Latest / Pod Save America / The 3.5% Protest Rule That Could Bring Down Trump

Transcript

The 3.5% Protest Rule That Could Bring Down Trump · Pod Save America

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Today's presenting sponsor is SimpliSafe Home Security. Summer travel season
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: is officially here, which means it's time to pack your bags,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: double-check your itinerary, and panic about whether you remembered to
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: lock up the house before you left, or you arm
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: your SimpliSafe system and head out confidently knowing SimpliSafe has
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: your back. Don't they love it? Yeah, absolutely. I set
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: up a SimpliSafe. Easy to do.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: Works right out of the box.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: You can customize it to your house, and then it
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: gives you such peace of mind because the app works great,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: the customer support is great, you can rely on it. Also,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: don't sleep on their new ActiveGuard outdoor protection, which helps
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: stop break-ins before they happen. If someone's lurking, agents talk
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: to them in real time, turn on spotlights, and can
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: call the police. Proactively deterring crime before it starts. SimpliSafe
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: is named Best Home Security System of 2025 by CNET. Woo-hoo!
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Ranked number one in customer service by Newsweek and USA Today.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: No contracts, no hidden fees. Monitoring plans start around $ 1
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: a day. 60-day money-back guarantee. Visit simplisafe.com slash crooked to
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: plan and get your first month free. That's simplisafe.com slash crooked.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: There's no safe like Simply Safe. Welcome to Pod Save America.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: I'm Jon Favreau. I've really been looking forward to the
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: conversation you're about to hear, which I've wanted to have
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: for a while, but has turned out to be extremely
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: timely after the events of last week and this weekend.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Massive immigration raids that have led to protests that have
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: led to our own government deploying American troops on the
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: streets of Los Angeles, all leading up to a weekend
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: of nationwide protests that were originally planned in response to
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Trump's military parade in Washington, D.C. It's a lot. It's
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: a lot to process. And one thing I've struggled with
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: since January is finding the time and space to have
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: conversations about the most effective ways to fight back. Trump
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: floods the zone, we react in the moment, and then
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: everyone moves on to the next outrage. I also feel
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: like even though most of us know that this isn't
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: normal politics we're dealing with, the reference point for our
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: response is still basically normal politics. make Trump and MAGA unpopular,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: block what we can, fight them on the issues where
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: they're weakest, and then organize ahead of the midterms and
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: eventually 2028. But I think a lot of us feel
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: like we've reached a point where that may be insufficient
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: and that maybe we need a new playbook to help
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: us through this reality. Our guest this week has been
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: working on that playbook. Some of you may be familiar
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: with the three and a half percent rule. I was
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: not until about a month ago. It comes from extensive
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: research done by Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth, who studied
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: the last hundred years of global activism and came away
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: with two really important findings. Number one, nonviolent protests are
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts. And number two,
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: every nonviolent protest movement where at least three and a
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: half percent of the country's population is engaged has succeeded
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: in in bringing about social or political change. The success
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: could be toppling an authoritarian regime. It could be preventing
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: democratic backsliding. It could be achieving a goal like civil rights.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: But the number is 3.5%, which here in the United
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: States would require engaging about 12 million Americans in a
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: sustained nonviolent protest movement. So for obvious reasons, the 3.5%
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: rule has gone viral on TikTok and other social media
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: platforms just over the last few months. mainly because it's
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: given a lot of people hope and a goal to
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: organize toward and a sense of agency. So I'm going
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: to talk to Erica all about what makes protests work,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: how regimes are catching on to these tactics, and what
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: we can do to build a unified, organized, and disciplined
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: pro-democracy movement in the weeks and months to come. Erica Chenoweth,
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: welcome to Pod Save America.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Glad to be here.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: I've been very excited to talk to you, and I
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: really want as many people as possible to listen to
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: what you have to say, because since Donald Trump became
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: president again, you are the first person who has helped
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: me really see a realistic path out of this. Not
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: an easy path, not a sure thing, but your findings
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: are grounded in a lot of compelling research and data
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: and the experiences of millions of people all across the
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: world over the last hundred years. You have coined what
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: has now become a viral sensation known as the three
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: and a half percent rule, which is the idea that
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: no authoritarian regime has been able to withstand an opposition
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: movement where at least three and a half percent of
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: the country's population engages in sustained nonviolent protest. I, of course,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: want to get into why that is and what the
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: caveats are and all that. But just for people who
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: don't know, what do you do? What's your background? And
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: what is the backstory behind the three and a half
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: percent rule?
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: Sure. Thank you so much. So I'm a political scientist.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: And for the better part of the last 15 plus years,
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: I've been studying how people confront authoritarianism and respond to
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: democratic backsliding episodes in ways that do minimal harm and
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: in fact, create something new and better, which is a
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: more democratic renewal or a country in which they emerge
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: from a political crisis in a better place. So the
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: sort of backstory behind the three and a half percent
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: rule is that my colleague Maria Stephan and I together
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: wrote a book in 2011 called Why Civil Resistance Works.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: And what we did there is we looked at 323
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: campaigns that you would call, say, maximalist campaigns. So they
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: were trying to oust dictatorships. They were trying to expel
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: foreign military occupations or achieve independence against a colonial regime.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: And we found in that book a couple of important things.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: One is that the campaigns that had relied on people power,
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: which is civil resistance, nonviolent civil resistance, where unarmed civilians
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: prosecute the conflict and using strikes, protests, boycotts, and other
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: unarmed methods, were more than twice as likely as their
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: armed counterparts to have succeeded. So cases like the Philippines
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: People Power Movement or the Polish Solidarity Movement or even
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: the latter part of the South African anti-apartheid movement, were
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: actually using a technique of struggle that was more effective than, say,
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: the Algerian revolution or even the Cuban revolution, which many
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: people had held up as sort of a hallmark of
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: the success of armed revolution. So, in other words, the
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: nonviolent campaigns had a better track record and were much
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: more likely to have created democratic breakthroughs. way more likely
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: than their violent counterparts. So where the 3.5% rule comes
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: in is that in our book, we argued that mass
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: participation is a critical reason why nonviolent resistance is more
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: likely to win. It's easier to get huge numbers of
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: people participating in nonviolent resistance from all walks of life,
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: and it's a much more inclusive technique of struggle. And
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: so after the book came out and I was talking
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: with an activist at a workshop who was just interested
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: in exploring these ideas, he asked me, is there a
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: critical threshold of people required in order to create that change?
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: And I said, I don't actually know. There is a
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: scholar named Mark Lickbach who has coined something called the
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: 5% rule, where he just basically mentions that no government
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: probably could withstand a challenge of 5% of the population.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: He also kind of mentions that it's usually unlikely for
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: a movement to get more than 5% of the population participating. Um,
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: and so maybe that's close, but I could actually open
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: our data set and just look. And so, um, I
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: looked and it turned out that none of the campaigns
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: that had surpassed three and a half percent of the
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: population had, uh, had failed. And so, uh, that is
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: then what coined the three and a half percent rule, which, um,
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: which I first talked about in a talk I gave
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: in 2013.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: You mentioned, um, nonviolent movements being more inclusive and more
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: likely to get more people to participate as one factor
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: in why they were more successful. What are some other
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: factors that you found that made the nonviolent movement so
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: much more successful than their armed conflict counterparts?
