A Blast from the Past » « The Ignoble War Prize Goes to Trump

No Kings

I haven’t posted anything in ages.  I’ve been too depressed given the oligarchs’ current attempt, too nearly successful so far, to destroy democracy.

But I did get a bit of a pickup yesterday morning.  I showed up at my local No Kings rally around 10:30, about half an hour before the scheduled start; and already there were maybe a couple hundred folks on the sidewalk in a line that extended probably the equivalent of five or six city blocks; and cars were lined up trying to get into nearby shopping center parking lots.  There were thirteen rallies in the St. Louis area, and this was one of the smaller ones.

We were lined up along Lindbergh Blvd., a major four-lane north-south street in St. Louis County; and there was lots of traffic.  About every third or fourth car that went by would honk in support.

I stayed for only about an hour.  The temperature was around 45°F, 7°C; and this old fart was getting chilled.  (Also, the only covering I have for my bald head that wouldn’t blow away in a gust of wind is a St. Louis Cardinals cap; and I was concerned that, if folks didn’t see the Cardinals logo on the front, if all they saw was a red baseball cap, they might think I want to make America hate again. 😎 )

I wish I had some photos to show you; but I didn’t bring my real camera.  I thought I’d try to take pictures with my phone (for the first time), and did a really bad job of it.

My next civic duty will be voting in a municipal election a week from Tuesday.  There are four candidates for three positions on my local school board; and school board elections are important.  Only one of the four has made statements that sound a bit MAGA, so this’ll be an easy choice for me.  There’s also “Proposition F,” an attempt by Republicans to turn a property tax into a sales tax.  I’m against it.

Missouri’s primary elections will happen on August 4th, two days after my 80th birthday.  I’m looking forward to that (the election, not the birthday).

A Blast from the Past » « The Ignoble War Prize Goes to Trump

Comments

  2. billseymour says

    Yep, that’s where I was, same side of the street as your photo taken with what I assume is a fisheye lens.  It’s about a two-minute drive from where I live.

    I’m guessing that your picture was taken after this old dude needed to get out of the cold. 8-(  I would have been sitting on a walker about where the guy with the orange shirt is roughly half way from the middle of the picture to the right edge.

    Like I said, this was one of the smaller rallies in the St. Louis area; and the crowd extends to the horizon on both sides of the picture.  Robert Reich reports that there’s a study (he doesn’t give a citation) that claims that even the most repressive regimes will topple when 3.5% of the adult population take to the streets.  We should be getting close to that.  Let’s hope…

  3. John Morales says

    Unwarranted hope. Feel free to check me, but:

    cf. https://politicsoutdoors.com/2025/10/18/the-3-5-fallacy/

    She herself has claimed it’s but a heuristic, though she has not conceded there are actual counter-examples.

    Warnings and Qualifications from Erica Chenoweth
     
    The 3.5% rule has been popularized and inspired many activists to aim for mass mobilizations around a range of issues. While welcoming this, Chenoweth has offered a number of qualifications and warnings in publications such as Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know (2021) and Questions, Answers, and Some Cautionary Updates Regarding the 3.5% Rule (2020). In the latter they offered takeaways including:

    “The 3.5% figure is a descriptive statistic based on a sample of historical movements. It is not necessarily a prescriptive one, and no one can see the future. Trying to achieve the threshold without building a broader public constituency does not guarantee success in the future.”
    “The 3.5% participation metric may be useful as a rule of thumb in most cases; however, other factors—momentum, organization, strategic leadership, and sustainability—are likely as important as large-scale participation in achieving movement success and are often precursors to achieving 3.5% participation.”
    “Large peak participation size is associated with movement success. However, most mass nonviolent movements that have succeeded have done so even without achieving 3.5% popular participation.”

    —

    Example: https://stabilityjournal.org/articles/59/files/submission/proof/59-1-333-2-10-20130529.pdf

    As the protests moved into a new post-clampdown phase, the government reacted by sponsoring counter-demonstrations to try to fracture the social movement confronting them. Thousands of pro-government supporters gathered at the Al-Fateh Mosque in Juffair on 21 February (and again on 2 March 2011) to declare their support for the regime. They formed The Gathering of National Unity (TGONU), consisting of a loose umbrella grouping of loyalist Sunni communities spanning a spectrum of Salafist, Muslim Brotherhood, tribal, and urban communities, all loyal to the regime.
    In response, an estimated 200,000 Bahraini citizens (one in three of all Bahraini citizens) participated in a pro-democracy march to the Pearl Roundabout on 25 February, as two massive columns of protestors converged on the roundabout to demand the resignation of the Prime Minister, Khalifa bin Salman. This represented a level of societal mobilisation unprecedented in any of the Arab Spring movements in 2011 (Lynch 2012: 110).

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