On June 14th, 2025, between 4-6 million Americans demonstrated something extraordinary: our capacity for coordinated mass action. With nearly 2% of the population taking to the streets in over 2,100 cities, we proved that resistance to authoritarianism isn’t just deep, it’s organized, widespread, and ready to escalate.
But we stand at a critical juncture. Research shows that when 3.5% of a population engages in sustained resistance, authoritarian systems face an existential crisis. We’re already within the threshold where movements have a 40-60% chance of success. The infrastructure exists. The networks are activated. The question isn’t whether we can reach the tipping point, it’s how quickly we can get there and what we build while we do.
Months after the largest mobilization, it’s time for us to take stalk of where we are and begin to ask, what’s next?
The Strategic Reality: From Defense to Sustained Offense
The No Kings protests demonstrated our defensive capacity - our ability to mobilize rapidly against authoritarian excess. But sustained movements require transitioning from episodic resistance to continuous pressure that makes authoritarian governance impossible. This means moving from protest to strategic noncompliance and disruption, from opposing what we reject to building what we demand.
The gap between 1.8% and 3.5% represents roughly 6 million more Americans. These are very likely not people we need to convince democracy matters; they’re people waiting for a movement that can win. Our task is creating the conditions where participation becomes irresistible and sustained engagement becomes the pathway to the democracy we all want.
Strategic Recommendations for Reaching 3.5%
Organizational Infrastructure
Absorption: Build systems for absorbing those who turn out for protests in order to channel them into multiple necessary forms of activism, including kitchen table activism, boycotts, and material aid, as well as connecting them with existing organizations with the infrastructure to support sustained engagement. Protesters can be absorbed through a multiple of simple to do acts, such as distributing talking points on paper for them to use to explain the protests to their families, friends, co-workers, and neighbors when they get home that are embedded with a QR code that they can use to share their information, participate in surveys, etc.
Establish Neighborhood Democracy Councils: Build permanent, participatory decision-making bodies in every community that participated in No Kings protests. These councils coordinate local action while prefiguring the democratic alternatives we’re fighting for, and may host community events and celebrations, and pivot to mutual aid as needed.
Create Rapid Response Networks: Develop systems for turning millions into the streets within 48 hours of authoritarian escalation.
Build Cross-Movement Alliances: Systematically connect labor unions, environmental groups, racial justice organizations, and civil liberties advocates around shared democratic infrastructure rather than single issues.
Establish Movement Security Culture: Develop protocols for protecting organizers, communications, and decision-making processes from infiltration and surveillance while maintaining openness to new participants.
Economic Strategy
Launch Strategic Economic Disruption: Identify the 20-30 corporations most essential to authoritarian power and coordinate sustained boycotts, strikes, and divestment campaigns that create economic crises requiring democratic solutions.
Build Alternative Economic Institutions: Establish worker cooperatives, community land trusts, and participatory budgeting processes that demonstrate economic democracy while building material bases for sustained resistance.
Coordinate Strategic Strikes: Work with labor unions to prepare for coordinated work stoppages that can shut down key economic sectors when authoritarian escalation crosses red lines.
Create Mutual Aid Networks: Build community support systems that allow people to participate in sustained action without risking economic survival.
Cultural and Narrative Work
Shift from Opposition to Vision: Move messaging from "Stop Trump" to "Build Democracy"—concrete proposals for participatory governance, economic justice, and community control that people can see and touch.
Create Cultural Demonstrations: Use festivals, art installations, community celebrations, and cultural events to show what inclusive democracy looks like while building joy and connection within the movement.
Develop Popular Education Programs: Establish widespread political education that teaches democratic skills—facilitation, conflict resolution, economic literacy—while building shared analysis of how change happens.
Build Independent Media Infrastructure: Create communication systems that can reach millions without relying on corporate platforms, ensuring messages reach people where they are.
Political Strategy
Target Local Electoral Systems: Win city councils, school boards, and county positions while transforming how these bodies operate—introducing participatory budgeting, community oversight, and direct democracy mechanisms.
Prepare for Constitutional Convention: Begin organizing for state-level constitutional conventions that can implement structural democratic reforms beyond what federal politics allows.
Create Democratic Sanctuaries: Establish jurisdictions that refuse cooperation with authoritarian policies while implementing alternative democratic practices.
Build Electoral Reform Coalitions: Unite behind ranked choice voting, anti-gerrymandering, and campaign finance reform while demonstrating these changes through alternative political institutions.
Escalation Strategy
Establish Clear Escalation Triggers: Define specific authoritarian actions that automatically trigger mass mobilization, with pre-planned responses that can deploy millions within days.
Prepare for Sustained Occupations: Develop capacity for long-term occupations of key public spaces and buildings, with infrastructure for housing, feeding, and organizing thousands of participants.
Coordinate Mass Non-Cooperation: Prepare for systematic non-compliance with authoritarian policies—tax resistance, draft resistance, refusal to cooperate with deportation efforts.
Build Community Defense Networks: Establish neighborhood-level rapid response systems for protecting community members from state violence while maintaining nonviolent discipline.
The Next Six Months: From Momentum to Movement
The No Kings protests created momentum. Now we build the movement infrastructure that can sustain and escalate that momentum into sustained pressure. This requires treating the next six months as a movement-building period focused on reaching the 3.5% threshold and more, which is likely to be necessary in the U.S. today, through expanded participation and deeper organizational capacity.
Every person who participated on June 14th becomes a organizer in their community. Every organization that endorsed becomes part of coordinated strategy development. Every city that saw protests becomes a laboratory for democratic alternatives. We turn the energy of one day into the sustained engagement that can overwhelm authoritarian governance through sheer democratic participation.
The distance between 1.8% and 3.5% isn't a mountain to climb, it's the next wave of people waiting for a movement that combines the urgency of resistance with the joy of building something better. We don't just protest authoritarianism; we demonstrate the democracy that makes authoritarianism impossible.
The infrastructure exists. The numbers are within reach. The time for sustained action is now.