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so the most important thing that they are able
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: to do is they're able to build enough political power
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: and influence, and sometimes economic and social and cultural power
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: and influence, that they begin to elicit defections from the
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: opponent's pillars of support. So there's no tyrannical regime, no
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: matter how dictatorial, that's monolithic. Every autocrat has to rely
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: 100% on the cooperation, obedience, and help of people in
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: different pillars of support, whether that's the kind of economic
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: and business community, the security forces, writ large state media,
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: civil servants, people in their own political party or in
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: opposition parties that are more kind of conciliatory, et cetera.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: And so nonviolent resistance movements that get very large are
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: capable of tapping into networks that begin to pull apart
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: the loyal of those pillars. And so you start to
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: see defections. And defections can mean everything from, you know,
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: in the case of Serbia, police refusing to fire on
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: huge crowds of demonstrators and indicating a signal moment in
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: which the police and armed forces were not going to
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: defend Slobodan Milosevic, for example, in 2000 when he had
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: to resign. But it can also just mean a more
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: quiet refusal to engage in compliance with the sort of
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: status quo autocratic orientation. So there are all kinds of
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: ways that people defect, some kind of overt, others kind
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: of behind the scenes. But successful nonviolent resistance movements win
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: because they elicit those defections, and it makes it very
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: difficult for the autocrat to stay in power. So nonviolent
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: campaigns are just better at doing that. They're better at
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: doing it because they have the numbers. Those numbers tap
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: into social and cultural and economic networks, and those result
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: in defections. The third thing that successful movements do is
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: that they're able to make repression against them backfire. And
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: as a general matter, people around the world, at least
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: for the last hundred years, have been more repulsed by
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: repression against unarmed people than they have been by repression
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: against armed actors. And so it is more likely that
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: when state violence escalates against a serious nonviolent movement that
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: the government perceives as threatening, that that attempt to repress
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: will backfire. And then the fourth thing is that very
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: large and inclusive movements are capable of using much more
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: powerful techniques of struggle, like a general strike. So general
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: strikes are very powerful. They're one of the potentially most
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: powerful forms of collective action we've discovered as a species.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: And yet they can't really be pulled off unless a
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: movement has that really broad base of support. And so
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: the larger a movement is and the more tapped into
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: different networks it is and different organizations, the more likely
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: it is to be able to pull that off. So really,
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: that's the basic argument that Maria and I articulated in
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: our 2011 book.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Your point on defections is interesting, and it's the size
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: of the movement that helps elicit the defections. Is that because, like,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: for example, in the case of security forces not wanting
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: to fire on the crowd, that because the movement is
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: so large, I think I've heard you say that it
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: becomes more likely that that people who support the regime
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: start having relationships with people who are in the opposition
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: movement and then, you know, don't want to hurt them.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. In Serbia, that was clearly articulated by police who
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: refused to fire on demonstrators in Belgrade in October of 2000.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: And journalists were asking them after it was obvious that
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: they were refusing to back Milosevic all of a sudden
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: why they didn't follow an order to fire on the crowd.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: And they did say things like, I thought I saw
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: my kid in the crowd, or I thought I saw
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: my neighbor or my sister's brother. You do start to
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: tap into those relationships. Or they recognize somebody that they
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: respect in the society that they don't know, but that
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: They realize they have an affinity with, and if that
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: person is saying that Milosevic has to go, then I
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: identify with that person. So it's really about tapping into
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: the sources of influence and the social power that exists
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: in very large, broad-based, cross-cutting networks. Then the question always comes,
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: how do you even get to that point? How do
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: you build that broad-based movement with all of those cross-cutting networks?
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: And there's certainly no shortcuts. It's not something that happens overnight.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: But I think in our book, at least, our argument
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: is that movements that resort to methods that are accessible,
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: that are inclusive, are going to have a shot at it,
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: whereas movements that don't, don't.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: Today's episode is sponsored by Acorns. Acorns is a financial
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: wellness app that makes it easy to start investing for
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: your retirement because the sooner you start, the more of
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: a chance your money has to grow. You don't need
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: to be an expert. Acorns recommends a diversified IRA portfolio
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: that can help you weather all of the market's ups
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: and downs. You don't need to be rich. Acorns lets
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: you get started with the money you've got right now.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: You'd be surprised at what just $ 5 a day could do. Plus,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: sign up for Acorns Gold and you'll get a 3%
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: IRA match on new contributions in your first year. That's
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: extra money for your retirement on Acorns. You don't want
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: to keep all your money, you know, just in a
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: savings account somewhere, especially as you're getting older. You want
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: to build a nest egg for retirement. Yeah. You know?
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: And so you want to do some investing. And if
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: you want to take too much risk, that's okay. Acorns helps.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: You know? They help you figure out what's right for
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: you in terms of investing. Sign up now and join
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: the over 1 million all-time customers who've already saved and
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: invested over $ 2. 2 billion for their retirement with Acorns. Head
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: to acorns.com slash crooked or download the Acorns app to
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: get started. Paid non-client endorsement compensation provides incentive to positively
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: promote Acorns. Tier 3 compensation provided. Investing involves risk. Acorns
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor. View important disclosures
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: at acorns.com slash crooked. Have you looked into what differentiates
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: the movements that choose nonviolence and the ones that choose
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: armed conflict, like what factors lead certain movements to go
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: one way or the other?
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, as you can probably imagine, there's a
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: huge literature about this and lots of different arguments about it.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: I think that just one observation I'll make about that
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: literature is that there's a general finding that fragmented movements,
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: that is movements that aren't able to sort of unite
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: in a way, are more susceptible and vulnerable to having
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: certain factions within the movement escalate to armed conflict. It's
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: also the case, though, that that that sometimes happens even
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: if there is a relatively united kind of nonviolent movement,
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: and then there's sort of a violent flank that emerges
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: outside of it or that has been there for a
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: long time and just isn't part of the broader movement.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: And so I think the point I'm trying to make
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: here is just that one of the things that autocrats
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: do is they try to paint an entire movement as
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: a violent movement when there are what in the scholarship
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: is sort of called violent flanks. And that's just part
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: of the authoritarian toolkit. And it's almost never the case
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: that that's true. It's almost always the case that a
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: vast majority of people in the movement would not be
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: even kind of, would not volunteer to be part of
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: like an armed wing. But it's a very cynical move
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: that governments who are trying to suppress these movements and
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: delegitimize them will often use to try to do so.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: I'd love to talk about sort of the movement's response
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: to that tactic from the regime. I don't think a
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: significant number of people are calling for armed conflict in
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: this country. I have heard people argue that protests are
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: difficult to control and there will always be some violence.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: And who really cares about vandalism when the state is
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: committing violence and repression? And does it really matter whether
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: our movement is seen as peaceful and committed to nonviolence
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: if the regime is just going to paint us all
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: as violent anyway? What would you say to that?
