Labor pushing hard for No Kings Day III on March 28

NOW AVAILABLE TO DOWNLOAD: People’s World No Kings Day III flyer. Print it and distribute it at your local events, in English and Spanish.

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WASHINGTON—In a mass conference call last week that was part planning and all pep rally, sponsors of No Kings Day III, scheduled for March 28, urged listeners to increase their activism and recruit even more people for what they hope will be the largest demonstration in U.S. history.

Their objective with the protest, again, is to show the leader of the corporate-backed ruling class, President Donald Trump, that the U.S. people are unafraid of him and that they mean to take the country back. The AFL-CIO and the nation’s four largest unions agree, and the federation has scheduled another Zoom conference call for activists at 7 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, March 24.

A major objective this time around, organizers said, is to recruit those who until now have just been standing on the sidelines, uninvolved. They are even getting positive responses from people who say they have voted for Trump as many as three times.

“The president thinks his rule is absolute. But in America, we don’t have kings—and we won’t back down against chaos, corruption, and cruelty,” NoKings.org says on its website.

“Each No Kings has gotten bigger and spread to more communities in rural and deeply conservative parts of the country,” Dr. Maria Steffens, an academic who studies mass movements in the U.S., told the March 19 mass conference call. “That includes those who voted for the present president.”

“This is not about red versus blue. It’s about need versus greed and about freedom versus authoritarianism,” she added.

Organizers also mean to show the power of the people by emulating the Jan. 23 city-wide anti-ICE protest in Minneapolis-St. Paul, which literally shut the Twin Cities down. Some 75,000 people flooded the streets in sub-zero temperatures after ICE and Border Patrol agents killed Renee Nicole Good. Another person, Alex F. Pretti, was killed by agents the day after the march.

So, the Twin Cities will host the flagship rallies for the national protest. Three marches will converge on the state capitol building in St. Paul at 2 p.m. Central Time. Veteran activists Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez, and Jane Fonda, plus Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind.-Vt., will speak.

The No Kings protests have been escalating in numbers and the last one, in the fall, got seven million. Organizers want even more this time, with many expecting as many as ten million. For example, one activist in Des Moines, Iowa, predicts at least 10,000 people will converge in that city alone.

As of March 24, NoKings.org counted more than 3,000 rallies planned in the U.S. plus events in London; Paris; Berlin and Frankfurt, Germany; Tokyo and Okinawa, Japan; Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Ottawa in Canada; Mexico City; and other world cities.

Labor pushes turnout

The AFL-CIO and the nation’s four largest unions—the National Education Association, the Service Employees, the American Federation of Teachers, and AFSCME—plus Unite HERE, all actively endorsed No Kings Day, signing up as sponsors. Workers Circle, originally established a century ago to help Jewish refugees from European state-sponsored violence, has also joined.

“Since Inauguration Day, the radical pages of Project 2025 and the fever dreams of America’s corporate billionaires have come to life with a relentless assault on America’s workers,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler ahead of labor’s conference call.

“The Trump administration has committed the single biggest act of union-busting in history, attacked good jobs across the country, launched a brutal assault on immigrants, ripped health care from millions, jeopardized the essential services that working families rely on, and threatened our fundamental freedoms.

“Unions have been leading in our courts, on Capitol Hill, and in our streets to fight back—and our movement will be there on No Kings Day to peacefully and powerfully say our government doesn’t answer to a king. It answers to working people.”

“We have a leader who acts like an unbridled king, as opposed to a president who abides by a legal and moral responsibility to the people of our country,” AFT President Randi Weingarten, a New York City civics teacher with a law degree, said.

“Americans are fighting back, peacefully, with signs, whistles, and cameras—from thousands in the bitter cold in Minnesota to millions across the country,” she said. “We are at an inflection point. That’s why the AFT will take to the streets again for No Kings. Our communities are hurting. People are afraid, and they can’t afford basic necessities. It’s time for the federal government to listen to the people.”

NEA President Becky Pringle, a Philadelphia science teacher, said her union’s members will be out there for their students. “All students, regardless of race, background, or ZIP code, deserve safe, welcoming schools where they can learn and thrive. Schools should be places of belonging, not fear,” she said. Absences are rising, mental health needs are spiking, and trauma is being injected into classrooms nationwide, harming students of every background and immigration status.

“Students cannot learn when they are afraid their parents won’t be home when they return from school. Students cannot learn when they fear their friends may be gone tomorrow. ICE does not belong in our schools.”

