Steve Eberhardt :: No Kings, Atlanta 3.28.26
You can't make a NoKings protest without someone shouting, "NoKings is not a real protest, it's a DNC psyop!"
So which is it? Is NoKings an important social movement or is it a party-promoted astroturf affair lacking any substance?
Full disclosure, I've been actively involved in NoKings and my work is financially compensated. As always, the following is a lengthy post but nothing in life is worthwhile without some effort on my part — and yours.
I mention my participation for a few reasons. I think you should be aware of any biases I likely have. But I mention it mostly to make the obvious point that proximity to something comes with a certain perspective — an insider's view as cheesy as that sounds— which informs everything about how I look at events like this, even when I'm not directly involved. I want to know who's attending NoKings and why, who isn't attending and why, what signs and messaging are resonating, what issues aren't being properly reflected, and I want to evaluate its effectiveness. I also engage and evaluate valid criticisms.
NoKings have inarguably been some of the largest single-day protests in US history. The only other possible contender for that crown was the The Women's March during Trump's first inauguration, which I also participated in DC and played an indirect role doing amplification of content as well aggregating accurate crowd counts from across the country. The Women's March in DC was the biggest action I've ever been to by far — 700,000 people if I recall correctly. There were so many people it wasn't even a linear march but rather resembled an organism under a microscope at a cellular level. People weren't marching, they were crunched masses swirling in a whirlpool.
The day before the march I got in a scuffle with a motorcyclist with a giant TRUMP flag attached to his hog. I ripped his flag off his bike and stomped in out in front of him and told the old man I'd do the same to his noggin if he didn't get keep his ass on his seat. I'd fight cops at every protest if it didn't come with a 10-year sentence. The day of Trump's inauguration went to shit, a McDonald's burned, people got tear gassed and arrested and hit with major life-altering charges, which were thankfully later dropped. The next day was the biggest march in US history until NoKings.
It's patently absurd to outright dismiss a protest when it's among the largest, if not the largest, outpouring of people in 250 years. That means something. As far as function and goals, critics of NoKings are correct in pointing out that it's little more than a sidewalk visibility with placards scaled up to unprecedented levels.
NoKings is not direct action and it's not civil disobedience, but that doesn't mean it's intrinsically ineffective. The functions and goals of these large rallies are too numerous to articulate, but among them are: meeting old friends and making new ones, organizing massive coalitions of the broad left, demonstrating to voters and everyone at home and the media we have numbers, and publicly opposing Trump's policies.
There are NoKings protests in the reddest states and counties and there's safety in numbers. Some people want to make their voice heard. Some people want to find volunteers for the next campaign. Some people want to organize and inspire. Some people want to contribute and share their creativity and artful resistance. Some people simply refuse to sit on the sidelines and do nothing while the country they love — despite all its deep flaws — is getting dismantled and destroyed before their eyes. Some want to watch capitalism and the oligarchs burn.
The group Indivisible is not a puppet of the Democratic Party. It's not even formally connected to the party. Senator Chuck Schumer and House leader Hakeem Jeffries were publicly blasting Indivisible last year for pushing too hard for immigrant justice among other things. Indivisible are among the dozens of 'Groups' major donors and Third Way centrist ghouls are trying to discredit and dismiss. Indivisible might not be radical left group, but they're not fascist accomplices and they're not your enemy. They also didn't pay me and I know no one in the org so I have no stake in defending them.
There are people at the protests with nauseating signs, "If Kamala were president, I'd be at brunch". The photo circulating today is from last April but I saw an identical one today at a protest in California. It's a well-worn meme on the left, it's not without criticism, but it's also one of many memes where there's more than a touch of misogyny. The Chapo bums don't get any heat for hosting a lazy podcast, extracting $50k/month from dweebs, and contributing nothing to the cause aside from discourse about video games. One NoKings sign I saw today: "The only solution is socialist revolution" and a million more from hilarious and terrifying. No one sign or person is singularly representative of what the anti-Trump movement is and what it's about, of which NoKings is just one small part.
In attendance at NoKings are lifelong local Democratic party advisors and apparatchiks, wealthy consultants, the Party For Socialism and Liberation, DSA diehards, career union organizers, LGBT activists, students, veterans of the Civil Rights movements, Wobblies, black block, I could go on. The idea that leftists can come here to 'radicalize' libs is frankly absurd and ridiculous. More leftists than not need an education in radical politics from their grandmas than the other way around.
I randomly marched alongside a Weatherman and other famous revolutionaries from a previous era. You're not walking in here with your favorite book and teaching people lessons of How To Do Real Socialism. You're here to do your basic duty as a citizen of a beleaguered democracy. You're here to wipe out white supremacy. You're here to stomp out fascism, even if you're not literally stomping anyone and even if most of the attendees would never advocate violence as a means to political goals.
Just as it's inaccurate to describe NoKings protests as DNC fronts, it's not accurate to label critics as 'armchair leftists' as many of the fiercest critics are lifelong and dedicated activists and organizers. Some of the fiercest critics of the Democratic party are in attendance.