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: I think there are sort of two things to think about.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: One is the power of kind of organizational and tactical discipline,
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: and the other is the power of narrative discipline. So
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: on the organizational and tactical discipline side, I think the
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: most important thing is for movements to to be able
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: to build the capacity to prepare and train and strategize
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: and build power with the people that they have. And
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: that is, you know, often in history, what puts them
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: in the best position to be able to execute the
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: tactics they want, regardless of what's happening around them. So
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: I think, like, That just speaks to the power of
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: organizing and organizations in helping to build the capacity for
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: sustained nonviolent resistance, regardless of everything else. In terms of
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: the narrative discipline piece, I think what can be a
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: danger for many movements is that the autocrats always want
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: movements to have to distract from their overall goals by
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: defending their tactics and or debating their tactics or doing
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: that kind of thing. And I think the sort of
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: narrative discipline piece is many movements in the past have
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: tried to just not take the narrative bait and instead say,
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: this is what our movement is for. Um, we're, you know,
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: the movement is not going to succumb to the violence
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: and chaos being imposed upon the movement by, uh, the,
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: the sort of autocratic forces. And we are a nonviolent
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: movement who's carrying on, uh, or something like that. So I,
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: I just like not even, you know, indulging in the, um,
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: in the justification of this or that or whatever. I,
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: I think that it's, um, anytime like tactics are being
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: debated in the sort of public media space, it distracts
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: from the broader claims of the movement. And so, yeah,
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: those are just kind of capacities that many movements have
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: built in the past to try to avoid falling into
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: those traps.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: So the key is to be loud and clear both
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: about the goals of the movement and advertise it as
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: nonviolent and to be clear and repetitive about that and
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: not to really get dragged into the debate over who's
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: violent and who's not and whether it's good or bad.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I also think that it can be useful to
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: sort of call out the cynical misrepresentations, but only in
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: such a way that it keeps the light shining on
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: sources of the violence, which is to say state attempts
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: to infiltrate, repress, escalate, provoke, which are straight out of
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: the toolbox of autocrats as exactly a way to try
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: to challenge the movement's legitimacy and its perceptions in the
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: public eye.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: I heard you say something like movements don't necessarily have
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: to get most people on their side. They just need
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: to shift most people slightly towards them, and that the
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: most successful movements are the ones that invite the public
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: into the conversation as opposed to the movements that are
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: constant nuisances to the public. Can you talk more about
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: the importance of persuasion as a strategy? Because I think
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: sometimes people look at movements and they think, okay, there's persuasion,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: and that's for voters in an election, and then there's protest,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: and that's separate from persuasion, that's just bodies in the streets.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: But it seems like they really are, they need to
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: work together.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good question. So Gene Sharp, who is
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: considered by many as being a really, like, potentially the
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: key intellect in the latter part of the 20th century
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: on nonviolent action and the theory of civil resistance, kind
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: of makes the kind of categorizes methods of nonviolent action
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: into three buckets. And the first bucket is what he
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: actually calls protest and persuasion. That's the first bucket. The
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: second bucket is non-cooperation. And the third bucket is what
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: he calls alternative institutions or methods of nonviolent intervention, which
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: includes alternative institutions. And the reason in the first bucket
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: he puts protest and persuasion in the same category, I think,
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: is because of this kind of tacit acknowledgement that Protest
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: is a largely symbolic action. Protests as such, as opposed to, say, strikes,
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: are there to make a point. And it sort of
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: depends on what the movement is trying to do. Is
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: it just trying to make a point, or is it
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: also trying to articulate new values? Is it trying, or
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: the movement's own values, is it trying to set the agenda?
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: Is it trying to put pressure, you know, on particular policymakers?
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: to advance new policies or plans or to get on
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: their side or whatever. So there's lots of things that
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: can be done with protests, but it's largely a sort
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: of communication device between the movement and the public. Sometimes
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: it can serve an organizing function because it's a way
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: of people to find themselves in a movement and then
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: they can be They can be further engaged through mass
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: organizations and things like that. But it's largely like a
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: communication and signaling device. That's compared to things like mass non-cooperation,
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: like the strike, or different types of social ostracization campaigns
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: and things, which are meant to impose direct costs. And
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: they do impose costs, right? So If you look at
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: things like the Tesla sellbacks and the suggestion to people
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: that they should not buy Teslas or to make showrooms
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: uncomfortable places for people to be in, therefore they don't go,
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: that's imposing direct material costs. That's more than just a
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: communication device. It's an invitation for people to use their
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: own material resources to impose costs or withhold benefits. And so...
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: This is all to say to your sort of earlier question,
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: I think it depends on where in its life a
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: movement is and what it's trying to achieve with the
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: different techniques that are available. And I would say that
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: movements that win, they do invite the public into a
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: broader conversation. They invite more and more people into the
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: movement over time. But there isn't any one tactic that's
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: sort of the best tactic to do that. It's more
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: a question of, you know, if the movement was thinking
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: about the project of eliciting defections over time and then
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: reverse engineering a strategy to get there, like what sequence
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: of tactics makes the most sense in their context. And
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: there's not like a formula. It's just, you know, it's
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: a sort of strategic question in each case.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about where we are today in this country.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: We're recording this late Friday after a pretty alarming week,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: even by the standards of the Trump era. The president
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: deployed 4,800 troops here to Los Angeles over the objections
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: of the governor. troops that have been accompanying masked federal
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: agents to conduct warrantless enforcement raids in neighborhoods.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: A U.S.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: Senator who one FBI agent escorted to a public press
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: conference was then tackled and handcuffed by other FBI agents
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: because he interrupted the secretary of Homeland Security to ask
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: a question. And then, of course, Trump is giving himself
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: a military parade this weekend for his 79th birthday. How
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: would you characterize where America is right now in comparison
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: to other countries that have gone through some level of
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: democratic backsliding? Like, where would you say we are on
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: the spectrum?
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think we are in an acute
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: backsliding episode. I think most scholars in this field agree
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: that there's not like usually a bright line that you cross.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: It's more that a lot of things go on at
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: the same time. There's sort of an unraveling. We're in
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: the unraveling. And I think there's sort of a common
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: term that's emerging that some of my colleagues use to
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: describe contemporary autocratic systems. They call it competitive authoritarianism, which
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: means that there are the trappings of democracy, like elections
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: that are scheduled and held. There might be some nominal
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: kind of freedoms and liberties and rights still on the books,
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: but they're sort of arbitrarily enforced and applied. And then
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of kind of privation and abuses of
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: rights happening all over the place. And the elections, when
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: they are held, they might be free but not fair,
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: is sort of how the colleagues describe them. And so
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: I think there's a conventional or sort of growing understanding
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: that competitive authoritarianism is the sort of most common form
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: of autocracy we have in the world today, and that
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: it's sort of where the U.S., it's somewhere in that landscape.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: I would argue that While it's true that competitive authoritarianism
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: has been the dominant mode around the world over the
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: past 20 or so years, it can actually get worse
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: from there. And so we've seen countries like Russia go from,
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: you know, relatively kind of competitive authoritarianism in the 2000s to, like,
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: full autocracy over the last five years, for sure. And so.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: So this is just to say, regardless of where we
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: are on the sort of downswing, the deeper it goes,
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: the harder it is to climb out. And I think
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: that we are in a pretty acute and alarming kind
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: of political emergency right now.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: There are also long-planned widespread protests scheduled for this weekend,
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: no-kings protests. You've done some work that shows, contrary to
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: popular belief, or at least my belief, there were more
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: protests in the first few months of Trump's second term
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: here in 2025 than in Trump's first term in 2017.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: Say more about that. And why do you think that's
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: not the general impression people have?