“Working people see what’s happening in Minneapolis and come together with purpose and courage even as ICE continues to tear families apart,” said Service Employees President April Verrett. “This country doesn’t change because of force. It changes when working people show up for each other and have each other’s backs.” Workers “will come together in Minneapolis and across the country to protect our people and demand what we deserve.”

“The White House’s reckless enforcement of immigration policy and violent occupations of our cities are a direct threat to hospitality workers—immigrant and U.S.-born alike,’ said Unite HERE President Gwen Mills. Her union is majority female, majority workers of color, and has a high concentration of migrants. “These policies are scaring away tourists and damaging the industries our members work in and the communities they rely on.”

Other union backers include the Communications Workers’ Texas State Employees Union, plus AFSCME and its Local 3299, and the Service Employees and its pro-Palestinian caucus within Chicago-based Local 73. Other named sponsors include the Government Employees—whom Trump calls an enemy and whom his federal firings have hurt.

Joining along are the Postal Workers, the Asian and Pacific American Labor Alliance, labor councils and state federations from Texas, central Oklahoma, and Boulder, Colo., the United University Professionals of New York state, and the Fayetteville, N.C., Education Association.

“We work hard, but the cost of living keeps rising,” AFSCME tweeted on X. On March 28, AFSCME members and allies are coming together to demand an economy that works for everyone.”

The democratic demands of a growing majority

Trump and other administration officials either downplay the mass movement or use force to try to quell it and cow people into silence, speakers said at the live organizing meeting. It isn’t working, Weingarten reported

“The majority keeps growing in spite of them,” Weingarten said. And it’s getting built from the bottom up, person by person. “You do something” to stand up to Trump’s tyranny “and it’s contagious.”

Trump helped his foes, Weingarten said, by breaking his key campaign promise, that “life would be better.” Instead, everything from the price of gasoline to the price of eggs shows “it’s gotten worse.”

She also warned the protests would have to continue even beyond March 28. “Autocrats don’t quit unless they’re pushed out of power,” she added.

No Kings offered training for participants and leaders in the week leading up to March 28: “Knowing your rights and safety practices” (March 23), “Messaging and media” (March 24), “Talking with the reluctant” (March 25), and an event leaders call (March 26). There’ll be a debriefing call on April 3, with discussion of next steps.

“Trump has doubled down,” No Kings warns on its website. “His administration is sending masked agents into our streets, terrorizing our communities. They target immigrant families, profiling, arresting, and detaining people without warrants. Threatening to overtake elections. Gutting healthcare, environmental protections, and education when families need them most.

“Rigging maps to silence voters. Ignoring mass shootings at our schools and in our communities. Driving up the cost of living while handing out massive giveaways to billionaire allies, as families struggle. Spending billions of our tax dollars on missile strikes abroad,” referring to Trump’s Iran War.

Groups like the Communist Party USA are also adding stopping the administration’s brutal economic war against Cuba to the list of demands when it comes to foreign policy. The party says that the blockade “is not principled foreign policy—it is collective punishment, and it is wrong.”

The people themselves must take matters into their own hands, Nahal Zamani, director of state campaigns for another sponsor, the ACLU, explained. “At the ACLU, we work to delegitimize repression,” she elaborated. “But the courts and Congress are completely unreliable checks on government power.

“And fear and repression rely on people complying in advance” with authoritarian orders, Zamani said. “But if large numbers of people mobilize, it disrupts everything. Large-scale mobilization creates real pressure” which politicians respond to. “We are a diverse, powerful coalition. We’ll come together in the largest single protest in history. We have too much to lose.”

Weingarten warned the Zoom attendees about the tendency of people to be taken in by simplistic slogans, which she admitted Trump and his backers are good at. She cited the GOP’s monster voter repression bill, the SAVE Act. The ruling Republicans tout it as a way to prevent voting fraud, which is virtually non-existent. It really goes the other way, towards controlling who votes, she said.

“The SAVE Act? Really?” Weingarten asked rhetorically. It’s the ‘Save Trump’s presidency act.’”

NoKings.org left the question of “what comes next” to Bishop William J. Barber II, co-executive director of the New Poor People’s Campaign and president of the Repairers of the Breach.

“In the face of an authoritarian crisis, too many with power have abdicated responsibility, repeated lies, become complicit for profit, or obeyed in advance,” said Barber. “But Americans from every walk of life have come together and built a movement that says, ‘We will not bow.’ At this moment, we must say resistance is essential, but it’s not enough. We’re going to build power moving forward together to reconstruct an America where all of us can thrive.”

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