On Oct. 18, Americans across the country marched in the second round of No Kings protests this year, demonstrating against President Trump’s abuses of power. No Kings Day is designed to be bipartisan in an effort to unite as many people as possible. Protestors are told to wear yellow and are encouraged to bring the American flag.
This approach has been effective. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reported over 5 million people at the first round of No Kings protests in June. On Oct. 18, the ACLU estimated over 7 million people in attendance.
Intentionally pandering towards the political center is an effective campaign tactic. But this optics-first strategy is not an agent of change. Political growth isn’t useful if it comes at the expense of core values and goals within the movement.
Sanitizing ideologies leaves the most vulnerable groups behind. Disregarding values for optics is unnecessary and brings action to a halt. The path to resisting the Trump administration’s illegal and cruel acts must involve true civil disobedience and headstrong political values.
What is a protest?
No Kings Day is marketed as a protest. Language is crucial when discussing politics. Words don’t just describe political movements — they are the fabric that creates them.
We must use the right words to describe No Kings Day. Protests make specific demands and cause tangible societal disruption regularly until those demands are met. Countless protests throughout history have used these tactics to create real change. Denigrating values to earn mainstream appeal is counterintuitive to the very basis of activism. Activism, at its core, is making society change for you rather than being forced to change for society.
This year, hundreds of Palestinian solidarity encampments across college campuses pressured universities for months with media attention, non-violent disruption and daily inconvenience until they divested from genocide in Gaza.
Despite this cause contradicting historic American foreign policy and mainstream political opinion from voters and politicians on both ends of the political spectrum, dozens of universities have now committed to completely divesting from Israel, including San Francisco State University and the City University of New York (CUNY). Many more universities have paused contributions to weapon manufacturing, including Portland State University, which specifically stated that student protests were a main consideration in this decision.
Places where protests have been met with vehement administrative opposition have been scandalized, forcing media coverage of Palestinian activism and pushing the topic into the mainstream. These campus protests have been a driving force in the recent shift in public opinion regarding Palestinian liberation. Recent polls show that, for the first time, the majority of Americans support ending military aid to Israel.
Real disruption drives real change
These encampments created real change because they used resistance tactics that have defined protest for centuries. These tactics are not convenient. They require taking risks for a greater cause and refusing to quit until demands are met.
The recent No Kings Day marches have avoided disrupting the status quo. They occur with city permits and police supervision. Participants are asked to register beforehand with their personal information. They happen on weekends, and organizers have yet to announce any concrete demands.
Without putting pressure on people in power, the No Kings demonstrations are not protests. They can build solidarity and momentum within the critical anti-Trump movement, but equating these weekend parades to civil disobedience is counterproductive. Shifting the concept of protest further away from actual acts of resistance and closer to sanctioned, surveilled events threatens our First Amendment rights, benefiting the very administration that organizers denounce. Partnering with the state you are protesting isn’t a means of protest.
Authoritarianism isn’t silly
At No Kings protests across the nation, people can be seen dressed in inflatable costumes and holding light-hearted signs that feature memes and pop-culture references. A recent New York Times opinion calls this “absurdity protesting,” pointing out the juxtaposition between these costumes and Trump’s accusations of Antifa terrorism.
But Democrats’ blithe attitude also juxtaposes dark realities. In the very communities that pioneered the frameworks of actual protest, people are being arrested without probable cause or warrant, some never to be seen again. Palestine is being obliterated by a genocide that our government funds while denying the evidence. Trans children are becoming political tokens as their rights to healthcare and privacy are taken away.
Solidarity is a worthwhile cause, and the left can benefit from a wider reach. But minimizing the weight of heavy issues doesn’t bring us closer or drive sympathy. The desperation of our cause is the left’s strongest agent of change, growth and solidarity.
This isn’t to say resistance cannot be small or joyful. During the AIDS epidemic, LGBTQ+ activist Dan Savage said, “We buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night. The dance kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for.” Savage is speaking to the fact that they couldn’t have resistance without joy, nor joy without resistance. But joy does come without resistance for the privileged white Democrats who make up most of the crowd at No Kings.
This privilege is wasted on inflatable costumes. White people are listened to more while risking so much less when engaging in actual protest. Protest is about taking risks and doing hard things because of what you believe in. As our rights face threats, the ability to choose a risk rather than to live one is a privilege. Civil disobedience is the core of every civil rights struggle.
