Given all the events happening, this is a reminder that peaceful protests are the key to change. We are all angry, we are all sad for the people and families being violently attacked, and it is hard to stay cool and calm, but violence reciprocity is not the answer. Channeling Gandhi, and MLK, both who change nations by absorbing violence and standing in their way. Show how they lost the moral high ground, and DO NOT RECIPROCATE!
Also it works:
There are key parameters to the 3.5 percent rule according to Chenoweth. The “figure is a descriptive statistic based on a sample of historical movements.” Thus, it is not necessarily a hard-and-fast law, but rather a solid predictor. Remarkably, most mass nonviolent movements that succeeded did so even without reaching the 3.5 percent threshold. Moreover, durable nonviolent movements are twice as likely to succeed as violent campaigns because people generally reject violence. The 3.5 percent rule does not rely on cumulative participation, but rather participation at a peak event, which usually means a mass nonviolent demonstration. And the demands for change must achieve success within one year as a result of the mobilization.
...
For everyday Americans wishing to actively object to the government’s slide toward authoritarian policies, the 3.5 percent rule is a motivational yardstick to measure the likely result of peaceful mobilization.
People-powered movements can increase the chances of pressuring the government to meet their demands, including by building broad, sustained public participation across diverse groups. This is especially true because authoritarian-minded governments try to divide the population and keep them afraid of defiance. When 3.5 percent of a population goes beyond protest to engage in peaceful civil disobedience and noncooperation, these actions disrupt the system and force governmental change. For example, general strikes that affect the economy, boycotts, sit-ins, walkouts, or shutdowns of parts of cities can put unavoidable pressure on political leaders to hear their constituents and resolve the matter.
Chenoweth also states that 3.5 percent participation strongly indicates that there is much deeper support of the movement across society and a sense of inevitability, which can translate into defections from key pillars on the government’s side. For example, leaders from the economic, business, political, cultural, and media sectors become more likely to shift their allegiance to the side of a broad nonviolent mobilization. Perhaps most importantly, effective mobilizations can cause vital defections from police and military forces as well as the members of the political party in power.
So to reiterate:
...People-powered movements are more successful when they can strategically build a broad tent across the political spectrum, avoid violence, and remain relentlessly disciplined. Sharing the risks of defiance, Americans committed to pro-democracy principles can shift the current balance of power and change the trajectory of the nation.
The notion that any single protest can overturn a political system is daft beyond belief. the whole 3.5% rule argument gets the process of change backwards. While it presents a powerful looking statistic, it confuses the final, visible symptom for the cause. The idea that a single, massive peaceful protest can be the key is an idealist view that ignores the material and organizational groundwork that makes any protest meaningful in the first place.
Real social transformation doesn't work like flipping a switch when you hit some magic number. It works through the dialectical process where quantity transforms into quality. The big protest or the general strike, that's the qualitative leap. But that leap is only possible because of a huge, often invisible, accumulation of quantitative work. That work is the unglamorous foundation without which meaningful change is not possible. It's the years of on the ground political organizing in neighborhoods and workplaces. It's building mutual aid networks for food, housing, and disaster relief. It's the patient political education in study groups that turns anger into a shared class analysis.
Without that deep foundation of organized power and dual infrastructure, a big crowd is just a crowd. It can be dispersed because it has no staying power. We've seen this happen time and again with things like Occupy and George Floyd protests. The state isn't moved by moral appeals. It's moved by sustained, organized disruption of its systems. Look at the movements you cite. The Montgomery Bus Boycott wasn't a one day march. It was a 381 day campaign sustained by a community organized carpool system. It relied on existing mutual aid structures as the vehicle to sustain the protest. The Salt March was a direct assault on a state revenue monopoly. These were strategic withdrawals of consent, built on years of prior organization.
The belief that people reject violence and that moral high ground alone wins misunderstands the state. The state holds a monopoly on legitimate violence. It will use that violence to crush any real threat to its power, no matter how peaceful the threat appears on the surface. The moral high ground is a narrative that only exists when a movement isn't winning. When it starts to win, that narrative is promptly shattered by police batons and mass arrests.
So the real task isn't chasing a viral protest moment. It's the slow, quantitative work of building the material fundamentals of popular power from below. The 3.5% moment isn't the start of the struggle. It's the moment that shows the long, hard work of base building has finally created the conditions for a real leap forward. Change isn't an event you attend. It's a process you build every day through organization, mutual care, and collective education.