"Both performative and substantial" -- after No Kings

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 ...

• • • 

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. 

• • •

What to know WHAT'S NEXT? Click this link. 

Not simple and not going away

Sportswriters -- the good ones -- are different from other journalists. Well, maybe theater critics are also different in a similar way. Their job and craft is to describe the practice and art of people and collective groups who seek to demonstrate the excellence and delightful potential of our troubled species.

This calling sometimes makes sports journalists unexpectedly blunt commentators on our accompanying societal follies. The existence of athletes who break gender categories can bring out the best of them.

Ann Killion writes about sports and athletes amid the fading embers of the daily San Francisco Chronicle. And she calls bullshit on the current round of obfuscation from the International Olympic Committee about transwomen athletes.

Olympic ban of transgender women an overly simplistic decision with vast consequences

This past week the International Olympic Committee did the easy, simple thing. IOC President Kirsty Coventry announced that transgender women would be banned from all Olympic events, starting in Los Angeles 2028 and going forward. 

... It was simple — and simplistic — because it conveniently ignores the science that indicates that this issue is far more complicated and nuanced. But, hey, we live in a time where global warming is ignored, once-eradicated lethal diseases are making a comeback and scientists are mocked for their knowledge, so why not throw one more complex issue on the bonfire of human research and intelligence?

The IOC’s decision was simple because it flaccidly capitulated to the Trump administration, ceding territory to the loudest, meanest and basest elements, and ignoring the objections of scientists and advocates. ...

Killion goes on to explain the uncertain science that exists about the correlations between simple gender markers and athletic performance. The scientist who discovered the genetic variation which the IOC uses to define sex is not a fan of the current determination.

The IOC ban will require every female athlete who wants to compete in the Olympics to do a one-time gene test, either by drawing blood or having a cheek swabbed, to prove they are indeed female athletes. 

The test is designed to determine the presence or absence of the SRY gene, found on the male Y chromosome. Forget how this conjures up the long history of discrimination against female athletes and perceptions that if you’re good at sports you must not truly be feminine. The basic science behind this test is controversial. 

Andrew Sinclair, the Australian researcher who discovered the SRY gene in 1990, wrote an article last year after World Athletics — the governing body for track and field — adopted the same standard the IOC will implement. He decried the decision.

... Sinclair noted that biological sex is complex with a variety of physiological factors coming into play, and the SRY test only indicates whether the gene is present, not how it is functioning or whether testosterone is being produced. ...

We, both the scientists and the rest of us, know so little about what's "real" and what's meaningful about sex and gender in our species that we easily default to prejudice and bigotry when our preconceptions are challenged. Some people just don't fit. People who don't fit aren't going away. 

What's novel is that we live in a time when gender-complex people refuse to be erased. Get used to it.

I recommend again 800 meter runner Caster Semenya's The Race to Be Myself for a peek into what it is like to live inside these contradictions. 

Some whimsy from No Kings

I'm always bemused when the MAGA-ites describe those of us who repudiate their vision for the country as mired in anger. Sure -- we think MAGA's racism and retreat into an individualistic and patriarchal past is ugly, even sometimes evil. And we say so.

But when we get together, we know how to have fun. And there's joy in feeling you are part of creating a more courageous and happier future. The creativity was out in force on Saturday:

Imagine walking a couple of miles in that get-up!

Or along with that baby unicorn!

Three eagles consult before stepping off.

 

Sometimes it is good to watch a bit before jumping into the human flow.

Oh well, let's toddle along with march.

No Kings in San Francisco

No Kings, No ICE, No War. A few images:

 

The people assemble at the Embarcadero Plaza by the old clock tower and the new wire sculpture.

And then the crowd swelled, and swelled, and pushed forward ...

 

Many had their personal messages ... 

Some were happy to be part of this crowd.

 

Some earnestly rejected MAGA insults.

And others shared their fears.

At the end, the crowd drifted into City Hall Plaza for more speeches.

 

As it was for many marchers, arrival there was my signal to leave. We've done this before and, after drifting up Market Street, we didn't need any speeches. But we did check out the many organizational tables set up between the Main Library, the Asian Art Museum and the old federal office build on the way to BART. 

A good day, and we know in our souls this is to be continued ... 

No Kings today ...

Much more tomorrow.

Friday cat blogging

Janeway becomes possessive if one of us packs a bag for an overnight. She seems to ask: can I go too? No, you can't.

Big Mio tries to assert he's top cat. And he's certainly a big guy. But I'd bet on Janeway to take the lead every time.

 

A lot of feline mischief goes on in this household. 

On the infrastructure of young lives

This week two different US courts found two monster social media platforms -- Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and Google (YouTube) -- liable for encouraging social media addictions in young people. This should shake up these companies which have operated with so much impunity for the consequences of their products. About that, we'll see.

