Just show up by Ruth Neuwald Falcon

I’ve been thinking about how to encourage any undecided readers to participate in one of the 3,175 No Kings protests scheduled for this Saturday, March 28. Should I discuss a specific offense being committed by this regime? How could I possibly choose just one? Maybe I should make a list. Where would it start, where would it end? It would be way too long. You’d glance at it and go do something else.

And it’s not like you don’t know it all, or even, if not ‘all,’ then enough. No matter how much we try to avoid looking, it’s increasingly impossible to be unaware and untouched by the depredations of this regime and its consequences

So I’m not going to lay out arguments for being part of what promises to be a joyful and historic day. Timothy Snyder, who knows a thing or two about tyranny, articulates those reasons far better than I ever could. (Click on his name to read the rest of it. It’s brief and may well push you off the fence, should that be where you are at the moment.)

All of this can be stopped. A better America is around the corner. And protest is the first step to that better future. We know that non-violent protest works. It helps to stop authoritarian takeovers. And it opens the way for a better politics to come. — Timothy Snyder

What I will tell you is that you don’t need to make a sign. I made one for Hands Off and another for the first No Kings. It would be insulting to say they look like they were made by a schoolchild. After that, I let myself off the sign-making hook, a great relief. I went to Michael’s and got a small American flag. If you get one, you can turn it upside down as a signal of national distress. If not, no matter. And if you can’t find a flag, that’s okay too. Just show up. That’s what matters.

Some of the mainstream media, including pro-democracy-anti-Trump press, minimize or demean No Kings protests as cute but harmless efforts by progressives that are incapable of reclaiming democracy. They are wrong. We, the people, are the only remaining institution with the power and agency to end Trump’s corruption and renew the rule of law. — Robert Hubbell