WASHINGTON—In the few days since the historic turnout of 7 million Americans in demonstrations against the Trump agenda the would-be dictator Trump has faced opposition to the harm he is inflicting with the government shutdown, his continued abuse of immigrants, his continued attacks on union workers, the wrecking ball he has used to destroy a White House belonging to the people which symbolizes the destructive nature of his regime, and to his stepped up extra-judicial killings in the Caribbean.
Tens of thousands of organizers and supporters of the No Kings Day demonstrations from coast to coast went online last night to give form to this opposition by mapping plans to not just continue but to step up the pressure on the Trump regime to end all of these attacks, fueled by the White House’s frontal assault on democracy.
The 41,000 on the October 21 Zoom call heard moderator Ashlee Woodard-Henderson and other organizers detail actions people could take by themselves or in groups to put immediate pressure on lawmakers to resist and overcome the Trump tyranny and his MAGA followers.
She urged everyone to jump in via phones, e-mails, and by joining upcoming events that are already being posted on www.nokings.org, as follow-ups to the seven million people who massed and marched nationwide on October 18.
A video shown to the viewers featured crowds ranging from 400,000 in midtown Manhattan to 250,000 in Chicago’s Grant Park alone—though 150,000 or more ranged from the Lake Shore Drive bridge over the Chicago River southwards to museums and westwards into the Loop. In addition, there were 200,000 in downtown D.C.
But the video viewed by 40,000 last night also showed 2,000 in Chattanooga, Tenn., 20,000 in Kansas City, and a lone woman waving her “No Kings” sign at the edge of a two-lane road in deep-red Beckley, W. Va., and 28 Native Americans held “No Kings” signs while braving a blizzard in northern Alaska.
“People may say ‘It’s impossible to fight this authoritarian trend,’” Woodard-Henderson said. “But we know we can. Our ancestors and elders did” in other mass movements, especially in the 1950s and 1960s for civil rights and in the 1930s for worker rights.
Added Indivisible.org co-chair Mike Levin: “This regime is on its way down.” He announced the mass demonstration will be followed by a No Kings Alliance, with details to come on www.nokings.org.
The key to No Kings’ next pressure will be a weekly unveiling, every Wednesday, of new actions. The first two, on October 22, are virtual, with a following one on the 23rd. There will also be a separate economic security project posted on the website.
The 6 p.m. Eastern Time October 22 session on “Stop the Health Care Heist” refers to the Trump regime’s law that will vastly increase health care premiums for at least 20 million people and strip 14 million more of Medicaid coverage over the next decade.
An 8 p.m. Zoom call follows it, entitled “The Disappeared In America Movement” to organize protests against kidnappings and “disappearances” vicious and violent ICE agents carry out against immigrants and dissenters from Trump dogma, or both.
The 8 p.m. session on October 23 will launch a campaign for the “Freedom to Vote,” fighting back against Trump’s voting restrictions, including everything from ballot box removal to restrictive voting laws to intimidation at the polls to rampant and current state-level GOP gerrymandering designed to guarantee a permanent MAGA majority in the U.S. House.
“We’re going to have days of action” along with days of “non-violent civil resistance,” Woodard-Henderson explained. The entire session, including links to action plans, is on a YouTube video.
Economic pressure can also be successful, Indivisible’s Levin said. Several speakers on the big Zoom call criticized major corporations, universities, and law firms for giving in to Trumpite threats and going along with the regime by paying millions of dollars or agreeing to support Trumpite causes.
But Levin pointed out that when the Disney Corp. suspended late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel for mildly criticizing Trump, its ABC network was swamped by more than a million angry callers. and it lost $5 billion in advertising. ABC reversed course, and Kimmel is back on the air.
“Those fascists are quaking in their jackboots,” said Levin, whose organization was a No Kings lead sponsor. “We’re better than their few and bigger than their billionaires—and we’re gonna win.”
