There's plenty of punditry going around in the backwash of the big day. For what it is worth, here's mine.
This was big; there are critics, as has historically been the case when the underlying upsurge toward equality and justice erupts in all its flavors from frivolity to ideological zealotry. Somebody feels left out; somebody else feels the action should have been done differently. Leaders are blithely lionized or viciously and even falsely reviled. In my (too) long experience of these moments, these kerfuffles are just symptoms that something genuine is happening. Let us be glad -- for the moment calls on us each to find a role in the struggle for a better country. There are many roles.
I joined the walk from the Embarcadero to City Hall in San Francisco. By comparison with lots of previous marches, this was not a huge crowd. Maybe somewhere in the five to eight thousand range? It's hard to tell in a narrow corridor. But the wonderful Brad Newsham who pioneered organizing human protest messages on Ocean Beach reports that Saturday's crowd there, the same morning was some seven thousand participants! That's San Francisco too.
And, quite intentionally, these No Kings events were meant to show our faces everywhere, totaling over 3,000 locations nationwide and probably 8 million people overall.
Who came out to Market Street?
• Sure, there were lots of white-haired old timers. The Bay has a good supply of us. But my observation (and my hundreds of photos) show that as many as half were "middle generation," 30-65, sometimes with kids, workers who get Saturday off, the kind of folks whose jobs usually don't require them to get dirty. They may earn more than the national median income, but in this town, that doesn't mean they are affluent.
• There were many people from visibly Asian origins. More than the white folks, these people seemed quite likely to come from the class of workers who do jobs that do require them to get dirty.
• A lot of people appeared to be what I call "Californian," folks who don't look exactly "white" but whose ethnicity is not obvious.• There were plenty of gay men, slightly unusual for a broad spectrum San Francisco march. Perhaps some were government employees who sniff out bad times ahead?
• There were NOT many high school and college youth marchers that I saw. Those I did see appeared more serious than some of the old timers. Are the young appropriately scared of the world we are offering them?
• There were very few visible Black marchers. Of course, gentrification has ensured that there are very few Black San Franciscans ...
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Andrea Pitzer, author of a study of concentration camps, asks Does No Kings Matter?
She too has participant observations:
My sense is that, more and more, people aren’t showing up in some generic self-congratulatory way, but with the understanding that we need one another, that we are reliant on each other, and that policies of cruelty and exclusion will only lead the country into a cul de sac of fascism.
This is an idea that protesters are helping to shape as they expand the movement. It’s a profound realization to know that millions of other humans have enough desire for a different world that they’ll make an effort on behalf of something better, even in the tiniest, reddest towns. ...... The No Kings movement is a bottom-up force that is creating pressure for a different kind of politics locally and nationally. That process is bound to be messy and take time to sort out. But the protesters understand the assignment: the most important place they can be is right where they are. No Kings is binding together the core movements we’ve seen for a while on the streets of Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and elsewhere.
We’re seeing a massive shift in favor of the abolition of ICE, deep support for trans folks, and fury over the Iran War. Though we see the effects of public pressure on actions like the recent DHS shutdown, Democratic politicians have, by and large, had a hard time keeping up, because the movement is still evolving and moving faster than institutions can respond....... first-time protesters are practicing for the harder tests that may be coming. In the wake of the murders of Porter, Good, and Pretti, the risks are clearer now. They’re girding themselves to help because we know where authoritarianism goes and how far it will stoop to acquire more power, even after having seized so much. The greater the number who stand up now, the fewer the number who will have to pay with their lives later.
So many individuals have become atomized, isolated, and lonely. Protesting is an antidote for all that. And is also how to pull people into realizing they can play a role in building the future. No Kings is both performative and substantial. Showing up with a sign is in and of itself a powerful action to take in this moment, but it’s also a path to doing more.
She's caught on to something I agree is real.
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