Crowds across the US took part in the ‘No Kings’ protests on Saturday over President Donald Trump’s policies.

Rallies were held outside the Capitol in Washington, DC and in Times Square in New York, and cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, and Austin. More than 2,700 events were planned across all 50 states, according to Axios.

Protesters carried posters reading “No kings, no oligarchs” and “I pledge allegiance to no king,” accusing Trump of abusing his power and condemning his crackdown on illegal immigrants and his orders to deploy the National Guard to several cities on the pretext of fighting crime.

“The president thinks his rule is absolute. But in America, we don’t have kings and we won’t back down against chaos, corruption, and cruelty,” the organizers said on the ‘No Kings’ website.

Left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders addressed the rally in DC, saying the protesters are motivated by the will to “defend our democracy and our freedoms.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries backed the demonstrations, telling MSNBC that “peaceful expression of dissent is entirely consistent with the American way.”

Republicans have portrayed the movement as driven by radical groups. “We call it the ‘hate America’ rally that will happen Saturday,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Wednesday. “I bet you’ll see Hamas supporters, I bet you’ll see Antifa types, I bet you’ll see the Marxists on full display.”

White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told Fox News on Thursday that “the Democrat Party’s main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.”

https://www.rt.com/news/626666-no-kings-protests-trump/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

Trump Is Every Day. the Resistance Is Every Few Months. Wonder Why He's Winning?

TED RALL

Hundreds of thousands of anti-Trump “No Kings” demonstrators marched on Saturday through the streets of thousands of American cities, to expose general opposition to the ruling Republican Party and to express outrage over their various policies.

Like its predecessors, this effort will have zero effect.

Performative protests like “No Kings,” the 2017 Women’s March and the Hands Off marches this past April — organized by Democratic Party affiliates and allies — cannot accomplish meaningful change because they do not exert political pressure. Because they are nonviolent to the point of self-policing would-be militants in their midst and, occurring on weekends when most businesses and government offices are closed and therefore nondisruptive, the crowds pose no threat to the rich and powerful or their pet politicians.

Donald Trump and MAGA world are every day. They work tirelessly to push their radical right agenda. “No Kings” and likeminded exercises in safe, sanitized street displays (“in many places, the events looked more like a street party”) meet once every two or three months and thus fail the first test of agitation, which is to create chaos sustained and predictable enough to feel at least a little dangerous.

The last time this country saw a level of agitation big enough to make the ruling class worry was during the Vietnam War. There were huge marches in cities like New York and Washington. But what really helped shift the views of fence-sitting moderates was the ubiquity and consistency of the antiwar movement. Every morning, my mom drove me to school past a half-dozen anti-Nixon folks holding signs on the median strip along Route 48 south of Dayton, Ohio. Whenever we drove by the entrance to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, there were 20 or 30 lefties and hippies shouting slogans. They were there morning, noon and night, through rain, sleet and snow. No matter what you thought of them or the war, you couldn’t help but be impressed by their commitment and resolve.

No one thinks those who show up for “No Kings” are brave. It is neither sustained nor ubiquitous. Nor is “No Kings” a movement. Building a movement requires a broad-based grassroots opposition organization that is independent of the two main parties permitted to participate in U.S. electoral politics. There is no such group or party.

“No Kings” is barely even a protest. Against what? Kings? There is no danger of monarchy. The threat today is authoritarianism. Against Trumpism? Trump and Joe Biden — whom these same people never protested because he was a Democrat — were identical on the big issues: the genocide in Gaza, the minimum wage, health care. Protests have demands: Stop the war, raise wages, let us vote. “No Kings” issued no demands. Just a request: Show up and have fun.

I could detail, and have done so elsewhere, how actually left parties and organizations have been censored, suppressed, sidelined, marginalized and finally eradicated, and not just by Republicans. Here, though, I prefer to focus on how everyone who participates in performative, safe, Democratic-organized demonstrations like “No Kings” is helping Trump and the reactionary Right.

“In Manhattan,” The New York Times reported, “two siblings, Joyce Pavento, 75, of Marlborough, Mass., and Diane Hanson, 78, of Narragansett, R.I. … felt compelled to travel to New York City for the protest. Ms. Pavento said she enjoyed the camaraderie of like-minded people but wondered if their participation made any difference in the end. Yet despite pessimism and fears, the sisters agreed they couldn’t tolerate staying home.

“‘What choice do we have?’ Ms. Pavento asked.

“‘This is all we’ve got,’ Ms. Hanson said.”

“No Kings” marchers are driven by good motives. When they watch Immigration and Customs Enforcement thugs brutalize immigrants and peaceful opponents, they are disgusted. They’re rightfully scared of what comes next from an administration that views the courts as impotent idiots to be ignored or annoying roadblocks to be cleverly sidestepped, separation of powers be damned. They want to live in an America that is more respectful, humane and civilized than this.

So when liberals come across a Facebook post about a protest, and their friends invite them to attend, it’s natural for them to mark their calendars and drop by the office-supply aisle at CVS to pick up poster paper. They want to do something.

Sometimes, however, doing something is worse than doing nothing. Voting Democratic (or Republican) affirms the legitimacy of the party for whom you voted and of the system itself; a voter boycott would create massive political shockwaves were it to achieve substantial support. Buying from a small business as opposed to a giant conglomerate nevertheless feeds the capitalist beast, which would starve to death were millions of us to refuse to have anything to do with it. Watching TV and cinematic schlock encourages Hollywood to crank out more.

