[edited to add: in response to Community Sentiment Polling Results (NU4) and draft ZIP 1014 - #301 by dontbeevil]
(Hey, friends! Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. day. This is the day that Americans celebrate an American who practiced effective, non-violent, protest and organization. Martin Luther King Jr. - Wikipedia. Coincidentally, I’ve been writing a post about permissionless petitioning, and today is the day I finished it and am ready to post it, so I added this note at the top before posting. :-))
I believe that permissionless, unstoppable Coin Holders Petitioning is strategically important for the long-term success of Zcash. I’m gonna briefly lay out my reasons here just so I have something I can link people to if they ask me why I encourage coin holders to do this.
First of all, there are reasons why people shouldn’t. I’m not going to go into all the details here because it would turn this comment into a book chapter. You can read this thread to find lots of discussion about the risks and negatives of Coin Holders Petitions. They are real—I’m not discounting them, but my arguments here are at a different level. I have four arguments. These are from the least important to the most important argument, so if you’re in a hurry skip to Point 4. 
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The risks and tradeoffs are not that bad. Everything in life is risky and comes with tradeoffs. There’s never gonna be a perfect anything, including there’s never gonna be a perfect on-chain voting mechanism. But, what we have in Zcash already works, and it is a beautiful thing. We used it last time around, and it was a success.
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The best way to learn and to improve something is to do it over and over. We could spend years debating the risks and designing improvements, but our “Perfectionism and Worry (PAW)” emotions will never be assuaged no matter how much we do that. We learn more in one month of trying something imperfect and risky than we would learn in years of debate and design. We’ve already learned a great deal from the first Coin Holders Petition. And you learn more from doing a thing twice in a row than from doing it once.
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It’s permissionless and unstoppable. Using the current Zcash blockchain, Coin Holders can voice their opinions, backed by their ZEC, in an anonymous and unspoofable way. We can’t silence them. We should pay attention to what they are saying.
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Coin Holders, large and small, are treasured parts of the Zcash community. They aren’t the be-all and end-all of the community, but neither is anyone else. They are dedicated, valued allies supporting our mission. They’re important for our future. It’s possible that some of them can’t or won’t participate in the other community sentiment gathering methods, such as the Community Governance Panel, for many reasons, perhaps because they didn’t sign up before the cutoff, or because doing so could compromise their privacy. We should encourage Coin Holders of all sizes to know that their voice matters.
Okay, those are my arguments. Reason number 4 is my overriding reason which I think it is an important long-term strategic advantage to Zcash for us to keep pushing it forward.
In a subsequent post I’m going to make a few simple, actionable recommendations.
[Edited to add: instructions for participating]