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So my team at the Crowd Counting Consortium, which
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: is a group that I've been engaged in, started just
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: me and Jeremy Pressman back on the Women's March in 2017.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: And then we've had a group of volunteers working with us.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: And now we have a small group of staff and
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: research assistants who work with us. We have been collecting
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: data on protest and police response in the United States
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: in every day since the Women's March of 2017. So
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: we have I think, the most comprehensive database on patterns
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: and kind of flows of protests. And what we have
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: documented is that by now, that is sort of the
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: end of May of 2025, which is the latest data
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: that we've cleaned and released, we've had something like more
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: than three times as much protests in terms of the
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: volume of protests around the country as had happened at
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: this point in 2017. So it's actually quite a large difference.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: And I think there are a couple of reasons why
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: it's not getting picked up and isn't sort of the
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: conventional wisdom. The first is that even though the volume
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: of protest events is higher, there haven't been any real
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: signature events like the Women's March of 2017, where There were,
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: you know, dozens of cities that were brought to an
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: orderly standstill for a day because of the huge numbers
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: of people who were, you know, blocking streets because it
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: was so packed with mass participation. And so, you know,
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: I think that sort of set a high bar for
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: what people considered really newsworthy. At the same time, what
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: we have seen is this huge volume of events, and
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: it's much more geographically dispersed. So we're seeing many more
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: events in small towns, and we're seeing many more events
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: happening on a regular basis, sort of generating a sense
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: of regularity, continuity, momentum, and capacity and commitment, right? So
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: those are actually quite important trends. The other thing that
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: I think is going on is that there's just a
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: huge volume of news and kind of drama coming out
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: of the White House on a daily basis. And that
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: is distracting. And, you know, there's a question about just
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: limitations of people's attention abilities and everything. And so I
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: think it actually, it's very hard to have the capacity
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: to cover what is building in this country. But You know,
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: from where I sit, the two most important things that
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: we have seen are this huge volume of events. We
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: have had these signature days, like the April 5th hands-off
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: protest nationwide. And then tomorrow's, you know, No Kings protest
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: seems to be planned in something like 2,000 different localities
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: around the country. And that could possibly be, like, the
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: largest day of mass mobilization we've ever seen in the
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: country nationwide. I also point out that the April 5th
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: demonstrations were the largest single-day demonstrations we've had at least
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: since the summer of 2020, which was itself, according to
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: our data, largest and broadest mass mobilization in U.S. history.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: So we are, you know, in kind of historical levels
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: of mobilization, even if the sort of muzzle velocity of
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: the news coming out of Washington obscures the fact that
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: people are mobilizing in these historical numbers.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: We'll be back in just a minute. But before that,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: one quick housekeeping note. Join Friends of the Pod today
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: to unlock our subscriber-only shows and other perks. In the
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: latest episode of Inside 2025, the hosts of Strict Scrutiny
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: pull back the curtain on the Supreme Court. Kate, Leah,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: and Melissa reveal what it's like to really clerk for
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: a justice, how clerks are chosen, and just how insidery
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: the process can get. They also unpack what's happening behind
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: the scenes leading up to big decisions. And if you
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: need a moment of laughter and chaos to escape the
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: news cycle for a bit, tune in to Terminally Online,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: a subscriber-only show where Crooked hosts and staff dive headfirst
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: into the internet's wildest corners. The latest episode features Alyssa Mastromonaco,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Dan Pfeiffer, Tommy Vitor, and Elijah Cohn. Sounds like a
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: good one. Subscribe now to listen to these exclusive shows
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: and more at crooked.com slash friends or on Apple Podcasts.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is brought to you by Mint Mobile.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: You know what doesn't belong in your epic summer plans?
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Getting burned by your old wireless bill while you're planning
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: beach trips, barbecues, and three-day weekends. Your wireless bill should
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: be the last thing holding you back. That's why so
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: many people are making the switch to Mint Mobile. With
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: plans starting at $ 15 a month, Mint Mobile gives you
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: premium wireless service on the nation's largest 5G network. The
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: coverage and speed you're used to, but way less money.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: So while your friends are sweating over data overages and
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: surprise charges, you'll be chilling, literally and financially. Say bye
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: to your overpriced wireless plans, jaw-dropping monthly bills, and unexpected overages.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: Mint Mobile is here to rescue you. All plans come
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: the nation's largest 5G network. Use your own phone with
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: with all your existing contacts. Ditch overpriced wireless and get
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: three months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: $ 15 a month. Crooked Media's own Nina switched to Mint
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Mobile last year. Nina says she gets crystal clear service
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: and the data speeds are excellent. We can attest to that.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: We've had Nina dial into meetings somewhere else while she's
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: on her phone and the connection's perfect. Yeah, she's always somewhere,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: that Nina. She is always somewhere. Yeah, with her Mint Mobile.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: With her Mint Mobile. And best of all, she's paying
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: a fraction of what she was paying on her old
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: plan with one of the big wireless companies. This year,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get your
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: summer savings and shop premium wireless plans at mintmobile.com slash crooked.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: That's mintmobile.com slash crooked. Upfront payment of $ 45 for three-month
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: five-gigabyte plan required, equivalent to $ 15 a month. New customer
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: offer for first three months only, then full price plan
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: options available. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: So I'd love to talk about sort of the road
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: from where we are now. where we have seen sort
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: of a little under the radar, at least in the media,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: this sort of spontaneous organized protest in a lot of
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: different localities all around the country to three and a
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: half percent. And sort of the challenges that we face
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: that are specific to this country, it's the challenges of
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: organizing a nonviolent movement that begins quite decentralized, fairly spontaneous
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: at first, different factions with different priorities, and maybe most important,
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: at least from where I sit, an information environment where
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: it's become, as you just pointed out, really hard to
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: get attention, partly because of the regime, but also just
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: partly because of the information environment we have, which is
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: quite polluted and broken at this point. What does the
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: path look like to three and a half percent And here,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: you know, you could talk about some examples from history
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: that might be good comps for us, or also just
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: strategies that you've been thinking about and talking to people
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: about over the last several months.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, these are great questions. I'm afraid I don't have
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: great answers, but I can give you some, you know,
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: maybe historical examples that can serve as useful reference points. So,
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: And also, maybe it's a good time for me to
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: mention just a couple caveats about the 3.5% rule. For sure.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: As I mentioned earlier, it was based on a very
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: particular set of historical examples, those initial 323 cases that
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: Maria and Stefan and I had identified of maximalist campaigns
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: from 1900 to 2006, which is when our data set ended.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: And so, one way to look at that is that
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: threshold that applied in that sample of cases for that
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: period of time. And in none of those cases was
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: the population actively thinking, we just need 3.5% of us
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: to get out there. It was not a self-conscious organizing goal.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: And I actually don't know what happens if it becomes
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: a self-conscious organizing goal. Like if people think about it
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: as a prescriptive number, whether the same assumptions would hold.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: And I think part of that is because you know,
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: if you think about three and a half percent of
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: the population, that is a huge number of people in
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: absolute terms. So we would be talking about something that,
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: as far as I can tell, has not been achieved
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: on a single day of protests in U.S. history. But
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: it's also the case that if it was achieved, for example,
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: if the U.S. was in one of those historical examples
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: that I mentioned, and we saw that, we'd probably also,
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: look back at that case and notice that there were
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: three and a half percent of the population out at
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: a peak moment. But then there was like a huge,
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: you know, group of people who were not out, but
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: who sympathize with the movement or like public opinion was
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: shifting or they had the initiative. They had built momentum.