There are valid criticisms of NoKings. Among the most important, at least to my mind, is that NoKings was at least initially and conspicuously attended by white boomers, who as a group are the only living Americans who actually experienced the American Dream.
That said, it is educated white women who are among the only cohort who became more radicalized towards the left in the past 15 years. Feel free to argue about that but I have 15 years of backend data from 100 million+ on the subject. But you don't need to take my word on it, it's what every poll shows too. Black women are the only group who never imbibed from Trump's poisoned chalice; educated white women are the only group who lurched strongly in the other direction.
That's all to say the Democratic coalition and some of its most powerful and connected people aren't the same working class white folks as it was 20 or 40 years ago. The top 10% of income earners are in the base of the party now, the next top 10% to a lesser but considerable extent and it keeps going. The most enthusiastic supporters of Trump are working class white moron men who contribute nothing to society and are frankly just breathing our air without consent.
The most educated and privileged people in America outside the oligarchs and top .01% are not fascists but rather fire-breathing anti-Trumpster zealots. The phenomenon of the white suburban mom fighting fascism with stuffed animals in her pocket is real. Renee Good was one of them. There are millions of people like Renee and dismissing their contributions and radical potential is something only a fool would do.
The intoxicating mix of relatively wealthy white boomers marching alongside radical anarchists groups is captured by the emergence of 'Grantifa'. Sure it's campy as hell, but it's also pretty awesome that some of the most insulated, educated, wealthy, and privileged cohorts of society march under and identify with the anti-fascist brand. That's not a bad thing. We could live in Israel, or Nazi Germany, or pick any other place other than Ireland where the majority of people are white. The disease of whiteness plagues the modern world more than capitalism.
The reason NoKings marches are white, I can only hazard a few guesses. One is that everyone else is exhausted from protesting and struggling for the past decade. Professional organizers and activists are distraught, some destitute, and many paid a hefty price for protesting on campuses against Israel, including deportation to third party countries. If you've never had your head bashed in by a pig, fist fought a fat pig, or spent time in a cell, you don't know what I'm talking about but don't mistake your lack of experience for wisdom.
Other activists I know are imprisoned for life on terror charges. The protesters at Cop City, Standing Rock, Ferguson all paid a price few understand unless you were there. Some are victims of sexual assault by their comrades, like Dolores Huerta. Activists in Ferguson were found burned in their cars. The people made famous in viral protest imagery die after you share their sacrifice for clout, they lose their jobs, they get deported, their career and health suffers. Some suffer lifelong mental and physical illness from trauma. If you're wondering why the smiling middle class white lady is at the protest, it's because they're among the only people in this country who hasn't had their life obliterated by militarized goons or the mundane structural violence of capitalism which has pushed four out of every five people to the brink.
The thing is large visible actions inspire others. The day after the General Strike in Minneapolis — one of the most inspiring actions in memory — DHS agents shot Alex Pretti. To that day, there's been a protest or walkout at a high school or college campus, every single day, every country, and it's still happening today. Grandmas led the way so their grandkids could carry the baton. Trump fired the head goon, demoted another, and threw Stephen Miller back in his cage. Trump has now advised all his top people and Republicans to stop mentioning deportations. The people in Minnesota won, who were inspired by people in Chicago, who took up action after LA. NoKings played some role in threading these events and inspiring adjacent action.
Like Occupy, the Women's March, NoKings, left progressives put 10,000x more people on the street but get a 1/10,000th the media coverage as 10 Tea Party bozos on a street corner being paid by Americans for Prosperity. The last decade in America has been one of massive left social movements which were put down by the state. But the energy is there. And there's not a single right-wing protest in 50 years that's been even a fraction of what the left can put in the streets.
Another reason NoKings was predominantly white and older at the outset is the digital apparatus and organizations which put it together have become more segregated over time. Leftists and liberal spaces don't exist outside the larger society, and over time they have become racially segregated, both online and offline, to a stifling degree. The personnel and orgs which promotes these events are largely based in a digitally white world, and the corollary to that is mainly white protest turnout. If you think that's a fault of liberals alone, do a social media audit of white leftists to determine how many Black women they follow, share, and donate money to...how many books by Black authors do they have other than the obligatory unopened bell hooks and a well worn copy of Adolph Reed Jr.
But the criticism of NoKings as mostly white only goes so far. The second NoKings protest was far more diverse as far as age, race, gender, and ideology than the first one. There wasn't even really anything equivalent. The social dynamics and news cycle of each event were equally unique.
An even more important point, which is where my perspective comes into play, is that the NoKings protests are not equivalent. That is to say you can't make a sweeping statement about all three other than the most basic fact of which group organized it.
The entire debate of 'Is this a real protest' sidesteps the on-the-ground reality that many of the same people resisting ICE at warehouses, getting arrested, organizing mutual aid networks, bundling legal funds, participating in DSA, are the same people at NoKings. It's not an either/or thing, it's largely the same people.
There's something campy about the protests, fine. There's also something organic, unpredictable, beautiful and brutally effective about these protests. The organic and spontaneous element was immortalized by the inflatable Portland Frog with a blue hanky.
