What Resistance Requires

I think all of us have been, to some extent, holding on to that now-famous "3.5% in the streets" figure. Popularized by political scientists Erica Chenowith and Maria Stephan, it suggests that if we just hit this benchmark, change will become inevitable, or so history tells us.

But increasingly, I've found that folks seem to be projecting a little too much on this number. Getting 3.5% of the populace out to rallies is great, rallies are the first step to activating people and building solidarity - but it is the beginning, not the end. As Chenoweth has clarified, it's not a magic number, and getting that number to come to national rallies is not what she and Stephan were talking about.

Tad Stoermer, an expert in resistance in his own right, encapsulated this in a video rebutting the 3.5% "rule" - not a rebuttal to Chenoweth and Stephan, exactly, but to those who have turned that figure into an article of faith, a "cheat code," as he puts it, for change. Reality isn't that simple, and as Stoermer explains, real resistance requires hard work, sacrifice, and risk. There is no easy short-cut, no cheat code.

This might seem disheartening. But it seems to me that we have to be clear-eyed going into this struggle, to understand not only the stakes but what is going to be required to get us through it. Only then can we begin to truly resist.

Lock in. This is going to take a lot more work, from all of us.