George Floyd protests had more than that (closer to 8%) and they didn’t really change anything.

This refers to Chenoweth’s research, and I’m somewhat familiar with their work. I think it’s good to clarify what non-violent means to them, as it’s non-obvious. For example, are economic boycotts violence? They harm businesses and keep food of the tables of workers. I don’t think that’s violence, but some people do, and what really matters here is what Chenoweth thinks violence is, and what they mean when they say “nonviolent tactics are more effective”.

At the end of “civil resistance: what everyone needs to know”, Chenoweth lists a number of campaigns which they’ve marked as violent/nonviolent and successful/unsuccessful. Let’s look at them and the tactics employed tonfigure out what exactly Chenoweth is advocating for. Please do not read this as a condemnation of their work, or of the protests that follow. This is just an investigation into what “nonviolence” means to Chenoweth.

Euromaidan: successful, nonviolent. In these protests, protestors threw molotov cocktails and bricks and at the police. I remember seeing a video of an apc getting absolutely melted by 10 or so molotovs cocktails.

The anti-Pinochet campaign: successful, nonviolent. This involved at least one attempt on Pinochet’s life.

Gwangju uprising in South Korea: unsuccessful, nonviolent. Car plowed into police officers, 4 dead.

Anti-Duvalier campaign in Haiti: successful, nonviolent. Destruction of government offices.

To summarize, here’s some means that are included in Chenoweth’s research:

• throwing bricks at the police
• throwing molotov cocktails at the police
• assassination attempts
• driving a car into police officers
• destroying government offices

The point here is not that these protests were wrong, they weren’t. The point is that they employed violent tactics in the face of state violence. Self-defense is not violence, and this article completely ignores this context, and heavily and knowingly implies that sitting in a circle and singing kumbaya is the way to beat oppression. It isn’t.

Based on the article “no non-violent movement that has involved more than 3.5% of a population has ever failed” has the caveat of “we only look at 3 of them, and those 3 worked”.

So their overall sample size is small, and the 3.5% sample size is just 3. Further, those 3 had no idea someone in the vague future would retroactively measure their participation to declare it a rock solid threshold.

I think the broader takeaway is that number of people seems to matter more than degree of violence, and violence seems to alienate people that might have otherwise participated.

As a catalan actively involved in the 2012-2017 push for independence, I call bullshit.

American Revolution. French Revolution. Iranian Revolution.

Just a few very violent, and successful, revolutions.

Tell that to Hong Kong demonstrators on June 16, 2019, estimated by organizers at 2 million people marching. Hong Kong had a population of 7.5 million at the time.

Sure there was violence both before and after that protest, but mostly caused by violent crackdown by police.

But did it fail because there was violence or was violence a sign of stronger opposition? Causation vs correlation and all that.

So how do you keep the police from making it violent?

Non-violent protests still need to come with a credible threat of becoming violent if the protesters’ safety is being attacked or if their human rights are compromised.

That’s horseshit made up statistics.
Way more than 6% want single payer, but it’s not happening.

A lot of violent protests have succeeded too. Such as the suffragettes gaining the right to vote for women or unions gaining the right to exist, and the 8 hour work day.

Idk, that French deal seemed to work out pretty well.

Let me know what all the peaceful protests on climate change did leading up to and since the Paris Agreement.

Civil disobedience, including violent action, absolutely has a place in changing the policy of the state.

Data presented to you by BBC the same network that lied to you about WMS in Iraq, genocide of the Palestinians people, and most likely more.

my fucking ass 👅🥾

Bolsheviks, Stonewall riots, suffragettes, all famously peaceful movements that got their rights by staying on their knees and asking nicely.

Considering the UK’s biggest export is independence days, it’s kind of hard to think that all of those were solved through non violent means.