No, I'm Not Going to No Kings This Time
And neither should you
UPDATE: COMMENTS FOR THIS POST HAVE BEEN DISABLED. I very much appreciate the engagement and passion expressed as a result of this piece, but the comments were becoming repetitive and not advancing any meaningful discussion. Thanks for reading!
I’ve been to every No Kings protest since its inception. I went to the Women’s March in January 2017. I went to the Hands Off protests prior to No Kings. I’ve participated in multiple gun violence prevention protests for both Moms Demand Action and March for Our Lives in the last ten years. My husband and I divested from investment funds connected to the gun industry. I was an active local chapter member of Moms Demand until very recently, helping to get gun sense candidates elected. I did phone banking for Kamala Harris and other Democrats in the 2024 election cycle. I’ve written to elected officials via postcards and emails on various topics. You name it, I’ve done it.
I tell you all this to establish that I have been active in causes I care about. And you know what? No more. Why? Because aside from very incremental legislation carved out on a state by state basis, we are not moving the needle. Shannon Watts started Moms after the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012, some 14 years ago (which was 13 years after Columbine) and yet the situation got WORSE, not better. Guns are now the leading cause of death among children in the U.S., surpassing even traffic accidents. The needle isn’t moving for lack of enough organizing and activism, but because our elected leadership is bought and paid for.
Name any progressive policy you like: gun safety and violence prevention, universal healthcare, affordable housing, affordable higher education, free childcare, homelessness, disarming Israel, etc. and the reason nothing gets done is because the oligarchy won’t allow it. We have been literally screaming into the void in the 17 years since the financial crash of 2008/2009 and our representatives sit on their hands protecting corporations while life for the average American becomes increasingly less affordable. If they can’t even prosecute the President and ICE for blatant criminality and violations of the Constitution, why would they listen to the millions in the streets asking them nicely to do their jobs? If the Democrats can’t even unanimously vote against Trump, what hope is there they will eventually come to their senses?
I’m not going to do performative BS anymore that results in little to zero actions from our government. Collectively, we’ve had tens of millions of people come out to these protests since Trump’s first inauguration, only for the people to be roundly ignored by elected reps. The No Kings protest scheduled for March 28, a Saturday, isn’t meaningful action. It’s a Fuck Trump block party. Which, by itself, might be a fun thing to do. But it doesn’t result in getting what we want. If it was truly meaningful, the protest would be mid-week in combination with a call for a general strike by every union in the country, particularly the air traffic controllers and flight attendants. And it wouldn’t just be one day. It would be multiple days, maybe even weeks with the goal of shutting down the economy. We need to think of meaningful action as holding the flow of money in this country hostage, to be released only when our demands are met.
It’s been said the organizers choose Saturdays for two reasons: one, to maximize the number of people who will attend on a non-work day, and two, because they can’t get permitting from the cities in which they organize events. I’m sorry, but what? Do you think the Vietnam protesters asked nicely for permits? Do you think the Black Panthers asked for permission? Do the French ask pretty please to walk off their jobs and into the streets when they do general strikes? Did old school union organizers ask their bosses to allow them to strike?
The idea is absurd on its face. When did we become so meek? So cowed? Meta is planning to lay off 20% of their workforce and use that money to offset their investments in AI. I’m willing to bet that’s just the start of the 2026 employment apocalypse, on top of the job losses already realized since Trump took office in January 2025. With oil prices currently what they are—and climbing—you know that more jobs will be lost and/or pricing will go sky high because Trump started a war of choice to keep you from reading the ever more damning Epstein files evidence. If the war continues much longer, experts predict a possible food shortage crisis due to fertilizer not being able to get through the Strait of Hormuz. So really. What do people have to lose? Are we just going to sit here and let all of this happen? Are we waiting for this to get to crisis proportions before we act?