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: They'd been organizing for years to build to that peak moment.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: And So the problem with the threshold is it obscures
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: all of the different capacities and infrastructure and time that
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: go into building that kind of muscle. So this is
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: all just to say there's no shortcut, and it's not
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: exactly a magic number. But what it does do is
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: it helps us understand the sort of theory of change here,
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: which is that the main function of civil resistance movements
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: is to mobilize sufficient mass to with sufficient momentum to
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: effectively begin to disrupt the opponent's coalition, right? And that
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: it doesn't require 70% of the population or something like
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: that in order to engage in things that they're very
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: unlikely to do in order to begin to build the
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: sense that there's a major shift in the balance of
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: power underway. And so, anyway, that's kind of the way
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: I would sort of add caveats and also kind of
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: hold on to the nuts and bolts of what it
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: tells us. How do we get there? You know, the
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: four ways that these movements succeed I think are, you know,
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: useful to look to here. So movements that win, as
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: I mentioned at the outset, win because they build an
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: ever-broadening base of people who are willing to sort of
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: stand up for what they believe in. And they begin
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: to arrange themselves into formations that are able to strategize
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: to elicit defections. And they are able to withstand attacks
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: upon them. And they're able to maintain their resilience and
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: their own organizational, tactical, and narrative discipline as those attacks escalate.
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: And they are able to shift. They build a capacity
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: to shift so that they're not just doing protests, like
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: mass protests in the streets, which over time can become
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: very difficult to manage and can become very risky as
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: repression escalates. And so they can begin to do things
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: like mass non-cooperation. The ever-popular stay-at-home demonstration, which is another
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: way of referring to a general strike, which we all
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: found out during COVID, is something that can be done.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: So So, um, you know, I think the, the, uh,
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: those are the four capacities, uh, the capacity to build
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: mass mobilization, the capacity to elicit defections, the capacity to, um,
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: to withstand repression with resilience and to, uh, build tactical
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: innovation that doesn't over rely on the street demonstration as
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: the main show of power. So, um, So movements that
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: do that can shift the balance of power. And many
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: of them do it without even getting 3.5% of the population.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: Most of the movements in our database never got to
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: that threshold and still won with like 1.8% or something
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: like that.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: I would love to break down each of those factors
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: in successful movements and sort of start with non-cooperation, economic non-cooperation.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: You've mentioned it a few times. And I think that,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: you know, you use the example of the Tesla takedown
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: as it was a very successful sort of, you know,
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: smaller but limited effective campaign. We haven't had in this country,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: at least in my lifetime, a lot like sort of
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: mass non-cooperation, economic non-cooperation movements. Can you say a little
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: more about these types of tactics? There's boycotts, there's boycotts,
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: there's strikes. And how they've been used in other movements
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: and sort of why you think, whether you think they
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: can be effective movements here and whether they're realistic tactics
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: to employ here.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So I'll tell two stories about this. The first
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: is the origin of the term boycott at all. So
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: the term boycott actually comes from the Irish independence movement.
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: The late part of the 19th century, so after the famine,
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: there was, you know, building kind of agitation for independence.
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: And in the face of that, there was a, you know,
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: broad range of repressive techniques that the British used there.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: And one of them was banning the Irish Land League
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: because they felt like they were getting too organized and
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: too effective. But they failed to ban the Ladies' Land League,
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: which they didn't think was very threatening. The Ladies' Land
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: League is the one that originated the term boycott. And
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: the way it happened was that there was an absentee
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: British landlord named Captain Charles Boycott who had a wealthy,
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: you know, he was very wealthy and he had a
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: home in County Mayo. And when he would come to
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: collect rents, you know, it was always viewed as coming
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: to people who just suffered under the famine and taking their,
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: their food and their stuff. Right. So it was like very, uh, exploitative,
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: shall we say, just colonial regime. So, um, there was
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: an episode in which captain Charles boycott was going to
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: come back and collect rents from his tenants and everyone else.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: And the ladies land league started organizing these amazing campaigns, um,
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: where they would withhold their, um, So no cooks would
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: show up. No one would sell him food when he
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: went into town. No one would clean his house. You know,
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: people would just refuse to engage with him at all,
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: sell him things, provide him things. And so he found
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: himself completely ostracized in his town. People wouldn't even look
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: at him. And so he left and never came back.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: That's where we get the term boycott. And so it
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: was basically isolating him from access to anything that was
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: being provided in that place. So the way we use
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: it now is slightly differently, which is don't buy someone's product, right?
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: I will say the second story is based on that
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, where I think there's a
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: really powerful demonstration of how, you know, when things like
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: street demonstrations or mass demonstrations become simply too dangerous... because
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: there was never going to be a defection of the
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: white supremacist security forces to, you know, the, um, anti-apartheid movement, um,
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: that movement had to shift to the business and economic
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: community as the sort of targets of their aims to
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: get defections. And so, um, over time there were campaigns
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: even under martial law, uh, to, um, to not buy
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: from white-owned businesses for sustained periods. So that was the
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: sort of boycott campaign. But there were also strikes, so
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: people also wouldn't go to work in the white-owned businesses,
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: or they would go work and take their paycheck but
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: not buy anything. And those were sort of alternating to
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: put lots of instability and pressure on those businesses from within. So,
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: you know, a huge number of the population, in that case,
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: like over, you know, 88% or 90% of the population
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: is not buying, then you're going to have an economic crisis.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: And then combined with the divestments of multinational corporations and
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: sanctions by different countries against the South African apartheid regime,
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: then you just see this economic squeeze on really the
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: white-owned businesses. And those business owners went to the National Party,
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: which was the pro-apartheid party, and basically said, you have
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: to elect a reformer. You have to do business with
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: the United Democratic Front and ultimately the ANC, you know.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: And so they did. They elected a reformer. When Botha died,
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: they elected de Klerk, and de Klerk immediately unbanned the
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: ANC and began to, you know, negotiate and formulate the
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: you know, the new system with Mandela and all of
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: his negotiators. So, you know, basically, I think the key
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: story there is that even in situations where there's this actual,
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: you know, just like overwhelming state violence that is, you know, quite,
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: is continuing in a way that is very difficult to
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: interrupt and there were still these other tools that impose
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: direct material costs that produce the outcome. And it was
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: by understanding the landscape and focusing the defections on the
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: business community.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: So in this country, you know, we've seen, especially in
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: the second Trump administration, that a lot of the sort
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: of resistance to him from the business community that we
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: might have seen in the first term sort of dissipated.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: He has a lot more support from the business community.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: The idea of economic non-cooperation would be to pressure the
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: business community to either defect from the administration if they
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: are supportive or speak out against the administration or put
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: pressure on the administration themselves because a strike or non-cooperation
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: or boycott is are sort of hurting their bottom line.