The Portland Frog was just one of tens of thousands of people from LA, Chicago, and Minneapolis who were fighting ICE. He became a symbol of resistance after a Portland pig sprayed pepper spray directly into the vent hole of his costume. The man in the suit captured the public's imagination when he brushed off the attack saying "he had spicier Mexican food than that". If you think this shit is all scripted in some DNC backroom, you simply don't know how social movements really work.
The Portland Frog — soon followed by every inflatable creature and animal you can find on Amazon — became a symbol of anti-ICE resistance in the week prior to NoKings. They were at anti-ICE protests AND NoKings. When the Frog Suit became a global symbol and reverberated into meme culture, I knew the turnout and vibe of NoKings2 was going to have a major impact on US culture and politics. NoKings2 ended up being one of if not the biggest single-day protests in history. We also co-opted the frog from the right.
The following day, Trump tore down the White House while he and his party cut food stamps as a tactic to cut 15 million off Medicaid. One right-wing response to NoKings was that "we don't have a king" but that stance was difficult to maintain while a madman was tearing down the peoples' house while making kids starve. Wall Street banks in Argentina got a bailout while Trump and GOP megaonors hosted Gatsby parties. The whole charade was giving Marie Antoinette. And frankly, that message broke through to voters. I read quotes from Trump voters who threw in the towel right around then, citing a laundry list of complaints, all of which were surfaced and amplified by NoKings.
Go take a look at polling of Trump's approval and pay particular attention to when the abrupt and sharp declines occur. I'll save you the time: they coincide exactly with the NoKings turnout, the destruction of the White House, and the government shutdown escalating which concluded with massive Medicaid cuts. People want to think protests don't work but that's because that's the message the ownership class wants us to believe, and it's also a convenient excuse for those who don't want to share the burden of fighting back.
The Portland Frog set off a wave of nationwide anti-ICE protest in much the same way NYPD violence against kettled Occupy protesters in southern Manhattan provoked a cascading wave of anti-capitalist action across the country. Funny, quirky, unexpected, comical, bizarre, and creative protest is at the heart of all successful antifascist resistance. The Portland Frog may have well as been cooked up in lab by Gene Sharp than any DNC plot.
As far as the man behind the Portland Frog, he told Willamette Weekly about his role as a symbol of resistance: "I don’t know. Kinda meh, you know. It’s nice, I guess.” The WW noted, "Todd actually agrees more with his fiercest critics, who say he’s disguising violent revolution in a cute costume, than he does with his biggest fans, who admire his puncturing of authoritarian self-importance. But powerful art rarely stays within the control of its creators." Indeed.
Not only are the people who attend NoKings not of one mind, but each person holds contrary and conflicting views and yet still shows up. The Portland Frog didn't create the conditions of antifascist resistance, nor did Indivisible. This is what early stages of antifascist revolution look like in that they are entirely unpredictable, wilder than fiction, and often silly as hell when you're not actively scared or crying.
I'll leave it here before this shit is a book. Many critiques you've heard about NoKings have some validity. The other thing is most of the people spewing this shit have no clue what they're talking about at a granular level and it's an embarrassing spectacle to see bench warmers decry actions when they won't even drop their Twitter accounts. The most hardcore white Marxists are all on Twitter, as a badge of honor. That's cool, but libs took major financial hits selling their Teslas. One is willing to take a personal loss for the greater good, while other is cosplaying and helping the richest man in the world accrue power, without any benefit whatsoever to left organizing.
The opposing views about NoKings don't really come down to an ideological split, let's be clear. The world is divided by people who get their teeth kicked in fighting fascism and the experts who spend their time writing and interpreting them. History shows the latter are who will be remembered. That's the breaks.
The chief distinction is whether you will show up, show out, and take collective agent while being attuned to shortcomings, different tactics, are willing to learn — but above all, brave and receptive enough to capture the power of collective action.
It's also worth keeping in mind that dismissing protests is a long and proud tradition on the left. When Occupy shook the citadels of capitalism by naming our enemy the 1% and created the tsunami that Bernie Sander later rode, the only white leftists who wrote about it dismissed the movement as foolish dumb hippies without a list of demands. We were getting hammered by FOX and the left. The founder of Jacobin said Occupy weren't protesting the right way, as did Doug Henwood joined by dozens of other leftist luminaries who will go unnamed.
It could be worse. Jacobin's founder cheered on violent riot cops as they bashed the heads in of anti-corporate activists at the G20 protest in Toronto. You don't appreciate me airing the white left's dirty laundry? Tough shit I was in the streets and I don't appreciate me and my comrades getting dismissed and denigrated by bookish bench warmers cosplaying like we're in the same struggle. I don't like scribblers pretending they have skin in the game. I'm hungry so I'm getting offline, take care of each other, try to inspire, and for the love of God keep the negative nabobs at bay cause that shit is more corrosive than a Fed saboteur. People in the vanguard are uncomfortable when regular working people take action, and you see that same attitude among corporate media, reporters, pollsters, etc. No one wants to see people empowered or taking action and that's one reasons why our democracy is in the state it's in.
