it is also the most powerful way of shaping world politics – by a long way.
Looking at hundreds of campaigns over the last century, Chenoweth found that nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to achieve their goals as violent campaigns. And although the exact dynamics will depend on many factors, she has shown it takes around 3.5% of the population actively participating in the protests to ensure serious political change.
i'm not going to try to discredit the work of scholars, these are good points. i'm just ready for this to not ever be a problem again. i want a path for humanity to move forward without pushbacks every 50 to 100 years.
The problem is reaching that 3.5%--that's a lot more people than it sounds like, but that's what we'll need. Fortunately, the more people who show up, the more other people will join in, and the more people see them, the more will turn up. That's why the media doesn't want to cover the protests or at least not show footage of the crowds.