The 3.5% Rule

Why you should really go to a No Kings Day protest, especially if you’re a nice white lady

If you were waiting for a nudge, this is it. Get yourself to a No Kings Day protest. I know you’re overwhelmed. I know you’re scared. I know you’re busy. But please go.

Poster of a frog with a neckerchief in the style of Shepard Fairey, text: “Ribbit, Resist, Repeat” and “No hope without HOP”

Unless you live in a super-rural part of a red state, there is likely one *very close* to you. Here’s a map to find it.

Go, because while it may feel like each individual protest doesn’t matter, and there will always be another one to hit, this one really does. It matters because of the 3.5% rule, that says when 3.5% of the population of a country protest publicly and nonviolently all at once against their government, that government is likely to fall from power.

The last No Kings event in June saw 5 million people take to the streets. 3.5% of the US population is just north of 10 million people. WE CAN DO THIS. We can double the number of people who show up. But only if *you* come, and bring a few friends or family or church folks.

If you think you’re too busy: looking back on this moment in six months or 10 years, will you wish you had made this a priority? Creeping fascism is breaking into a sprint. All of us will suffer its effects. Not evenly, but every one of us all stand to lose a lot (freedoms, opportunity, money, self-respect) if we don’t act.

If you say to yourself: “politics is too depressing,” you REALLY need to go. There’s nothing like being in the joyful-serious scrum of a mass protest. YOU WILL HAVE FUN. You may belly-laugh. I can almost guarantee it. You may make new friends, and will definitely find new courage. It will make your DAY and be a fierce kick back at your depression.

If you worry you’ll get pepper sprayed or thrown to the ground or arrested or worse: I can’t promise you that’s not going to happen. But I *can* tell you that the more people show up, the safer every individual protestor there will be.

Especially if you’re white.

Especially if you present as female.

Especially if you’re a middle aged nice white lady like me, or an older white person of any gender.

Whiteness and respectability have done and are doing so much harm in our country right now, keeping us complacent or shielding bad actors and going along with the status quo, no matter how destructive to individuals and society.

Visibly showing up is a chance to use our white respectability as a shield to protect others who don’t have our agency and relative freedom to speak out.

Two days ago, our attorney general, a nice(ly groomed) white lady my age, characterized half of America as Hamas agents and far-left domestic terrorists. The more she gets her half to believe that they are in danger, the more violence will escalate against even respectable white people of privilege who dare to dissent.

NOW is the time to show up. If you’re busy/scared/not able-bodied, go for 45 minutes in the middle of the event. Stay at the edges. Just be counted.

I had my first hip replacement surgery in February, and I told myself “I’ll go back to street protests once I am physically able to run away from the cops/feds/whoever.”

I had my second hip replacement 3 weeks ago. I’m walking with a cane and some pain. I definitely can’t run yet. But I have to practice what I’m preaching, so I’m going to the No Kings event in my sleepy town of Alameda rather than to Oakland or San Francisco–much less chance I will need to run.

I am so clear that I need to be there and be counted. I was born white, female, American—and along the way became a Christian—for just such a time as this.

As a friend said: united we Ribbit. Divided we croak.

Here is my sign from May 5 in Sacramento, that I will re-create for tomorrow!

Me in a "I met God She’s Black” tee shirt, holding up a cardboard sign that says “To HELL with Christian Nationalism" in front of the state house

Hope to see you here there and everywhere. And let us all know in the comments how it went!

Much love,

Molly