John Della Volpe has been polling young Americans for over 20 years about what shapes their lives. He has explored with them what they think about social media. 

... According to our polling, 71% of young Americans use Instagram, 64% use TikTok, and 54% use Facebook. ... nearly 1 in 3 young Americans blame platforms directly for spreading false information. And when asked what would rebuild trust, 50% say holding both platforms and individuals accountable — the exact legal theory that just prevailed in court. ... 

Platforms have become infrastructure — useful, embedded, but not believed. And the implications extend far beyond tech. ... Gen Z depends on systems they believe are unreliable, run by institutions they believe are unaccountable. That’s not a user problem. That’s a legitimacy problem. ...

The consequences of growing up in, of being natives within, a system they can't believe in are scary and deep They adapt to their environment which is simply the world where they live, but which they cannot trust.

    •    They cross-check everything.
    •    They trust peers over institutions.
    •    They build their own internal filters for what’s real and what isn’t. 

That’s rational behavior in a low-trust system. But at scale, it creates a country where there is no shared baseline — only parallel realities, loosely connected, constantly contested. And that’s where democracy starts to strain..

... They don’t leave the platforms. They can’t. 

... Trust doesn’t disappear all at once. Platforms still work. People still log on. The business model still holds. But something underneath starts to shift.

When people stop believing what institutions say, they respond to authority differently. They question more. They verify more. They rely on each other instead of the system itself. ...

... Platforms can survive without trust. Democracies can’t. 

 • • •

Talking with a parent of teens recently, he observed that his young people weren't very interested in social media as far as he knew -- and they vehemently rejected AI-infused content when they encountered it. Maybe we'll see a generation more discerning than their elders about this stuff? That would be the normal human reaction to a novel technological reality.

A man wrapping a boomerang around his own neck

... Sure is what this looks like. No fan of Gavin here, but this is on point. Let's remind everyone who raised gas prices.

He's got impulses, not strategy

An interesting observation from the Big Picture substack about "the condition our condition is in" on the eve of another No Kings: 

While all of this [Trump-induced chaos and vandalism of the state] is both head-spinning and deeply alarming, those standing in resistance and opposition to Trump are learning in real time how to prepare for and push back upon his deployments. They are effectively combining quick and decisive legal challenges with community organizing and rapid response. 

Throughout these challenges to federal forces and authority, one clear advantage shines through because it is baked into Trump’s pattern: His federal agents don’t ever have a clear understanding of their real purpose or mission, other than as tools of a chaos agent and his regime.

By contrast, the resistance understands its mission far more clearly: Protect the community, impair or reverse the actions of federal agents, and build local and political opposition strong enough to drive Trump and his cronies to eventually back down.

And if the pattern holds, they always will.

He doesn't have some diabolical plan. He just has what I'd call "brain farts" -- emissions that pass for ideas, policies, and directions, all largely smelly hot air.

Losing his new Middle East war to battered Iranians just confirms this. 

There are individuals who he has empowered who do have plans. Russell Vought wants to decimate the apparatus of governance. Stephen Miller wants to Make America White Again (why does he think his neo-Nazi buddies would consider a Jew white enough?) But most of Trump's people are just clowns, and fortunately ineffectual ones, often sabotaged by their inept leader. 

People will die but the people are both better and smarter than they are.   

Concentration camps, USofA

 

I wonder whether this marker, which I photographed some years ago, has survived the Trump administration's disemboweling of federal signage about our history. Tule Lake was one of the country's World War II concentration camps for Japanese American civilians -- an episode so shameful that the victims eventually won some financial compensation from Congress.

 

Rebecca Gordon writes about the Trump regime's revived concentration camps for migrants at Tom Dispatch. 

 ... It’s no exaggeration to say that ICE detention camps now threaten to become a central instrument of repression under the Trump administration. As many as 40 people have died in the camps since Trump returned to office in January 2025. And those are only the deaths that have been publicly acknowledged.

... Concentration camps exist to support and expand the power of an authoritarian regime. They make everyone afraid of being treated like the current targets of the regime. Like state torture programs, concentration camps accelerate the process of dehumanizing groups of people in the public imagination. Such a process often begins by describing the target group as non-human, as “vermin” or “garbage” (as Trump has, of course, done). Ironically, the very act of placing people in inhumane conditions can amplify the public’s perception of their inhumanity. After all, would genuine human beings submit to such treatment? Would our good nation treat genuine human beings that way? ...

Gordon studies the ethical implications of torture. She's well equipped to describe what we must fear and fight to end.

The state of California marker at Tule Lake is far more informative than the NPS signage. And probably not something Trump can trash. Though who knows? Click to enlarge.

Obvious observation

Thanks to The Ghost of Mark Twain for this image of security theater. This will not end well. Calling the good folks of Bellingcat to keep watch.

Tylenol is made from crude oil!

