Why Authoritarians Want You to Stay Home On March 28
What research, mass movements, and democratic struggle tell us about showing up.
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Many people don’t think protests work. They look at a march and ask whether it produced an immediate, measurable result, and when the answer is not enough, they conclude it was just symbolic. That’s the wrong standard. This post breaks down what protest can do with sourced research, historical examples of mass gatherings that changed the course of authoritarian regimes and why No Kings is important in fighting back even if one day in the street doesn’t fix the country by Monday morning.
Many people are not staying home because they don’t care. One of the biggest reasons people stay home is that they don’t think protests actually do anything.
They have watched people march, chant, hold signs, and go home and then watched the same people in power do the same things the next morning. They are not indifferent, they’re heartbroken. And they have decided, quietly, that their presence doesn’t count towards anything meaningful.
Instead of asking people to trust us, let’s look at what can happen when people show up. Keep reading to learn what the research says, what history proves, and what our own readers told us when we asked them directly.
It can change what the country pays attention to
A 2022 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined large-scale news media and social media data around Black Lives Matter protests. The researchers found that protest waves shifted both news coverage and public discourse toward the movement’s agenda , and that the heightened attention lasted beyond the protests themselves.
Visibility is not just cosmetic. When people show up in public at scale, they change what the country is looking at, what reporters are covering, what neighbors are discussing, and what institutions are suddenly expected to answer for.
Before social change, there is discussion of social change.
Protest forces discussion into the open.
It can tell those in charge that an issue has obvious public weight
A Cambridge study of U.S. congressional voting behavior found that legislators were more likely to support the preferences of protesters than non-protesters. That does not mean every protest gets everything it wants but it shows us that protest functions as a costly public signal.
When people give up their time and comfort to stand in public over something, they are telling elected officials this is not a minor issue. And politicians, whether they agree or not , are forced to pay attention to what citizens are demanding.
It can build the conditions for institutional change
A 2021 American Sociological Review study by Stanford sociologist Susan Olzak found that cities with more protest against police brutality were more likely to establish civilian review boards, and that protest was associated with fewer officer-involved fatalities for Black and Latino people. The study also found that civilian review boards themselves didn’t reduce fatalities but evidence shows that public protest is not the same as doing nothing.
It can change what people believe is possible
Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan’s research at Harvard Kennedy School found that nonviolent campaigns in their historical dataset were about twice as likely as violent campaigns to achieve their aims. Harvard Kennedy School also notes that countries where resistance campaigns were nonviolent were far more likely to transition to democracy than countries where resistance turned violent, regardless of whether the campaign succeeded immediately. Chenoweth’s well-known “3.5% rule” , the observation that no campaign in the dataset that mobilized at least 3.5% of the population failed , should be treated as a descriptive historical pattern. Chenoweth has said there are exceptions, and many successful movements didn’t even have to reach that threshold.
Visible, peaceful participation widens sympathy, helps movements endure, and makes it harder for those in power to dismiss resistance as disposable.
Turnout is also about the people who watch.
When people see large public action, they are more likely to believe the movement is gaining momentum. And civic behavior spreads through social networks , especially through close, personal ties. People move because action becomes visible, relational, and harder to dismiss.
History has answered this question before
The research is useful. But sometimes the most persuasive evidence is not a study... It is a story. And history has handed us more than one.
The Philippines, 1986. Ferdinand Marcos had ruled the Philippines for twenty years. He declared martial law, concentrated power in the executive, curtailed civil liberties, and built a regime sustained by corruption and military force. Human rights groups documented widespread abuses under Marcos, including tens of thousands arrested or detained, and thousands tortured, disappeared, or killed. In February 1986, after Marcos claimed victory in a fraudulent election, Filipinos took to the streets along Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, EDSA , in Manila. Over four days, more than two million people showed up. Nuns stood in front of tanks. Citizens offered soldiers food and cigarettes. Cardinal Jaime Sin called on the entire country to come. And the military, outnumbered and outflanked by the sheer scale of peaceful refusal, began to defect. Marcos fled to Hawaii. Corazon Aquino, the widow of the opposition leader Marcos had assassinated, was sworn in as president. A twenty-year dictatorship fell after a mass civilian uprising, combined with military defections, made it impossible to pretend the country consented. Every single one of them had been told it would not work.
East Germany, 1989. The Berlin Wall had stood for nearly thirty years. The Stasi, East Germany’s secret police, ran one of the most sophisticated surveillance states in history. Dissent was not just discouraged. It was cataloged, punished, and used to destroy families. In September 1989, a few hundred people walked out of a Monday prayer service at the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig and began marching. One week later, there were a few thousand. By October 9, seventy thousand people filled the streets , outnumbering the eight thousand armed security forces sent to contain them. The security forces didn’t fire. The next week, there were 120,000. The week after that, 320,000 in Leipzig alone. On November 4, as many as 500,000 people gathered in East Berlin’s Alexanderplatz demanding democratic reform. Five days later, the Berlin Wall fell. The people who marched in Leipzig didn’t know they were going to bring down a wall. They didn’t have a guarantee. They had candles, and each other, and the knowledge that they couldn’t keep living on their knees. They showed up, and then more people showed up, and then even more people showed up, and one of the most feared security states on earth couldn’t hold.
