RE: https://mastodon.social/@box464/114285967307831123
Making good use of quote posts today to dust this important announcement off. Be loud, be safe.
nokingsday
RE: https://stefanbohacek.online/@nycviewsbot/115396008663332562
Today, @nycviewsbot will be posting views from Time Square every 30 minutes.
✊
#NoKings = United we stand
From Melbourne via Milan and Dublin to Portland ... Frogtifa is everywhere.
Happy #noKingsDay
There are more people at the DC #NoKingsDay protests than were at the 🤡 stupid military parade.
Thousands more.
#NoKings is coming up next weekend. Get your protest sign ready with a little help from Fedi's own @docpop
https://spectra.video/w/7ffb2b02-9588-449b-b8f4-e9618f799d85
Some leftists have criticized #NoKingsDay2 as useless. Though it was the largest protest in US history, it didn't change anything. I would go further to say that protests like these generally won't change anything. Dictators aren't forced to step down by 2% of the population coming out for one day. If they're forced to step down by protests, those protests are sustained. They are every single day. They are accompanied by general strikes.
We've been watching that happen all over the world. Portland in 2020 gave us a taste of that in the US. The George Floyd Rebellion was the type of resistance that actually brings down dictators like Trump. Occasional protests, no matter how large, can simply be ignored. That is precisely the reason the US developed a militarized police force in the first place. You need more, more than the largest protests in US history, more than Occupy, more than the resistance of the 60's and 70's, more than, and different from, anything we've seen in our lives.
And yet... Each protest has grown, and grown bolder. Some have grown more persistent. If you think of protest as the path to achieve change, you will lose. It is not. But it is a path to escalate. Some people, some otherwise comfortable white folks, came out for their first time. Some people got pepper sprayed for the first time. Some people questioned authority, stood up for the first time, and have had an experience that will radicalize them for the rest of their lives.
Protest is not useful in and of itself. It is training. It's making connections. Authoritarian regimes rely on the illusion of compliance, so visual resistance does actually undermine their power.
Liberals like to teach that non-violence is all about staying peaceful no matter what, that there's some way that morality simply overwhelms an enemy. I remember reading Langston Hughes' A Dream Deferred in high school. I said it was a threat. My teacher said, "you're wrong, he was a pacifist." Pacifism is a threat. If you can spit at me, beat me, shoot me, and I will not move, if I have the strength to absorb violence without flinching, without even rising to violence, what will happen when you push me too far?
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
For peaceful resistance to work, there must be ambiguity. It must not be clear if or when the resistance will stop being peaceful. Peaceful resistance with no possibility of escalation is just cowardice.
My critique then is not so harsh as some other anarchists. If you think that protest alone will work, you're probably going to lose. If you are prepared to escalate, if you are prepared to absorb violence without flinching, then it could be possible for protest alone to topple the dictator. The cracks are already beginning to show.
And then what?
The problems that lead to the George Floyd uprising were never resolved. The problems that lead to Occupy where never resolve. The DAPL was built, protesters were maimed, it leaked multiple times (exactly as predicted). Segregation never went away, it only changed forms. The fact that immigrants have different courts and different rights means that anyone can be arbitrarily kidnaped and renditioned to an arbitrary country. We never did anything about the torture black site. FFS, people can still be stripped of their voting rights and slavery is still legal in the US. The people who control both parties in the US are killing our children and grand children with oil wars and climate change.
Toppling the dictator does nothing to resolve all of the problems that existed before him.
No, #NoKingsDay was absolutely not useless. #NoKings and related protests are extremely useful but they aren't sufficient. But, I think we still need to challenge the movement on two points:
How do you escalate after you're ignored or brutalized?
What do you demand after you win?
Edited 2d ago
Good morning. Forgoing the usual flowers and pretty photography today.
Be loud. Be heard. Be smart. Be safe. #Today #NoKingsDay #politics #photography
NO KINGS DAY
“If there’s money for a parade, there’s money for Medicaid!”
14 June 2025
NATIONWIDE
nonviolent protest
BE THERE
#resist #protest #FascistAmeriKKKa #ImpeachTrump #fascism #nazis #tyranny #terrorism #impeach #NoKingsDay
With 2 days left to go, PeerTube is less than $6k from reaching the next funding milestone - and only 2 days ago it was $10k.
Reaching it will add live streaming directly from your phone via the app. Think how important live streaming is, especially on days like No Kings Day to provide censorship free documentation of protests.
If you can manage a contribution, please consider it!
Bella Ciao! 📯 🎶 🎺
Musicians surround Proud Boys, drown them out with tubas at 'No Kings' protest in Atlanta
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhBaJpzAR2k #NoKings #NoKingsDay #Atlanta #protest
Edited 129d ago
Some of you protesting are far too into publicly posting identifiable pics and videos of folks in protest crowds without good reason.
If you brought a camera to the protest point it at the authorities, not your compatriots. Document and publicize incidents of abuse, but don't facilitate your fellow protestors being identified and punished for showing up. Assume every face you post will be recognized and catalogued. They're not there to be your photo op.
My experience and photos from the San Diego No Kings protest. View the post from my server if you’re on mastodon for the full set.
#NoKings #nokingsday #SanDiego
https://gts.scoobysnack.net/@snaps/statuses/01JXRKSKDPX02YZD5EHB36HQDA
For No Kings Day, I've chosen to walk with the military burial flag of my father-in-law, who was a WWII veteran. I was there as upon this flag, William Edward Stiles Jr. received his final salute: three volleys from the rifles of the honor guard before it was folded and presented to my mother-in-law by two Navy men. Later, at his memorial, I was astonished to discover that a white man of his era had so many Black friends.
You see my father-in-law's fight against injustice did not end when he returned from the second World War. His fight continued in the civil rights movement negotiating for teachers unions in the shadow of Brown v. Board of Education America. Out of prejudice or fear of the Klu Klux Klan, few white people were willing to do what he did because it meant also representing Black teachers unions.
🧵 1/2
Edited 130d ago