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: I think that's right, and I think it's important, too,
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: to recognize that it's not always necessarily, like, engaging with
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: the White House, but what about the enablers, right? So, like,
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: GOP elected, and we're, like, really starting to break into
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: that coalition. So it sort of depends on the dynamic
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: changing arrangements. But the main thing to know is that
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: there's no regime that's monolithic and there are always actors
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: that are sort of available to be pressured, to be persuaded, etc.
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: And it's not always about getting the autocrat to change
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: their mind. Sometimes it's about limiting their options because they
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: can't get others to go along with them.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I want to talk about defections because that
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: seems to be an area where Trump has also learned
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: lessons from the first administration. And, you know, this has
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: been reported and he had a lot of defections in
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: the first term and he has been prizing loyalty above
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: all else this time around so that he doesn't have
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: as many defections. All that said, I'm wondering what you
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: make of Elon Musk, not necessarily defecting, but certainly... no
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: longer actively participating in the regime. I think a lot
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: of the media focus, certainly my focus, was on the
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: drama between them and the breakup and all that. But
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: I did wonder if Elon leaving, um, might make other
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: business leaders think, do I really need to be part
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: of this? He left, you know, was it a little
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: crazy in there and, and give people second thought, but
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know what you make of that.
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it's hard to know. I mean, it, uh,
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: I think that on the one hand, there might be
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: some business leaders that think now that he's gone, I
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: can get in there and they can benefit and they
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: can have more influence now that he's not there blocking
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: their influence. I think there could be also business leaders
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: who didn't want to be in there in the first place,
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: but also want to continue to benefit and so will
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: not fight because they don't want to be I mean,
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: Trump has been like putting people under the spotlight and
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: engaging in extremely aggressive tactics to try to coerce loyalty
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: throughout civil society, right? And retaliating against those that dare
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: to say no. And so I think, you know, that
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: there are costs to doing it and whether business leaders
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: come to a place where they're willing to accept some costs.
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: is sort of a question. And what would make them
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: do that, I think, is a big strategic question. The
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: other thing I'll say is that no business is monolithic, right?
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: So there are shareholders, there are customers, consumers, there are advertisers,
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: there are distributors, there are suppliers. And all of those, right,
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: have people who are in various ranges of kind of
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: loyalty and fidelity to their commitments to the business. And so,
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: you know, I think it's an opportunity to really think
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: about how can businesses be impacted. We've had many campaigns
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: in this country in the past in which unscrupulous business
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: owners have been, you know, forced to behave better because
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: of movements like, you know, unscrupulous grape farm owners during
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: the California Farm Workers Movement and things like that. So
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: there's lots to learn from the way that people kind
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: of can shift around points of pressure and influence within
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: even the smallest business.
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: Pots of America is brought to you by Quince. I'm
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: not big on trends, but I am big on clothes
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: that feel good and last. That's why I keep going
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: back to Quince. Their lightweight layers and high-quality staples have
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: become my everyday essentials. Quince has all the things you
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: actually want to wear this summer, like organic cotton silk polos,
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: European linen beach shorts, and comfortable pants that work for
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: everything from backyard hangs to nice dinners. The best part,
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: everything with Quince is half the cost of similar brands.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: By working directly with top artisans and cutting out the middlemen,
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: Quince gives you luxury pieces without the markups. And Quince
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: only works with factories that use safe, ethical, and responsible
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes. Quince is great.
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: Got a bunch of t-shirts from there, shorts. They have
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: like a nice duffel bag. They have other accessories. There's
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: all kinds of great stuff at Quince. So go check
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: it out. Stick to the staples that last with elevated
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: essentials from Quince. Go to quince.com slash crooked for free
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: dot com slash crooked to get free shipping and 365
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: day returns. Quince.com slash crooked. I'm curious how you think
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: about the relationship between America's pro-democracy movement and federal security forces,
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: ICE agents, Federalized Guard members, the U.S. military now. So
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: in addition to being on the streets of L.A., there
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: were troops at Fort Bragg who attended Trump's speech this week.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: They were reportedly screened for loyalty. And those who passed
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: the test were behind Trump booing the Democratic leaders he
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: attacked in the speech. Senator Padilla was handcuffed by FBI
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: agents who are standing by their actions. What is the
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: right way for a nonviolent opposition movement to deal with
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: increasingly loyal security forces?
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: I don't know if there's a right way. I don't know,
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: but I will say that As encounters with security forces
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: become more dangerous, that is risky just physically or even politically,
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: because it can be difficult to maintain control of the narrative. Again,
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: this is why many movements try to develop the capacity
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: to actually shift away from those encounters and engage in
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: other methods of resistance that don't actually require people to
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: have encounters with people. with security forces. So, um, so
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: that's the, the, the stay at homes and the go
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: slows and the stay aways and the, the different forms
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: of not being places where those encounters are more likely and, um, and,
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: and yet not stopping resisting either. Right. So, um, just,
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: just shifting the, the sort of targets of different campaigns
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: that would be meant to elicit defections, um, to keep
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: people in the movement safe and to prevent encounters that
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: could be misrepresented, shall we say.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's made me think, which I never thought
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: I would be having to think about here in America,
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: but over the last couple of weeks, you know, making
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: sure that a nonviolent movement doesn't rhetorically target security forces
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: necessarily Knowing that we want to make sure that there
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: are there is space for defection and that at some
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: point they think if they think they have to choose between,
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: you know, the regime and, you know, a growing movement
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: that they choose the growing movement. And, you know, I
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: just saw a piece in The Guardian today about how
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: they just interviewed. families and organizations that deal with a
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: lot of National Guardsmen and they said that almost uniformly
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: the California National Guard is very uncomfortable and upset They
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: have been put in this position which to me is like,
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: okay Well, that's a good sign and that's that we
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: should sort of use that somehow to build on but
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know what you think about.
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: That Yeah, so, you know there there there can be
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: real dangers with trying to sort of split the military
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: and things like that I I think though you know,
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: the way you put it was like, do they have
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: to choose between the government and the movement? I would
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: say that in 2021, we actually saw a really useful
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: way of making that dichotomy, like really unsettling that dichotomy.