Now that Donald Trump has got the USofA into a fossil fuel war. I figured I ought to know more about oil in our lives. Obviously, the big issue is petroleum in several forms -- gas and diesel fuel for cars and trucks. And also in some areas for heating. But it turns out there is so much more that we do with oil, including with the ubiquitous petroleum-based scourge of modern life: plastics. 

The video here explains how Tylenol is made from a component of crude oil with a lot of help from appropriate bacteria-eating plastic. Really. This is a clear explanation and mind bending fun. Even the fund pitch in the middle is smart and bearable. Enjoy.

There are a huge lot of everyday items that use oil in some way. If the current disruption of the global oil economy goes on, the Donald will have succeeded in screwing up everyone's lives. Seems in character.

Click to enlarge.

The economist Paul Krugman observes our moment:

... now we have the worst of both worlds. The world is now highly dependent upon a complex global supply chain and the erstwhile leader of the free world is erratic. Does anyone know what our Iran policy will be a week from now, or even tomorrow? Moreover, the Iran debacle has revealed us to be far weaker than most people realized – so weak that we are afraid to stop Iran from exporting oil even as we threaten to destroy its civilian infrastructure. The truth is, even our allies no longer trust or respect us.

So what we are facing now isn’t simply a matter of consumers losing the ability to purchase imports. Instead we are facing a scenario in which producers lose access to crucial inputs they need to keep producing. The crisis in the Strait of Hormuz is raising prices at the pump, which is bad. But it is also threatening to deprive American farmers of fertilizer during planting season, to cut off essential helium supplies to semiconductor producers in Asia, to deprive pharmaceutical producers of crucial materials, and more.

In short, terrifying as the Hormuz crisis is, I worry that it may be only the beginning. For a world economy that is riddled with multiple potential choke points can no longer rely on a strong, reliable and trustworthy America to act as a guarantor of the system. While things are bad now, they may very well get a lot worse.

What's No Kings good for?

Next Saturday, March 28, will be the largest one day peaceful (we hope) protest in US history at over 3000 sites around the country and beyond. I fully intend to enjoy and document the San Francisco event.

But what are these mass manifestations for?

Ezra Levin of national Indivisible took a swing at these questions in a letter a few weeks back. It's a great summation of why we do these things.

It’s easy to overplay or underplay the role of mass mobilizations. So let’s review two strawman sides of the debate: 

Argument A: Protests are the sole answer. Some folks think the “3.5% rule” means all we need is to get 11-12 million people to show up, and suddenly fascism loses. Already with last year’s mobilization, Trump has seen a string of electoral defeats, his poll numbers are in the toilet, and his congressional coalition is fracturing. But as [scholar Erica] Chenoweth counsels: That 3.5% has to be actively engaged in the work of opposition, before and after national actions. One-day protests aren’t a magic solution to fascism. 

Argument B: Protests don’t work. Others discount protest entirely. Sure, we saw protests hit historic levels last year. But then what have we seen this year? Venezuela. Greenland. [Iran bombing.] An amped-up secret police force murdering people in the streets. If anything, the regime is escalating. As we discussed with Chenoweth, while the regime is undeniably weakened, weakened authoritarians lash out. We should expect more of that as the walls close in on Trump -- it’s a sign of weakness, not strength. 

Where does that leave us?  

Reality: Protests are a tactic. Think of organizing like this: goal, strategy, tactics.  A campaign that starts with tactics is never gonna accomplish much. A goal with no strategies or tactics is never gonna get us where we want to go. So think in this order: goal, strategy, tactics. 

    •    Our goal: Stop the fascist regime from consolidating its grip on power.
    •    Our strategy: Organize overwhelming, nonviolent people power and foster a culture of mass defiance.
    •    Our tactics: No Kings is one tactic, that fits into our strategy, and aims to achieve our goal. Specifically, No Kings is designed to do three things:  

    1)    Model defiance on a national scale. Optimism in the face of fascism is one of the most accessible forms of defiance. The regime’s plan is to scare everyone into submission. But millions of people taking to the streets calls the regime's bluff, and is a powerful display of optimistic noncompliance. 

    2)    Create social proof that opposition is widespread. Humans are social animals. We follow each other. A massive demonstration of popular opposition helps reinforce that wherever you are, you’re not alone. Courage is contagious, but it only spreads if people see it. 

    3)    Recruit folks who were not previously active. People-powered movements depend on new people flooding into their local organizing home. From ICE watch to mutual aid to advocacy to electoral work, everyone starts somewhere, and each No Kings is the entry point for millions to get involved beyond one day of protest.  

This is all important enough that Indivisible's throwing everything we have into making No Kings III historically huge. ...

See you in the streets! 

(Note: somebody ought to have schooled Trump on goals, strategy, and tactics before he blundered into Iran ...)