Right-wingers, led by Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, had insulted the millions who took to the streets by calling them “Antifa,” “Communists,” and haters of America. Some right-wing GOP governors called out state troopers and National Guards to—they said—combat expected violence. None occurred.
Plus, added Hunter Dunn, spokesman for 50501—which put together a smaller demonstration earlier this year—this No Kings protest drew not just progressive individuals and groups that his group’s march and No Kings’ prior protest in May did, but others across the political spectrum.
“We had not just liberals but conservatives, moderates, unions, civil rights groups, and we all got connected as never before,” Dunn said. This protest also drew tens of thousands of people who had never marched. Dunn urged the Zoom callers to keep up with and spread those contacts.
Though no unions presented on the call, worker rights played a big role in No Kings’ plans. The goal is to overturn Trump’s mass firing of tens of thousands of federal workers through worker and union hater Russell Vought, his Office of Management and Budget director.
Senate Democrats holding out against Trump’s depredations “need to hear from us” in support, as the GOP duo “are punitively firing federal workers,” Dunn said.
And “the executive branch” under Trump and Vought “is literally cannibalizing the public purse” by illegally refusing to spend money Congress appropriated, added Lisa Gilbert, co-executive director of Public Citizen. “They’re already shutting the government down little by little.”
But Gilbert also urged participants and all the other marchers to keep the pressure on Senate Democrats to hold fast against Trump’s partial government shutdown, which has passed the three-week mark. Trump needs seven Democratic votes, Gilbert said—actually eight due to one defecting Republican—to break the filibuster and pass his government-reopening bill.
The Democratic price for their support of that measure is to restore the health care cuts. So far, three Democrats, notably Pennsylvanian John Fetterman, have defected during 11 rollcall votes on the GOP reopening bill. That’s not enough. There were 86 No Kings events in Pennsylvania.
“Staying with the shutdown is hard, especially with the president and Vought blaming the Democrats and firing the federal workers,” Gilbert admitted. Gilbert posted a text message number 30403, which will patch callers through to their senators to demand health care be retained, not trashed.
And she warned viewers to expect “a massive and terrifying increase in totalitarian behavior” by the Trump government, in addition to the ones already underway. In addition to the domestic totalitarianism, countries around the world are expressing concern about Trump’s extrajudicial continued killing of people in the Caribbean, claiming they are drug traffickers.
He has arrogantly responded by saying that “if I were a fisherman, I wouldn’t go fishing in the Caribbean.”
The emphasis on workers’ rights, reopening the government, and following the Constitution and the law will cheer the unions, including the Government Employees and the AFL-CIO. They were among the cosponsors of the protests in 2,700 U.S. cities and towns.
Several speakers made the point that coalition-building must continue, while others said the best way to bring new and more people into the mass movement against Trump is to post individual stories of the harm to themselves or to people they know on the No Kings website.
“People need to understand we are indeed living under authoritarianism,” said progressive campaign strategist Jiggy Geronimo. “Share our stories of the fascism that is on display.”
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut underlined that point on MSNBC last night when he declared, “We are no longer living in a functional democracy. We can still come back from this, but it will take a lot of work.”
Other organizers at the Zoom meeting listed other methods of resistance. They include “sharing the real ways people are really hurting” from the Trump-GOP agenda, especially its spending slashes, government program closures, and medical care cuts.
“As time goes on, more and more people will see the impact of fascism. And when they do, we have to catch them” and recruit them to the movement, Woodward-Henderson said.
Another said, Encourage people to actively resist ICE raids, roundups, beatings, arrests, and disappearances, but peacefully. The best way is to post photos, stories, and videos of your neighbors chasing ICE out of their neighborhoods.” Such chases have already occurred in several cities, including in Southern California and Chicago.
“Authoritarianism does not stand alone. It survives on violence, complicity, and cash flow,” one participant said. “We have the power to overcome it if we can keep this together, and make it impossible for anyone to profit”—as Trump’s corporate backers do—“or be in denial or capitulate.”
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