No Kings: A Spark in the Storm
“We’re honored to announce a final count of 13.14 million in attendance across more than 2,300 No Kings protests nationwide.
“It took a little longer to finalize due to the sheer scale, but the turnout was historic!”
“So far, 71 MAGA agitators have been arrested, with 62 more investigations underway. We’re actively reviewing online threats and escalating where necessary. If you see something, say something.”
This morning’s announcement came from the underground federal employee coalition, Alt National Park Service. Their goal was to get 3.5% of the U.S. population to rise up and protest on June 14th as a reaction to Trump’s criminal, unconstitutional authoritarianism and to counter to his birthday military parade. The Alt-NPS had hoped for 4 to 5 million. Instead, they got triple that.
From small farming towns with just a handful of protesters to massive city demonstrations with hundreds of thousands, the turnout exceeded expectations.
Before the protests, MAGA governors issued overblown warnings, with some even going so far as to activate the National Guard. Online, trolls bragged about running over protesters with trucks and hinted at “Second Amendment” violence. Fueled by a steady diet of fake (Fox) news, many had bought into the tired internet trope that liberals are the dangerous ones.
But the day remained overwhelmingly peaceful. With few exceptions, violence was absent—and where it did occur, it was largely instigated by MAGA agitators or overreactive police. Out of thousands of events, just three incidents were credibly blamed on left-wing protesters. Claims of bricks, fires, and assaults turned out to be baseless. MAGA sheriffs and trolls were left with egg on their faces.
So, what made this day so important? Why was 3.5% the target?
It’s based on research by Erica Chenoweth, Academic Dean and Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard. In her April 2020 paper Questions, Answers, and Some Cautionary Updates Regarding the 3.5% Rule, she writes:
“If just 3.5% of the population stands up against the regime, it will fall.”
The 3.5% rule holds that no government has withstood a challenge when that portion of its population mobilized in sustained resistance. It’s held true in every successful uprising in recorded history.
For the U.S., 3.5% of the population is approximately 12.1 million people.
We gave them 13.14 million.
1.26 million more than needed.
Trump, meanwhile, drew only a few thousand supporters—most of whom left after the parade and didn’t stick around to hear him or VP J.D. Vance bloviate.
The 3.5% rule came from Chenoweth’s earlier research, where she analyzed over a century’s worth of resistance campaigns. She found that campaigns in which at least 3.5% of the population actively and consistently participated were never defeated. Every one of them succeeded.
It sounds magical—but there’s important nuance.
Chenoweth emphasized that the 3.5% refers not to a single-day flash protest, but to sustained, disruptive action: marches, strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience—carried out over months or even years. And while impressive, the rule isn’t a guarantee. Organization, discipline, context, and long-term strategy all matter deeply.
As she puts it: “Correlation is not causation.” We don’t know if hitting 3.5% caused the change—or if the movements that hit that number were already well-organized enough to succeed.
Still, the number remains a powerful benchmark. It helps us understand when a movement becomes too big to ignore.
BBC correspondent David Robson explored this further, noting that nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as violent uprisings. He cited examples like the 1986 People Power movement in the Philippines that toppled the Marcos regime, Georgia’s 2003 Rose Revolution, and the peaceful resistance that led to the resignation of long-standing rulers in Sudan and Algeria in 2019.
“In each case, civil resistance by ordinary members of the public trumped the political elite to achieve radical change,” Robson writes.
Chenoweth’s research has also shaped contemporary movements like Extinction Rebellion.
Ironically, Chenoweth began as a skeptic. As a PhD student studying terrorism, she doubted that peaceful protest could be more powerful than violence. That changed when she attended a workshop hosted by the International Center of Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), which showcased global examples of peaceful uprisings.
Curious and unconvinced, she set out to rigorously test the theory. Her data set spanned 1900–2006 and included 323 resistance campaigns. Success was defined narrowly: achieving stated goals within a year of peak participation, as a direct result of the movement—not outside intervention.
Her findings, published in Why Civil Resistance Works, were clear: nonviolent campaigns succeeded 53% of the time—twice as often as violent ones.
Chenoweth discovered that they worked because they could engage broader demographics, mobilize larger crowds, and cause significant disruption without alienating public sympathy. In fact, nonviolent campaigns averaged four times more participants than violent ones.
Peaceful crowds also discourage violent crackdowns. Security forces hesitate when they see their neighbors and family among the demonstrators. And sometimes, seeing the scale, they decide not to go down with the ship.
General strikes, Chenoweth says, are among the most powerful tools—though they come at personal cost. She points to boycotts in apartheid-era South Africa that triggered an economic crisis among white elites and helped bring down the regime.
Of course, nonviolent resistance still fails nearly half the time. Some efforts never grow large enough to crack the regime’s power. Others—like the 1950s East German protests that drew 400,000—fall short because they don’t reach the 3.5% threshold.
So how does this apply to us?
First, there’s the matter of scale—reaching the tipping point in other nations took far fewer people. Then there’s the structure of our government. Comparing our protests to successful revolutions abroad isn’t one-to-one. In many of those cases, once a leader fell, real change could begin. Our system is built on layered succession. Remove Trump, and we get J.D. Vance. Remove him, and it’s Mike Johnson. After that? Chuck Grassley. And if we keep going? Marco Rubio. There’s nothing remotely palatable about any of them.
Still, that doesn’t mean we stop.
Change doesn’t always mean removing a figurehead. Sometimes it means changing the environment they operate in. When 13 million people show up peacefully, visibly, and without backing down, it sends a message: you are not the majority, and we are not afraid of you.
This isn’t over. Not even close.
The June 14th protests weren’t the end—and they can’t be. They were proof of what’s possible. The spark is lit. If we stay committed, organized, peaceful, and focused, we can build something that lasts. We can outlast the chaos, outnumber the fearmongers, and outshine the darkness with light. And as we win small victories, more people will join us.
When millions move with purpose, even mountains begin to shift.
What happened in Salt Lake City should never have happened. One man came looking for violence. He charged at the demonstrators, AR-15 raised to fire. In that moment, everything we’ve warned about became real. Without armed "peacekeepers," he might have seriously hurt or killed others. But instead, a peaceful protester was the one who died, and it was one of our own who killed him.
That’s the story the public will hear. The man with the AR-15 will fade into the background, while the narrative that liberal Democrats are violent will take center stage. The MAGAts have been desperate to paint us as violent. Now they have their trope.
We cannot bring guns to our protests if we want to break that cycle—if we want to prove that we stand for peace—we must learn that living by the lessons of Gandhi, Mandela, and Martin Luther King Jr. is the only way we will sway public opinion.
I appreciate this article but I'd research Alt National Park Service before quoting them again, it's likely that whoever runs the accounts/website has zero affiliation with the organization they claim to be.
https://bsky.app/profile/hypoautonomic.bsky.social/post/3lrtibqdths2l