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: And it was on January 3rd of 2021, the seven
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: living former secretaries of defense issued a letter, an open letter,
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: in which they said, and this was three days before
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: January 6th, they said, the U.S. military does not decide
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: the outcome of elections. The people decide the outcome of
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: the elections, and the U.S. military's job is not to
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: intervene in that, and the U.S. military won't intervene in that.
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: And so in that letter, they made clear that the U.S.
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: military's duty was to defend the Constitution, right? So it's
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: not actually about choosing between the movement and the regime.
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: It's about choosing between the regime asking it to do
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: something that's in contradiction to the oath and something that
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: is consistent with their oath. And so the more that
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: that can be reinforced, the more it's clear that actually
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: the movement doesn't want the military to pick sides. It's
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: the regime that wants them to pick sides. Right. And
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: the movement simply wants them to respect the Constitution.
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's very well said. Where do parties and politicians
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: fit into these movements? Right now, a lot of Americans
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: who are opposed to Trump, I think, are frustrated with
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: the Democratic Party and Democratic politicians for not doing even
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: more to fight this regime, at least not successfully. Where
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: do they fit into some of these movements? And is
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: the right move to keep pressuring elected officials? Or is
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: it better to focus energy on building sort of a
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: grassroots opposition movement. What do you think about that?
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: You know, I think it really, there's such a variety
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: of ways that this plays out depending on the type
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: of party system that a country has and all of that.
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, in a lot of the cases that I'm
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: aware of that I've studied, um, there's sort of situations
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: in which the opposition party was fully banned, right? And
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: some of these movements had to just go, uh, with
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: or without, um, the promise of having, um, you know,
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: a party to run a campaign that they could get
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: behind and things like that. And part of what they
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: argued for was the ability to form an independent political party,
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: you know, um, that was true in, you know, Poland
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: and in South Africa. Um, And many other places. And
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: then more contemporary movements, part of the issue is that
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: the opposition is so divided that, like in Serbia, there
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: was something like two dozen political parties that were just
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: every one of them super weak. And the object of
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: the Otpor movement and of the democracy movement more broadly
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: in Serbia was to get the 32 opposition parties to
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: back 1K. a unity candidate. And they did do that.
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: He ended up being a terrible politician and very weak.
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: And he only served like one term and it was
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: kind of an unstable time. But, you know, they got Milosevic,
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: he was elected and Milosevic was out, you know, and
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: that was like really important. And so in those, you know,
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: in that instance, the parties were following the pressure the
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: movement was creating on them to get together. I think
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: in the U.S., you know, a colleague said this sort
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: of in a conversation I was having earlier, that because
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: we have a two-party system, it's actually just because of
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: our voting rules. It's not because of, like, the fact
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: that there shall only be two parties or something like
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: that in the U.S. Like, we could have a different
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: system if we had different voting rules, and we could
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: have different voting rules if Congress passed a law, you know,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: saying we could have, you know, PR, multi-member districts. Then
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: we'd have more parties, right? But we don't. Instead, we
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: have factions in different, that sort of kind of organized
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: very uncomfortably under two parties. And, um, and so I,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: you know, in the two party system, um, I don't
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: know exactly how, like what role the parties play. I mean,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: I think in general, um, in the case of the
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: U S it feels like democratic party leaders really want
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: a movement to tell them what to do and to
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: give them wind under their sails and everything. This is
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: sort of how I, what my perception is based on, um,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: just what I'm seeing. But, um, But that may simply
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: be because because the Democratic Party is in a very
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: historically unpopular moment for itself and so thinks that maybe
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: a movement can realign a coalition in a way that
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: could be more powerful than what it could do. I
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: don't know. I also think that to the extent that
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: there are people who have been elected that represent people
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: and who swore an oath also to the Constitution, that
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: it's pretty important for them to get out there and
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: defend it. Well, that kind of a couple different minds.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: No, me, me too. I keep going back on fourth
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: is like, and this is sort of an age old debate,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: but it's like, what's, what's more important? The, do you
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: need charismatic leaders to sort of lead movements or is
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: it more important to have the movement that, you know,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: and then you have a whole bunch of different leaders
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: and it's okay. And you don't need just one leader
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: or a couple of leaders. And like, what, what is the,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: what is the importance of having like really charismatic, inspiring
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: leaders that people will follow.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right. And I think that's a separate question from
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: whether it's a political party leader, right? But I think
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: it is helpful often for movements to have people who
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: raise their hand and get out there and help to steer.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's always necessary for there to be
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: like a single charismatic leader, but I think movements definitely
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: need leadership in the sense that they need some you know,
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: some formation to step forward and say, we can, we
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: can lead. Like in South Africa, there's the United Democratic Front,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: and that was like hundreds, if not thousands of civic
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: organizations that came together in one like very broad-based united
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: coalition that had like a leadership council, which included, but
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: the ANC, but the ANC was not like necessarily the
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: dominant or only, you know, notable political actor there. There
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: was like unions and movements and grassroots groups and community
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: organizations and faith groups. And like, it was just a,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: it was the United Democratic Front, you know, so to
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: the extent that there's some kind of leadership that emerges,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: I think that, you know, that does help movements to
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: build power and to be able to move in a
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: coordinated way and even engage in very difficult things like
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: negotiations down the line when those moments present themselves.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier our extremely polluted information environment. I've personally
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: felt like it's more difficult to coordinate, share good information, even,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: you know, shape public opinion now that there are so
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: many more outlets and platforms with smaller and smaller audiences.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: And that's just a difference between this Trump term and
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: the first Trump term. Have you come across movements and
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: strategies that are successfully adapting to this reality, the information
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: environment reality.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: That is really tough. I mean, yeah. One of the
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: other elements of the authoritarian playbook is just continue trashing
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: the information ecosystem, right? So dominating it and then just
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: trashing it, right? It's very hard to navigate through that,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: both because of the sort of attention economy, but also
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: just because it's trashed, right? So I don't know. I mean,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: as I look around the world, One of the things
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: that strikes me as a very promising sign is actually
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: people getting a little analog about these things. In Serbia
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: right now, as I understand it, students are literally riding
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: bicycles into like every single village in Serbia to like
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: have conversations with people and their neighbors. And like it's
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: a one-on-one in the kitchen kind of conversational mode. And
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: that is part of the way that they're breaking through
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: you know, in that case, like a highly kind of
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: Russian sympathetic and Russian dominant information ecosystem that is equally
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: difficult to deal with. And so, you know, that's interesting
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: because it's basically relational organizing, but it's also, you know,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: relying like basically not at all on digital infrastructure. The
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: other thing that I've heard about, or let me just
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: say a way that movements often encounter problems of information,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: which are not new. It's just that, let me just
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: say what is new. What is new is not propaganda.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: Propaganda is something that every movement has had to deal
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: with against authoritarian movements or regimes. What's different is the,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: I'd say, digitization and volume and volunteering of information that
