The idea is to show off the great mass of Americans who oppose Trump and his policies, but not to give him a confrontation that the White House might use to its advantage, and also not to appear that demonstrators have any quarrel with the rank-and-file soldiers who’ll be marching that day.
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[G]etting permits to protest in D.C. under Trump have become a hassle, adding that the No Kings organizers are “highly committed to nonviolence and there is concern that there would be likely repression and potential escalation if they organized in D.C.”
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There’s certainly a legitimate concern that if tens of thousands showed up in Washington to protest Trump’s parade, that would make the president’s birthday look like the big deal he wants it to be.
Philadelphia Inquirer
Nah. But, the soldiers argument is a good one. And it probably would be impossible to get a permit at that time anyway. (That is to say, if you want to do it lawfully.) The other reason I've heard for why there will be no protest in DC that seems legit to me is that the police would be overwhelmed trying to handle both. And I'm not sure that's a good reason, either. Unless it means they'd call out the more brutal federal masked and heavily armed agents, provoking riots and injuries.
On the other hand, there's also the argument that the media spotlights conflict, so if you want widespread coverage, conflict gets it.There’s something to this. America only passed a Voting Rights Act in 1965 after the clubbings of Selma’s “Bloody Sunday” were televised to a shocked nation.
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There’s zero doubt that [Leah] Greenberg, her husband and Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin, the members of Indivisible, and the other groups who’ve thrown themselves into Hands Off!, No Kings and other coast-to-coast protests have done a invaluable public service. They’ve shown the world that millions of Americans oppose Trump and will stand up for democracy.
But I can’t help thinking about what Frederick Douglass told an audience in upstate New York in 1857, when things still looked bleak for the anti-slavery movement in America.
“Power concedes nothing without a demand,” the formerly enslaved Douglass said. “It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
Find a protest near you and show up.
