Erica Chenoweth

what's going on and what they should know about it and what they might do about it.

Like I said earlier, I think, like, what we're seeing right now in the U.S.

is consistent with what we've seen in a lot of different successful democracy movements, in part because there has been such robust training infrastructure set up for things like, you know, observing ICE operations.

And because of that, the killings of Rene Good and Alex Preddy backfired

it's only because cameras were rolling and people were there observing, because they knew how to do that and they knew how to get the information out, that those stories ended up being— the sort of official narrative about those stories ended up being contested in the first place, right?

And then there's training in nonviolent discipline, there's training in noncooperation.

Like, all of those things are happening.

There's so many people around the country in organizations trying to support that work.

And I think that's part of why we've seen it play out the way it has.

So I think in terms of... It's hard to...

to focus on more than the sort of four things that I mentioned that successful movements do, right?

And I think those things are happening.

So I guess this is all to say I wouldn't really suggest that much is different in the country except what I mentioned about a sort of broader umbrella formation helping to make it more than the sum of its parts.

So the really abbreviated version of this is that last December, there was an attempted coup by the incumbent president.

And while it was underway, meaning after he declared martial law and was enacting the coup, there was a huge umbrella formation largely represented by a trade federation.

and unions that came out and said, by declaring martial law, you've declared the end of your presidency, and we're going to bring the country to an orderly standstill tomorrow morning if this thing goes down.

And they were able to bring thousands of people to, within minutes of the declaration of martial law, also to a nonviolent protest outside of the

like a main government building, and by the morning had made such a credible commitment to being able to shut down the country that the people who were doing the coup blinked, basically, like the senior military kind of hesitated and said they didn't think they would go along with it.

And the president had to basically cancel the martial law order and effectively try to cancel the coup.

And then, you know, by the next day, the trade unions and the sort of pro-democracy movement had come out and said, we're really glad the coup has ended, but that's not enough.