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: people do now because we carry in our devices so
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: much data about ourselves and and also offer data about
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: ourselves and consume constantly data. So that is new because
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: people could just opt out of propaganda if they didn't
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: want it and then select into some new revolutionary mode
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: of information or something if it emerged. So the question is,
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: how would we do that now? So how would we
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: create some novel, very interesting, hard-to-resist mode of information that that, um,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: that acknowledges the sort of, uh, uh, attention limitations of
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: our time. Um, but also is like too, too fun
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: to avoid. Um, so I guess that's like why the
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: TikTok thing kind of took off, right. Is, is because, um,
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: because it kind of served, it met the moment of, um,
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: of people's information, attention span, and also, um, was fun.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: So I think, you know, solidarity, some people don't know
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: that solidarity is actually named after its newspaper. Solidarity is
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: the name of a newspaper that was an independent news
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: that came out and started to say stuff that was
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: like not allowed in the country and was banned promptly,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: went underground, continued printing, had like 20 million subscriptions within
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: a couple of years because it just was like the
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: thing that that was going on that wasn't allowed, that
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: was cool, you know, and that became the irresistible information alternative.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: So I haven't wrapped my mind around what the sort
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: of version of that is in our time, but that's
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: the category of thing that has to come in order
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: to really seize people's interest and attention.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: I do think that your point about sort of going
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: analog is important and well taken. It also makes me
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: think that, you know, it's one of the many ways
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: valuable things about protesting is you go someplace in person,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: you meet other people, you sort of feel the, you know,
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: inspiration of the crowd. And I think, and especially if
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: you haven't protested before, that sort of helps get you
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: into it. I think that we're seeing at least in
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: campaigns that relational organizing, talking to people in your social
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: network in person is becoming more effective than just random
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: door knocks or phone calls or text banking or all
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: the other stuff. And so I do wonder if part
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: of this is going to be getting back to a
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: place where we are actually meeting with people in person, organizing, planning,
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: which again are all easier to do when you're in
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: person than to just do with big groups of strangers
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: over the internet, where there's a lot of other people
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: who can screw that up for you.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: Totally. Yeah, I would say the only thing more dangerous
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: than overestimating the power of protest is underestimating the power
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: of protest. Exactly for this reason. I mean, what people
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: experience when they participate is not only their own agency,
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: but they experience a collective... agreement about the things that
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: trouble them, and they see others who are equally committed.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: And that's just a really important thing. I mean, for
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: human beings, that kind of information creates, you know, common knowledge.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: And common knowledge is really powerful for us.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: So much of... how we think about protests today is
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: informed by the nonviolent approach of Dr. King and the
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: American Civil Rights Movement, maybe certainly the most successful nonviolent
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: movement in the United States, one of the most successful
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: nonviolent movements in the world. What lessons from that time
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: period do you think are still worth remembering today?
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: I would definitely encourage people who listen to or watch
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: your podcast to check out the documentary series, A Force
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: More Powerful. And there is one episode in it that
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: covers the Nashville campaign during the civil rights movement. And
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: it's only like 27 minutes. It's really worth watching. In it,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: there are so many things that I think are the
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: key lessons from that movement. The first is the deep
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: level of preparation that went into preparing a community to
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: confront segregation and, in fact, end it in Nashville in
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: the late 50s before segregation was functionally ending most places
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: in the country. And James Lawson... who was the sort
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: of young minister who was asked by King to organize Nashville,
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: did trainings in the church basement in which he was
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: teaching people about the theory of nonviolent action, in which
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: they did role-playing. And they prepared people for confrontations and
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: encounters with white supremacists and with police who were going
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: to be abusive to them, who were going to arrest them,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: who were potentially going to beat them. And did so
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: to basically instill levels of discipline, which they sort of
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: described as like a nonviolent West Point, like that they
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: were preparing for something that was requiring the level of
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: strategy and discipline as a military struggle without arms.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: And so he trained huge numbers of people for that,
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: including John Lewis, who came to join that campaign. And
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: they did lunch counter sit-ins. They boycotted the downtown district.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: The primary aim of the campaign was actually to desegregate
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: the shopping area of downtown Nashville and the department stores.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: That was their first target. And then they were doing
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: the lunch counter sit-ins and all kinds of things. And
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: the The ability to respond to violence when it did
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: happen in a way that was so, shall we say,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: undeniably disciplined is part of what forced the crisis in
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: Nashville that the Nashville authorities could not avoid. So to
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: give an explicit example, Alexander Luby was a Black lawyer
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: who represented many of the students as they were arrested.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: for the lunch counter sit-ins. And because he was representing them,
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: his home was bombed by the Klan. And after his
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: home was bombed, the movement organized a silent march. So
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: this is an incredibly clever tactic because, in fact, even
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: though people are feeling incredible pain from what has happened,
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: it is easy to detect infiltrators and provocateurs at a
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: silent march. So they organized the silent march from his
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: home to the steps of City Hall. And something like 5,000
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: people joined in to this extremely somber silent march. And
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: at the front of the crowd was Diane Nash, who
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: was a young Black student from Fisk University. And she
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: just happened to be the one who encountered the mayor,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: Mayor Webb, who came out to meet them. And she
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: put the microphone to his mouth and said, do you
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: believe that it's right to deprive a person of business
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: just because of the color of their skin? And in
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: front of a crowd of 5,000 people, he said, no,
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: I don't believe it's right. Because what else are you
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: going to say? And in that moment, they caught it
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: on camera. Everybody applauded. And what happened next is there
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: was a negotiation between Lawson's group, and the white business
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: community in Nashville to desegregate their stores and take down
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: the signs without a public announcement of it because people
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: were worried about white supremacist backlash. But they agreed and
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: came to that commitment, and that was that. So, you know,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: there's a lot to learn. And that episode, I think,
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: pulls out some of the key lessons about the capacity
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: and the strategy. to make even an incredibly violent and
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: hundreds of years enduring situation end.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: Well, I think that is a perfectly hopeful and inspiring
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: place to leave this conversation. Erica Chenoweth, thank you so
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: much for all the work you've done on this topic
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: and for joining Pod Save America and sort of giving
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: us a path forward. Appreciate it.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: or get access to our subscriber Discord and exclusive podcasts,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: consider joining our Friends of the Pod community at crooked.com
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: slash friends or subscribe on Apple Podcasts directly from the
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America feed. Also, be sure to follow Pod
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: Save America on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for full episodes,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: bonus content, and more. And before you hit that next button,
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: you can help boost this episode by leaving us a
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: review and by sharing it with friends and family. Pod
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: David Toledo, Saul Rubin, and Emma Illick-Frank. Our associate producer
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: is Farrah Safari. Reid Cherland is our executive editor, and
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: Adrian Hill is our executive producer. The show is mixed
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer,
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Madeline
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: Herringer is our head of news and programming. Matt DeGroat
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: is our head of production. Naomi Sengel is our executive assistant.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Haley Jones, Ben Hethcote,
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: Molly Lobel, Kiril Pallaviv, Kenny Moffitt, and David Toles. Our
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: America East.