In my recent article, The Danger of Waiting for Consequences That Never Come, I advocate for the idea of getting our own houses in order before we jump in to help our neighbors, so that we all feel secure enough in our personal resources to be able to focus on the greater mission. The mission, as I see it, is not to topple the Trump regime (although that would certainly be a relief to every living being on the planet), but to topple the oligarchy and to make sure our individual state governments are Trump-proof. Because if it wasn’t clear to you before, it should be clear to you now that Trump will fuck with the mid-term federal elections in favor of the GOP just as he did with the 2024 elections.
What does toppling the oligarchy mean? It means boycotting the media, goods, and services they use to extract wealth from the rest of us. (See the Tesla takedown as a great example.) It means activism to get state legislatures to enact wealth taxes. It means lobbying state legislatures to increase income taxes on the top 10% of earners. It means electing Governors and Mayors who adopt a Mamdani/AOC-like platform to alleviate the financial burdens of average workers/citizens. It means rejecting corporate centrism and any of their candidates, local or federal, who accepts money from PACs, particularly those that have effectively paralyzed representatives from voting against Israel or the NRA. It also means creating the networks that protect the most vulnerable: the undocumented, women who are being persecuted for exercising bodily autonomy or receiving life-saving medical care, and anyone, frankly, who isn’t white or Christian.
So, where does one start? First, send an email to the No Kings organizers at info@nokings.org and explain why you won’t be joining this time or at any time in the future until they adopt a strategy with teeth:
Protests must occur on weekdays and for multiple days at a time and to call it a general strike.
To use their clout to call for union leaders to have their union membership strike in solidarity.
To call for their sponsors to contribute to a strike fund for non-union, hourly wage participants, offsetting the financial burden of participating in these actions.
To have specific demands for our government:
Remove and Prosecute Trump for his criminality, particularly as it relates to the sex-trafficking and rape of minors
Abolish ICE
Audit the 2024 election, restore voting systems where breaches have occurred, and implement federal voting rights statutes to ensure every voter is heard and every vote counted
Ratify the Equal Rights Amendment across all 50 states, codifying women’s rights to vote, have equal pay, and access to reproductive health care.
Adopt Medicare for All.
Now, there is a May Day general strike being organized by the UAW, but it’s being planned for 2028 which seems awfully far away and too late. I’m sure the idea was to do some union saber-rattling in the lead up to the 2028 Presidential election. However, the time to show some critical mass is right now, not two years from now, after heaven knows how much more crap this Administration will inflict or how much more suffering Americans will endure. No Kings has the numbers; why not just consolidate and do it sooner?
Then, I encourage each of you to join Substacker Christopher Armitage ‘s Existentialist Republic Discord channel in which volunteers are organizing to bring about his Soft Secession ideas. Real people from many different states are putting in the work. We need more of you.
Next, figure out how to become part of that underground railroad, if you will, to keep the vulnerable out of ICE’s concentration camps. Look up “ICE Resistance Training Near Me”, and preferably do it via a VPN. Even if you simply volunteer at local food banks to distribute food, that work will become more necessary than ever.
And finally, stop voting for establishment Democrats. The old guard needs to be replaced with younger, more progressive leadership. Start with Leaders We Deserve and the Working Families Party and give them your donations, not the DNC.
Let’s all agree that we need to move beyond just protesting to identifiable and quantifiable actions. Waiting for the mid-terms to solve everything isn’t going to cut it, nor is business as usual. These are anything but usual times.
Fuck that, I’m going. Not because I expect it to change anything, but because I want the administration to see that our numbers are growing and that at some point, one (or hundreds) of us are going to snap and stop being polite.
Plus, it’s an opportunity to network and start building your teams. If shit goes sideways, it will be helpful to have a group of people to train with and perform direct actions with.
These things only look pointless if you see them as an endgame, instead of as a beginning.
In my community, I’m helping with NoKings, and we are actually intentionally structuring it as a way to promote community organizing and networking. We’re splitting people up by neighborhood so they can meet likeminded people around them. It strengthens a movement.