No Kings Day is Coming, But Does It Matter?

This Saturday is No Kings Day.

More than 3,000 protests are planned throughout every state in the U.S., as well as hundreds of cities around the world.

If last year’s events are any indication, close to ten million people could be in attendance.

We can safely make some predictions about what will happen. this weekend:

The National Mall will be overrun by a massive, ebullient mob of radical woke leftists: families, schoolteachers, ministers, parents, grocery store clerks, college students, business owners, grandparents, and toddlers on shoulders.

City streets all over this nation will be lined with exuberant, sign-waving throngs of joyfully defiant human beings loudly declaring their shared disdain of a wannabe dictator.

Local parks will explode in a kaleidoscopic display of disparate humanity, converging to declare their solidarity and their collective rejection of authoritarianism.

Republican lawmakers’ offices will be surrounded by a spirited show of fierce resistance from pissed-off, fed-up constituents demanding accountability.

And, based on my previous experience, there are some guarantees I’ll make:

The vibe will be glorious.

The chants will be on point.

The sign game will be strong.

The love will be tangible.

It will be soul-stirring.

It will be goosebump-inducing.

It will be off-the-charts beautiful.

And if that is all that happens, it also won’t make a damn bit of difference.

We’ve already had two massively successful No Kings Day events, and as cathartic and encouraging as they were, things here are far worse than they were then.

The Constitutional crises are piling up.
We’re immersed in unnecessary and unwinnable wars halfway across the world.
This Administration’s disregard for legality and morality is escalating.
The complete Epstein files are still concealed, the monsters within them still evading their reckoning.
ICE is still ravaging our communities with impunity and with taxpayer funding.
And our traitorous, cognitively-decimated, sociopathic Predator-In-Chief has become more unstable, more violent, and more unhinged than before.
We’re a hair’s breadth from full-on fascism.

The last No Kings Day protests didn’t stave off the chaos that is now here, and it won’t prevent what this regime has planned, unless we all do more than show up on Saturday.

Rallies and protests are powerful, important things.

They are a necessary visual reminder that we’re not alone.
They help provide a sense of agency in dark days, to help our minds right-size the threats that seem so towering and so beyond our reach.
They give us a chance to stand with a chosen community and be a tangible response to the things that burden us.
They connect us with people we live, work, and study alongside and give us the chance to forge partnerships and build coalitions.

Rallies and protests are awe-inspiring, breathtaking moments.

But rallies and protests don’t save democracies.

They can’t craft legislation and they won’t protect endangered people.
Rallies alone won’t jettison corrupt leaders from their well-fortified perches of power.
They can’t reach into the labyrinthine hallways and cloistered rooms where those charged with protecting us decide our fates.
Protests can’t tip the scales of our political process back toward balance.
They will not reject would-be dictators.

Please hear me: attending a No Kings protest for a few hours isn’t nothing, but it is the easiest possible ask of us, as Americans.

Our efforts on Saturday don’t matter even a little bit to Trump and his sycophantic gaggle of ghouls. Like so many times before, they will simply allow us to have an afternoon where we all feel a false sense of power, blow off steam, and then largely return to our lives currently in progress, while they continue to dismantle our Republic largely unabated.

We need to remember that transformative activism is found in sustained movements, not in soothing moments, and we need to find our place in the messy and local battles throughout this nation until we actually strike fear into the oppressors and oligarchs, and upend the new order they are constructing where we are truly powerless.

The only way this Saturday will really mean something is if we make meaningful connections with our neighbors while we’re there, if we partner with organizations in our communities, if we sign up to work the polls or lobby our lawmakers or contribute to campaigns, if we find a place to do the daily, unglamorous, incremental work of resisting fascism.

For No Kings Day to matter, it cannot be a landing pad; it must be a launching pad.

Yes, Saturday afternoon is something.

But Monday morning is everything.

In the comments, let me know what you’ll be doing for No Kings Day, and share ways that you’ve found to do sustained activism in meaningful ways, so that others can be inspired beyond Saturday.