No Kings

Jun 15, 2025

Most every town by us had their own No Kings protest, and they were staggered so if you really wanted to you could drive to three or four during the day. We stuck to the one in our town.

As a Gen X person, I’ve always been of two minds about protests. The 1960s protests had a threat of violence sometimes, and sometimes that was their intended purpose. They received all sorts of media coverage. They could be destructive. And they didn’t really work: all those 1960s protests against the Vietnam War, and the war didn’t end until 1975.

By the 1990s, “protests” were kids cosplaying as their parents. Protests were safe, patrolled by police, organized in advance, ending at proscribed times. Comparatively little attention was paid to these protests in the national or even local media, since 200 people in every city were always upset about something or other. It was make believe, or at least that was my justification for not spending every single weekend rallying about what was happening in Bosnia or Rwanda.

What protests really did, I thought, was create a false feeling of efficacy. Michael Crichton books make you feel that you’re really learning something, when what you’re learning about is how not to run a dinosaur theme park. It’s the flavor of learning minus any lessons in real arts or sciences. And protests were the same. Whatever was happing in Bosnia, it didn’t get any better because 200 people in Seattle help up signs for a few hours in 1994.

That was then.

I passed several parking lots approaching our rally center, and I was worried they were empty. I was expecting thousands, but NJ’s so chopped up into little towns no one town is going to draw thousands. We parked and walked a few blocks, worryingly passing more empty parking spots.

But others were walking our way, and we heard chants and cheers of a crowd. They were packed in around city hall, with all the signs and hats and umbrellas foul-weather gear that everyone else in the northeast was sporting yesterday.

There were only two speakers: the richer town next to ours pulled in a gubernatorial candidate, but ours did not. I had assumed the protest would be hearing people speak, and I got worried, since they had one megaphone that was in no way mega. I was 25 feet away and couldn’t hear.

(I will spare you the 10,000-word analysis of who from my town were there and more importantly who were not. But they mentioned this was the fifth such protest in 2025. And some politicians like to stay home on the weekends and some are out there protesting on rainy Saturdays.)

Our town hall is right next to the police station. There was no police presence here at all. This was striking for me. Our town is way bluer than red, even if the police, like all law enforcement, lean conservative. And our town was officially dinged by the administration for not cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.

But this was, I guess, not an official protest. Not one of those I help myself so superior to in the 1990s where you hired police protection and filed a permit to assemble months in advance. This was just people agreeing to meet up in a public space. Assembly: not just for the Avengers!

The speakers were only there for five minutes: then everyone started to march, We walked exactly one block, to the main drag through town, and started lining up on both sides of the street for a block in either direction. The number of people kept growing: new people showed up, existing people crossed the street to experience both sides of the street (if not the issues!), and eventually some people had to leave.

We were a real assortment of people, all sorts of ages, from babies to the elderly. Our town’s a diverse one and all that variety was represented as well. Even if you’re conservative, you should appreciate seeing fellow Americans use their Constitutional right of freedom of speech.

One thing we all had in common was we all had Saturday off. A lot of people don’t: many work, or work second jobs. Some aren’t physically fit enough to stand out in the misting rain for hours. It was a privilege to hold up signs for an afternoon, in more ways than one.

--We saw a beloved high school physics teacher there, holding an umbrella and raising his hand in solidarity to cars who honked in support.

--The unofficial rule was short honks in support. Some people really laid down on their horn, though. And some horns sounded way more aggressive than others.

--one woman spent three days on her sign, laboriously crafted on a piece of cardboard She was holding it a little bent so the rain didn’t ruin it.

--Signs from previous protests were collected and brought to this one: you could grab one if you didn’t bring or make your own. The pros had their signed covered in Saran wrap so they wouldn’t bleed or wilt. One guy taped his to a broom, so he could hold it high aloft without actually doing a piece-of-cardboard military press for two hours.

--We didn’t bring signs but everyone helped themselves to the signs on offer. I started off holding the umbrella but a hat or hood was plenty, and I eventually put the umbrella down then took someone else’s sign.

--Briefly thought about grabbing a placard already in the ground. It wasn’t a political sign but an advertisement for a convention with the cast of The Office. Decided against it; these protests are full of humor but not that kind, that negates the entire purpose of the event.

--Another pro gamer move: a sign taped onto your umbrella.

--I told Cindy this felt like a reverse parade. In a parade you stand still and people drive slowly down the street and you in the crowd cheer them. Here, we stood still and the slow-moving traffic honked and supported us. (Peope who remember math: this may in fact be an inverse or contrapositive parade.)

--I saw way more real-life prayer-hands that I imagined. People rolled down their windows and sun roofs to wave in support, hold out their fists, cheer us on. So many people took out their phones to film. We were there to cheer them on. It was an O Henry moment.

—Thought about taking loads of pictures, but I took one video instead.

--The traffic pattern determined our cheering pattern. Cars driving fast would slow down to honk, or roll down their windows to yell our support.

--Were there any negatives? Maybe. It’s hard to tell positive honking from negative honking.

--A Porsche SUV slowed down but did not honk, and the passenger side window rolled down. And it did nothing for 30 seconds, and then the window rolled back up, and it drove away.

--One other SUV did hold out his middle finger as he drove by. Cindy said she was going to assess that as someone who was passing on the middle finger to the current administration, and that was his sign of support for us.

--Zero MAGA bumper stickers. But lots of honks from contractors and landscapers and plumbers, people who use and rely on (and maybe are) immigrants.

--I gradually forgot a fear someone would get so upset they’d drive right into us. It was both entirely peaceful and the peace was maintained without any law enforcement.

People who didn’t support the protesters, if there were any, maybe responded with silence. There was seemingly nothing they could do that would be effective. Coincidentally, that feel is what created all these protests!

Social media can create echo chambers and hiveminds, but seeing people in person walking the walk was reassuring. It’s not just me. It’s not just the people I know and follow. It’s not just the few and the loud.

This is something new about protests I learned; they create a feeling of inevitability. It’s the same feeling as an echo chamber or a hivemind, since it’s lots of people all thinking similarly about a subject. But there are broader words for this feeling: Communion. Unity. Inevitability.

We are going to get our country back.

It’s not going to turn into an autocratic dictatorship.

Americans are going to win the battle of America.

Happy (Founding) Father’s Day.

PRINCESS LEIA OF THE WEEK

I could do a hundred of these just based on Leia: I’ve got a chapter in the Leia book all about how she became the face of the movement.