Show up at the No Kings rally on Oct. 18 if you oppose Trump and are pessimistic about stopping his government takeover. Rallies are organized in all 50 states at over 2,200 sites. With 25 in New Hampshire alone, it’s likely there’s one nearby. Our physical participation is the strongest tool we have for stopping Trump, and his administration knows it. They fear our mass nonviolent public protest more than our votes.
The first No Kings protest on June 15 was one of the largest, single-day public protest in American history, involving more than five million people nationwide. And that doesn’t count all the people driving by, honking and cheering. Trump occupied Los Angeles with 4,000 National Guard members and 700 Marines but could not stop 200,000 protestors who gathered there peacefully. He immediately accelerated his threats to squelch opposition nationwide. By the end of September, he had deployed active-duty military to Washington D.C., Portland, Ore., and Memphis, Tenn., and occupied military bases outside of Chicago with the National Guard, threatening to deploy active-duty military. He also threatened troop deployments to at least 10 more cities.
Trump’s escalation is his fear in action, and it hit a new peak when he threatened to authorize troops to use “full force” against protestors. The phrase provokes the notion of “deadly force,” but it is entirely made up. It doesn’t appear in any military regulation or directive, and it has never been used by any previous president or cabinet member.
That didn’t stop him from creating a full force photo op with 300 federal agents in military gear attacking an apartment house in Chicago just last week. ICE agents, using Blackhawk helicopters broke down doors, rounded up children, American citizens and legal residents, zip tied their hands and trashed their homes. They were then held in the street for hours without any search or arrest warrants.
Trump frames peaceful demonstrations as threats to public order and national security every chance he gets. Protestors and journalists are physically attacked and illegally detained. Homeland Security considers videotaping a demonstration to be a “possible threat.” Trump repeatedly sells the lie that peaceful protestors are agitators paid by domestic terrorist organizations. He wants to provoke more protesters into aggressive responses to justify stronger crackdowns against an “insurrection.”
Trump wants our fear to exceed his so we stay home on Oct. 18. We can’t afford to. Organized, public, non-violent opposition to Trump grew from one million on April 4 to five million 10 weeks later. We need to get to 12 million protesters to find out how potent our opposition can really be. That is 3.5% of our total population of 340 million and a sustained movement of that size is a different ballgame.
The 3.5% is based on rigorous reviews of 323 protest movements throughout the world between 1900 and 2006 done by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, highly respected legal and political science scholars. Many factors strengthen the ability to stop a non-democratic government. Size has not guaranteed success historically, but movements rarely failed once they reached that 3.5% critical mass of the population.
The dangers to legal protesters are rising and will only get worse if unchecked, so why not get to 12 million protestors on Oct. 18? We would seize an enormous opportunity to open the public imagination to sustainable change that can unravel Trump’s power, even from within. Trump started taking away our government on Jan. 20. This Saturday can be the day when the people start taking it back. Be there to stand on that side of history.
David Coursin lives in Northwood.