The problem here is what 1960s radicals called “co-option.” What is needed and desperately desired by millions of people who hate Trump is opposition that is at least as strident and sustained as Trumpism, or at least effective enough to meaningfully reduce its impact. What the labor unions and other Democratic front groups behind events like “No Kings” actually offer is watered-down, un-sustained drivel with no lasting impact. Democrats divert us from activism and make the system safe for Republicans.

This would not matter were it not for the fact that time, attention and energy are limited resources. Every second you spend watching sports is one you don’t spend working out. Every minute you spend doomscrolling on TikTok is a minute during which you are not petting your cat or overthrowing the state.

The problem for the Left — or, more accurately, what should be the Left — is that many of them tacitly agree when Democrats and their allies claim that they are leftist politics in the U.S., that they are the vessel through which Trumpism may be resisted — that, if you’re worried about fascism, they’re the only game in town. Vote blue. This is all we’ve got.

It’s a compelling argument because it’s true. Not that Democrats are actively resisting Trump; everyone sees that they’re not. But it is true that Democrats are the only significant political structure outside the GOP. This is because Democrats have made it that way, by denying presidential and other major nominations or a policymaking voice inside the Democratic National Committee to their party’s left flank. The DNC also sues to keep third-party alternatives like the Greens off the ballot and out of televised debates. They arrested Ralph Nader when he showed up to a presidential debate as a spectator.

Liberals, progressives and real leftists face a no-win situation. Refusing to participate in events like “No Kings” helps to confirm the right-wing narrative that Americans either agree with them or aren’t against them. Showing up, however, empowers the willfully tepid Washington Generals-style pseudo-resistance of the Democrats.

Worst of all, it sucks away the energy required to start building a grassroots Left that could organize actual resistance to the Right.

What choice do we have? Energy is zero-sum. Imagine those same throngs, gathering across the country every single day in their communities, dedicating themselves to creating a real left movement: loud, unapologetic, relentless. Nothing could stop us.

Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of the brand-new “What’s Left: Radical Solutions for Radical Problems.” He co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis and The TMI Show with political analyst Manila Chan. Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com.

https://www.unz.com/trall/trump-is-every-day-the-resistance-is-every-few-months-wonder-why-hes-winning/

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Robert C. Koehler

This is who we are. And this is what our country must be: people with a soul-deep love for Planet Earth and all who inhabit it.

Shouts and honking horns… and a country being born?

Hey, hey, ho, ho… I don’t know. it’s been four days ago, as I write, that the second No Kings rally was held across the country – across the world. I can still hear the blaring horns; they sounded like music. Something fused and bubbled in the blare, a sense of connection and shared values, that isn’t going away. That was the uniqueness of this rally, or so I hope and feel at some deep place in my heart.

I attended the rally, with my sister and two friends, in Appleton,  Wisconsin, where I now live – one of about 2700 such rallies across the country. The several thousand people packing the streets of downtown Appleton were part of the seven million people throughout the country who felt called upon to — shall we say? — join the future. This is my takeaway. This is why I’m writing about the rally today. Yeah, it’s over. But it’s not “done".

No faux king way!

Excuse me as I quote one of the signs at the rally – one of thousands of angry and heartfelt cries put into words at the event. No Kings — a continuation of the rally held in June — was, as far as I’m concerned, an act of creative participation. We’re still in the process of creating our country.

So let me toss in a few more signs that I saw. The spirit and message of these signs fell into several categories. The first, unsurprisingly, was defiance:

• Resist like it’s 1938 in  Germany
• No kings, no Nazis
• I hope the Big Beautiful Bill is his cellmate

And a zillion more, of course. Fury at DJT is unsurprising. Especially in the wake of his decision to “invade” American cities and turn desperate emigrants — indeed, brown-skinned people of every sort, including legal residents and American citizens — into the new enemy. And beyond that, Trump’s lust for power and his ability to herd together countless sycophants is consuming what’s left of American democracy and opening a door to God-knows-what, sometimes referred to as  fascism. Collectively standing up to this is critical. No kings… no corporate oligarchs.

But there was more to the rally than fury and defiance, which is why I feel the need to write about it. As I say, this was a collective act of creative participation. What I truly and most deeply felt as I stood with my friends and loved ones in the middle of it, amid the endless cheers and honking, was the ongoing birth of national values. I felt them transcend political abstraction and come alive. A second category of signage could be described simply as: Who are we?

• Power to the peaceful
• Diversity equals strength
• The greatest threat to democracy is indifference
• No one is illegal on stolen land
• How society treats its most vulnerable is the measure of its humanity

In the context of the rally, these were not simply nice-sounding words, shrugs of hope. I felt something far more significant, far more vibrant, in them. This is who we are. And this is what our country must be: Not an ever-fearful empire wannabe, defined by its declared enemies, manifested by its military  budget and its impenetrable borders, symbolised by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and white Christian nationalists calling for war in the name of God, but…

Let’s just say, people with a soul-deep love for Planet Earth and all who inhabit it. This is the nation I felt coming to life at the rally.

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/new-america-on-no-kings

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.