The No Kings! Movement Trumped Trump

Milwaukee—Donald Trump’s increasingly chaotic assault on American values, ideals, and practical governance left Alice Thompson with a conundrum as she prepared to join Saturday’s No Kings! protest in Milwaukee. She thought about referencing her father’s service in World War II on a sign that read, “They Fought for Democracy Then, We Fight for it Now!” As a wetland scientist, she certainly had things to say about the Trump administration’s war on research and the environment. She’s got a daughter living in the Los Angeles area, so she considered a sign opposing Trump’s decision to override California Governor Gavin Newsom and put members of the National Guard and Marines on the streets of a great American city. Or maybe something about the threats to Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. “And I haven’t even mentioned women’s rights,” she said, with a sigh.

“There really is too much to fit on one sign,” explained Thompson. What to do? “I finally decided to go with the preamble to the Constitution,” she said, holding up a poster board with the words, written in colorful bold letters, “We the People, of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Thompson had highlighted the words “justice” and “general welfare,” added the date that the Constitution was signed, September 17, 1787, and attached a small American flag at the corner of the board. She gathered up flowers to place at the foot of Milwaukee’s Immigrant Mother statue, along with a jar of peanut butter to contribute to a food drive, and headed with her sign to Milwaukee’s Cathedral Square Park.

There, on a sunny Saturday, she was gathered with at least 10,000 other people who had the same idea. American flags waved in the sky, and many of the handmade signs in the crowd featured references to the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, 1776, 1787, and other historical touchstones of a nation that was founded almost 250 years ago in a grand rejection of monarchy, “the divine right of kings,” colonialism, and empire.

Thompson and the Milwaukeeans were part of a national—and even international—outpouring of opposition to Trump and his regal self-absorption. The No Kings! protests drew millions into the streets of American cities and towns on the same day that the nation’s embattled ruler presided over a military parade in Washington, which had in classic authoritarian style been scheduled for the same day as the president’s 79th birthday.

The manufactured event in Washington cost tens of millions of tax dollars; yet, by most accounts, it fell dramatically short of the president’s expectations. At the same time, the more than 2,100 No Kings! parades, marches, and rallies nationwide turned into precisely the festive celebrations of patriotic dissent that the organizers with the 50901 movement, Indivisible, and allied groups had hoped would reveal the emptiness of Trump’s latest attempt to pump up enthusiasm for a flailing presidency.