Swapping civil disobedience for sanctioned gatherings and leftist values for centrist ideas benefits those in power. Communities that have been systematically attacked through illegal and violent acts know that the path to liberation isn’t sanctioned by their oppressors.
America was built on the idea that freedom isn’t something you ask for. It’s something you take. Deprioritize liberal comfort and fight Trump’s authoritarianism with the desperation and anger of America’s most vulnerable.
John Hedberg | Nov 7, 2025 at 4:47 am
Here’s why it’s good for journalists to rigorously check their sources, even the sources who are saying exactly the things they want to hear:
Your critical rhetoric against Constitutional America precisely echoes the Marxist talking points of students, professors, and “activists” prior to the fall of such nations as China, North Korea, Cuba, Soviet Russia, Cambodia, and most recently, Venezuela (reference: @XVanFleet, @Lily4Liberty). In every case, well-meaning but not well-read people of compassion were fooled (duped) by TALK of a more ‘just and equitable’ society-by-force, especially for “marginalized people”, but in every case, once these “ambassadors of compassion” gained power, a bloodbath followed in which marginalized people suffered just as much alongside everyone else who disagreed with the new regime. Marxists especially targeted the well-meaning “sock puppets” who allowed them to take power, since their first goal was to eliminate any group still powerful enough to change their mind or question why every group was now being shot, put in prison, starved, or otherwise brutally oppressed.
Here’s the irony: compassionately well-meaning but not well-read people are perfectly willing to protest slavery which happened centuries ago while completely ignoring the slaves just recently escaping the Marxist genocides in Soviet Europe, Cambodia, North Korea, or CCP China (reference: @YeonmiParkNK). History teaches by opulent example (reference: the books of Thomas Sowell of Stanford) that conquest, slavery, and brutal oppression are the norm on every continent among every people, and it’s always been this way, at least until England, France, and the United States became the first 3 countries in history to declare war on slavery worldwide: a new innovation!
The truth is that we’re all the descendants of both slavers and the enslaved. No nation or people escaped this anywhere. Even here in the Americas, genetic anthropologists now have evidence that the first wave of human settlers who arrived here near the end of the last Ice Age were wiped out by the second wave: literally, the people we today label as “Native American” are descended from colonizers who arrived late and wiped out the first (actual) natives in the Americas, and archeological evidence shows that this 2nd wave of colonizers didn’t relent in their own practice of conquest, slavery, and oppression, not even during the period when Europeans first began to arrive (3rd wave).
So, your article really seems to be upset at human nature, and how humans react absent the Judeo-Christian values upon which individual freedom and the Constitution are based… IF you read history! And for those who drink the full Marxist Kool-Aid (Jim Jones reference) and declare Christianity racist, the Jews were Asians (“Brown People” for you racists out there who care about human appearance) who were enslaved by Africans and inter-married with them for 400+ years, so Jesus was both “Black” and “Brown” when he preached that we’re all family, equal and equally beloved children of the same beautifully-loving Father in Heaven, which is literally the foundational doctrine of all international human rights today: our own American Bill of Rights directly derives from the Bible’s teachings.
So, it really is good for journalists to rigorously check their sources, even the sources who are saying exactly the things they want to hear, so they don’t innocently bring ONTO EVERYONE the very slavery they think they’re trying to seek justice for, by being “sock puppet dupes” who help this generation’s aspiring genocidal slavers gain the power they’ve so desperately been seeking, no matter the inhuman cost to the genuinely compassionate. 👍☺️
FYI, Scott Bessent is currently sitting in the Supreme Court every day representing the Trump Administration, listening to oral arguments about the Constitutionality of tariffs, so that the government elected by an American majority, of all colors and beliefs, E Pluribus Unum, stays within the law. Scott, like many in the President’s Cabinet, is one of several former Democrats (super-donor, in fact), he’s one of several LGB Cabinet leaders, and he’s not atypical in a group in which people of every race, sex, party, and religion are playing major roles implementing the policies that we, the American majority, voted for a year ago. There’s never been a Cabinet more representative of every citizen in every neighborhood.
Journalistic “due diligence” is really about making certain you’re “well-read” about the facts of this (and every other) story, including a thorough study of human nature and history on every continent. Doing a good job aims toward best outcomes for everyone we love, so isn’t that aim something we can all agree on?
Kindly, 💛
(updated & corrected)