The magic of White Street is low right now, re-energizing for the months ahead. Last fall I saw magic as I stood in the parking lot at Ermilio’s. I saw humans become butterflies.
A half dozen young Eurekans walking, grouping and talking as only teens can: an instant, a nanosecond, an inner signal and all six took off running, in different directions, at different speeds. They were beautiful. I have seen birds do that, have seen butterflies do that, but never have I seen humans do that.
I thought of that today when the sun was warm enough for coffee on the back porch, quiet, only the birds flying in and out from the feeders. They feed intensity but with order, and with what I want to call good manners. The patterns allow sizes from the jays to the finches. They land, they eat, they fly off. No fighting, no hoarding, no battling. I want so badly to insist on a metaphor, to compare with humans. But they are birds with their behavioral patterns, I am a human with mine. However, I can examine where the two interact.
The passenger pigeon, so called because of an Americanization of a French word for “passing” to describe these migratory birds. All information about the birds must use the past tense. They are now extinct. They were still here for Audubon to study so we know what the looked like. Their lives come from oral history.
They lived in huge flocks, so huge it is hard to imagine. Late 19th century observers saw flocks large enough to block the sun. One group of scientific viewers reported a migration that measured 100 miles wide, 300 miles long, and took 14 days to complete – even Alfred Hitchcock could not imagine that! I’ve read of the mass herds of buffalo and can almost visualize that, but I can’t visualize the passenger pigeons.
Within one lifetime, a settler’s lifetime, they were all but gone. Hunters and settlers alike killed them by the thousands: for food, for “sport,” for crops to be spared, for protection(?). “Somewhere in the dark heart of the average mid-western settler was the thought that the world would be better off without the passenger pigeon.” [That is not my sentence, but I can’t find its owner. I can’t footnote it.]
By the turn to the 20th century, zoo operators began to fear the bird would disappear and took small bands to tame. However, birds are a flock animal: these lived because of the huge flock, and did not thrive in captivity. The last one, named Martha, died in a Cincinnati zoo in 2014 at the age of 29.
There is one last story about another “last” one. An Iowa farmer saw a passenger pigeon in a tree by his barn. He told his family and neighbors, then shot it because he wanted to go down in history as the man who killed the last passenger pigeon. I sincerely hope that is not a true story but it has a trumpian ring to it. His dark heart would rid the world of a lot, people included.
I know I’ll never see a passenger pigeon but these stories stick with me for many reasons, one of which is they show that a certain number is required for the health of the flock. Martha, that last pigeon, lived far longer in captivity than she would have in the wild. She had no flock memory, no flock experience, no ability to reproduce even when with males in her younger years. Those old flocks of billions would have self-regulated by the food supply available. The wisdom of the flock would prevail. Martha just stayed alive.
Bird information leads me to human information, again with the wisdom of the flock determining the health of the flock: the 3.5% theory and the health of the American flock.
Two researchers, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, have examined government and social change from 1900 to 2006. Their study shows that sustained non-violent resistance by 3.5% of the population will bring about change. No government, no leader, can win. The vital words: actively, sustained, non-violent.
Non-violent resistance has always been twice as effective as violent. Now Chenoweth and Stephan show that those resistances engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about the change.
In America right now that means between 11and 12 million, a number that does not seem impossible. Voting will be one way to resist. The researchers conclude that feet on the ground active protesters have never failed. Together, this flock is healthy.
The flock can be maintained holistically; we can keep ourselves healthy. Like those young people on White Street, we can run, we can walk, we can stand to create the magic of a healthy flock. The numbers are against the fascist-in-chief who has brought about enough destruction. The numbers are on the side of change, in the feet and the power and the wisdom of We The People. Twelve million will do it.