South Korea, 2016–2017. When President Park Geun-hye was exposed for allowing an unelected personal confidante to secretly influence government policy and extort major corporations, South Koreans organized twenty consecutive Saturday night candlelight vigils, the largest drawing an organizer-estimated 2.3 million people in a single day. Over roughly twenty weeks, organizers estimated cumulative attendance at 15.87 million, a figure that reflects repeated participation across many rallies that still represents an extraordinary sustained mobilization. Politicians who had been reluctant to push for impeachment changed their positions explicitly because of the protests. The parliament voted to impeach. The Constitutional Court upheld it 8–0. Park was removed from office and later convicted. The demonstrators didn’t stop after the first rally. Nor did they stop after the fifth or tenth. They kept going , peacefully, with candles and humor and music and homemade signs , until the institutions of their country had no choice but to follow the people.
Three different countries. Three different decades. Three different authoritarian structures.
The same pattern: people showed up, kept showing up, and made it impossible for power to pretend the public consented.
None of those movements won on the first night. Every person who walked out of their home in Manila, in Leipzig, in Seoul had someone in their life who told them it wouldn’t make a difference. They went anyway and the world changed because they did.
Authoritarianism starts with people believing they are alone.
It feeds on isolation and that everyone has accepted what’s happening. It grows on the lie that resistance is small, scattered, and irrelevant.
When thousands of people show up in the same city on the same day and stand together in public, it sends a message to every person watching from their window, scrolling past on their phone, sitting in traffic near the march route. It tells them: you are not the only one. This is not over. We are still here. And we are not going quietly.
No single protest saves a country. But the absence of protest makes everything easier for the people who want the public quiet, divided, and resigned.
What happens when millions of people decide to do nothing visible at all? And we already know the answer to that.
The wrong standard
If we want to make protest seem pointless, the easiest way is to judge it by a standard no democratic action has ever met.
No single vote has ever fixed a country. No single election has ever solved every problem. No single phone call to a senator has ever single-handedly changed a law. And no single march has ever transformed a nation in twenty-four hours.
But nobody tells you not to vote because one ballot doesn’t singlehandedly decide an election. Nobody tells you not to call your senator because one call doesn’t singlehandedly change a law. The only action people are told to abandon because it is not immediately and permanently sufficient, is the one where you show up in public and let power see your influence.
Change builds through attention, legitimacy, pressure, recruitment, and momentum. Protest is where several of those forces start. Not where they end or where they peak.
Please, don’t confuse “this doesn’t fix everything in one day” with “this doesn’t matter.” Those are not the same thing.
Sources & Additional Reading
PNAS | “Black Lives Matter protests shift public discourse” | Large-scale media and social media data showing protest shifts public attention toward movement agendas, with effects sustained beyond protest periods
Harvard Gazette | “Why nonviolent resistance beats violent force” | Interview with Erica Chenoweth on nonviolent campaign success rates, democratic transitions, and the 3.5% pattern
Harvard Kennedy School | Erica Chenoweth research overview | Nonviolent movements about twice as successful as violent ones; nonviolent resistance far more associated with democratic transitions
Chenoweth & Stephan | Why Civil Resistance Works | Comprehensive dataset of 323 violent and nonviolent campaigns, 1900–2006
Origins | “The People Power Revolution, Philippines 1986” | Overview of the EDSA revolution, Marcos regime, military defection, and Aquino inauguration
Amnesty International Philippines | “EDSA People Power Revolution” | Documentation of Marcos-era human rights violations and timeline of the 1986 uprising
Global Nonviolent Action Database | East Germany, 1988–90 | Monday Demonstrations, Leipzig church origins, escalation from hundreds to 320,000+, and fall of the Berlin Wall
City of Leipzig | “The 9th of October 1989” | Official city commemoration of the Monday Demonstrations and the peaceful revolution
Global Nonviolent Action Database | South Korea Candlelight Revolution, 2016–2017 | Twenty consecutive Saturday protests, organizer-estimated cumulative attendance of 15.87 million across rallies, impeachment timeline
Dissent Magazine | “Revolution by Candlelight” | In-depth account of how sustained mass protest compelled South Korean parliament to impeach and the Constitutional Court to uphold 8–0
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Always appreciate the words of encouragement you guys put out. I've always believed that peaceful protests do exactly what you laid out. My problem now, is that tRump could care less how many people protest. He just does not care. He is going to do exactly what he wants to do, with no regards or consideration to what we want. That is what makes protesting seem so futile. I'm hoping that things get better, I haven't lost that. I don't know, just feeling helpless, and I don't like it.
Remaining silent will not do. Waiting for others to speak out in protests does not absolve you of your responsibility. Defending freedoms requires actions from all of us who recognize the dangers this amoral administration represents. Our country has faced threats before and we did not back down. We must resolve now to soundly defeat the present threat because it's from within, not from abroad. For this is the most insidious attack of all: our own fellow Americans are attempting to place the nation under the control of a dictator. These are the actions of traitors to the definition of America. We must not allow them to succeed.