Commentary by Jerry Lanson
Three days after the huge Oct. 18 protests, grass roots organizers of the No Kings rallies invited those who had participated to join a national Zoom call.
I don’t know how many people signed in. But I was struck that those who spoke were looking forward instead of merely dwelling on what one speaker described as “the largest peaceful protest in American history.”
An estimated at 7 million people protested in 2,700 different locations. While one person stood out alone in in a rural, red West Virginia town, an estimated 350,000 marched through New York City, a speaker said.
Organizers on the call urged everyone to share photos, videos, articles and stories (I’ve seen dozens and dozens). They noted that No Kings will be sending out weekly updates, including calls for action. They urged people to participate in nonviolence training and to know their rights. And they cautioned that the road ahead will demand the time, determination and sustained engagement of everyone.
“Some of the answer of what’s next depends on you,” activist Ash-Lee Woodward Henderson said.
The call offered promise that No Kings2 wasn’t going to be just another big, but isolated cry of resistance against a regime that is crushing the fundamental tenets of democracy, but instead an important step toward something bigger.
Just who is running the growing No Kings movement and what’s next remain fuzzy to me. Its website lists a mosaic of affiliated organizations that joined together for the first No Kings rallies on June 14. These range from the ACLU to Indivisible to Stand Up for Science to the Sierra Club to MoveOn to Manhattan Young Democrats. In all, the site lists more than 200 allied groups. The list for October 18 is not yet up, but there’s no doubt that there were more protests and a larger turn out than June 14.
I was among the skeptics of the initial “No Kings” label. It struck me that we aren’t fighting King George but modern-day authoritarianism, something akin not to an 18th century British monarch but the contemporary Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán.
No Kings felt euphemistic.
But I’ve come around. No Kings, I realize, is an effective American sentiment, harking back to our historic roots and the very reason we fought a Revolutionary War.
We, the American people, often disagree with one another. Yet I still believe a sizable majority of us agree that we have a right to our views, a right to participate in self-governance, a right to freedom of speech and a shared belief in our Constitution.
No Kings speaks to these common denominators.
The question now is how do we get beyond sharing these fundamental beliefs to standing up for them?
Time is of the essence. As Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes October 22;
“We are not living in a functional democracy any longer. It’s not too late to save it, but it is just as important to acknowledge that we aren’t on the precipice of losing our democracy. We are losing it every day.”
His words are evident in the rubble of what was the White House East Wing, flattened without debate or discussion.
They are exemplified in the repeated sinking of boats and those aboard them in the Caribbean, without explanation, authorization by Congress or evidence that those killed are our enemies or even drug smugglers.
They are reflected in Donald Trump’s demand that his own Justice Department repay him $232 million, in the militarization of American cities, in his unilateral firing of whomever he pleases, and in his reliance on a secret donor to pay the military during the shutdown.
All are outrageous. Yet such actions are unleashed by the day as Trump bulldozes all in his path, increasingly unrestrained by courts, Congress, or anyone else.
If there is good news, it can be found in the continued growth of a popular movement to resist his regime, peacefully but forcefully.
There are signs, too, that this resistance is making converts. Though polls show Trump’s core Republican base is still solidly behind him on most issues, 30% believe he is using federal law enforcement to go after his enemies, a Reuters-Ipsos poll finds. Overall, the poll finds Americans by more than 2 to 1 think he is abusing his power in this way, politicalwire.com reports.
Other polls suggest independents in purple states and elsewhere strongly oppose Trump’s leadership and policies, leading political analysts like Charlie Cook to question whether Republicans, even after widespread gerrymandering, will succeed in holding the House in 2026. Another new poll shows Democrats moving ahead of Republicans when voters are asked which party can better lead the economy.
Meanwhile, the economic conditions continue to sour. Inflation in September climbed back to a 3.0% annual rate for the first time since January. Health insurance rates are about to spike for millions who rely on the Affordable Care Act. Millions more will lose food stamps in November. All this while the price tag for the new ballroom Trump intends to name after himself climbs to $350 million.
But the resistance still faces steep challenges. Even though 7 million people turned out October 18, that falls short of the roughly 12 million active resisters that research shows is needed to boost the odds of stopping the authoritarianism of this regime.
Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist who among multiple roles directs the Nonviolent Action Lab at Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Innovation and Governance, has studied hundreds of cases of non-violent popular resistance around the world over the last century. She has documented, the BBC notes, that “civil disobedience is not only the moral choice; it is also the most powerful way of shaping world politics.”
But there’s a rub. Chenoweth, the BBC reported, has found that “it takes around 3.5% of the population actively participating in the protests to ensure serious political change.”
In the United States, that would mean about 12 million people.
Based on these projected numbers, the US resistance, though growing from rally to rally, must continue to grow, person to person, town to town, state by state.
Chenoweth and three colleagues recorded promising signs in an article published at the Ash Center two days before the October 18 protest. They noted that the protest movement during this administration has been “far greater” than in 2017, and “overwhelmingly (and even historically) nonviolent, and far-reaching.”
Furthermore, the article noted, “the current protest movement has already reached deeper into Trump country than at almost any point during the first Trump Administration.”
This is encouraging. Whether it continues to grow rests with us.
Lanson’s column first appeared at his Substack, From the Grassroots.