In Defense of No Kings

Why No Kings, ICE Out For Good, Hands Off, and other mass protest movements are good, actually.

A year into Donald Trump’s second presidency, resistance has been mixed. In his first term, there were a series of mass protests like the Women’s March and a whole movement dubbed “the resistance,” that was dedicated to impeaching Trump and exposing his incompetence in office. To be sure, those movements did something. But on the whole, most people feel the resistance to this second, more sinister term needs to be evolved and different.

There have been a series of protests organized by Indivisible and 50501, popular mobilizing platforms, that have drawn millions of people across the country. The first mass protest was the Hands Off protest in April 2025 to call attention to cuts to social security, healthcare, veteran’s benefits, SNAP, and other important social welfare programs. Then there were the two No Kings protests, which were both massive turnouts in every region of the country. More recently since the controversial Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis and the killings of American citizens Renée Good and Alex Pretti, a series of anti-ICE protests have cropped up under the banner of “ICE Out For Good” across the country.

These protest movements differ from the protests in DT’s first term in that instead of being one mass protest like the Women’s March in DC, they are a series of smaller protests in local communities across the nation. The first major No Kings protest on June 14th, 2025 drew an estimated 1.2-1.8% of the entire country’s population, making it one of the largest coordinated protest movements in the nation’s history.1 On the second No Kings Day of October 18th, 2025, 2,700 protests took place across the nation which drew a total of 7 million people.2 The Minneapolis ICE Out protest on Friday drew some estimates of 50,000 people, though the temperatures dipped below zero Fahrenheit.

But recently I have been seeing some discourse over their effectiveness — some of which is warranted, some of which is not. I wanted to explain why I believe this movement of mass protests still is worthwhile, even if it isn’t the silver bullet that will end the reign of Trump overnight.

1. They disrupt the state’s narrative.

Since the November 2024 election, Trump has used the results to claim he has a “mandate” from the American people to impose a fascist, authoritarian agenda made in his image. He claims he is popular, that he is a king, that most people fall in line or want what he has to offer.

Mass coordinated protests across states, cities, and even rural communities disrupts this narrative. Without them, we wouldn’t see just how much Trump lies when he claims to be extraordinarily popular or that his power lies in his “mandate.” When conservatives in their own media bubbles come upon even small crowds in their own hometowns saying no to Trump’s agenda, they might not agree. They might jeer or dismiss them as wack jobs. But it still plants a seed in their mind: not everyone is ready to fall in line. Some people are even willing to take to the streets to say no.

It’s easy to criticize Trump on social media where only people who already agree with you will see it. But it has a different effect when you put your body out on the streets and show with your physical person, no, I won’t accept this. Our information ecosystem has become so unreliable that it’s incredibly easy to dismiss criticism of Trump as AI, or bots, or just chronically online people. It’s harder to dismiss how unhappy the American people are when you see millions of people coordinated all across the country. In this way, the protests chip away at this narrative. Even in the digital era, the most effective way to combat fascism is still to use your physical person.

If you already agree that Trump is out of control, it can feel quite helpless to receive bad news everyday and watch as our institutions crumble underneath his overreach of power. It can feel easy to believe that Trump is right when he claims the American people are okay with this. But when you see people everywhere standing up and venturing out of their comfortable homes to disagree publicly, it can inspire you. I know I personally have felt rushes of hope and energy and vitality at the days of mass protest I have been to, and seeing the staggering pictures of millions of people who are fed up enough to take to the streets. Imagine how many people stayed at home due to fear, to insecurity, or apathy, and were inspired by these days of action. How many people, like my own grandma, who can’t go to the protests due to disabilities or old age or immigration status or other factors. Now my grandma sends me articles every time another mass protest breaks out. We get outside and we get loud so those who are prevented from doing the same can hear the sound of our resistance from inside.

2. They help ordinary people get their foot in the door.

One of the biggest questions we ask when we hear about terrible events unfolding is “What can I do??” The Trump administration has led to more people than ever fed up and ready to do something. But what to do? It can feel paralyzing and intimidating.

When there are mass protests like No Kings and they are in your very own town, suddenly there is an answer to that question. No, a day of protest is not going to upend the regime, and I’m not arguing that it is. But when I go to these mass protests, I see countless people who say they have never protested until now. Suburban moms. Old men. Teenagers who already have more moral courage than most adults. Parents bringing three year olds who have hand-drawn their own signs. (Including one child who drew an absolutely devastating image of Donald Trump).

We need to unlearn the narrative that the only people who can take action are activists, community organizers, or opposition politicians. Any justice movement that succeeded only did so because of people power. We have machines of apathy and hopelessness in our pockets at all times in 2026. Ordinary people who are consuming an endless stream of hopeless content in their homes catch wind of a day of action and go, “wait, this is a small way I can fight back. There is something I can do, that we can do.”

Once enough ordinary people get their foot in the door, the possibilities are endless. The 3.5% rule states that it only takes 3.5% of a country’s population doing sustained resistance to a government to take away its power. 3.5% is a lot of people in a large country like the United States, but it’s so much less people than we imagine. Yes, a day of marching or holding a sign in the cold is not going to transform our politics immediately. But as more people become empowered to take action, the 3.5% threshold seems closer and closer.

3. They build solidarity in local communities, which can lead to further mutual aid and more intense forms of protest.

On Friday, January 23rd, the state of Minnesota led the largest general strike in more than 80 years in the United States. 50,000+ people took to the streets in subzero temperatures in Minneapolis to collectively say, “ICE go home.” To tell the Trump regime to stop terrorizing their streets, their neighbors, and causing chaos in their city.

The general strike was only one day long, and a quick peek at the comments section under the More Perfect Union video of the protest revealed naysayers. “This isn’t a general strike, it’s just another meaningless protest.” “What’s the point?” “This won’t do anything.” Such people seem to think that the greatest justice movements — Civil Rights, Suffrage, marriage equality, etc. — involved a lot of people waiting around for the perfect combination of direct action, mutual aid, striking, marching, and boycotting to be handed down from on high and all the people had to do was say yes.

The truth is that justice movements are messy. They aren’t cut and dry. They don’t start perfectly, and they evolve over time. They make mistakes. But how can they begin to make any genuine change if the moment anything is tried, it’s dismissed as being “only one day, only one protest, just a show.” The most glamorized of justice leaders in our country. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., stumbled frequently in his calling attention to injustices. He tried, he failed, and he succeeded in dramatic ways. He also wrote an entire book called Why We Can’t Wait to emphasize just how urgent it is that we get out of our homes and into the streets when we see injustice.

Yes, the general strike in Minnesota was only one day long. Ideally, a general strike goes on indefinitely until the economic pressure from withheld transactions and the refusal to work mounts to a degree that demands are given into. But what the general strike in Minnesota showed was that in 2026, striking is still possible. Boycotting is still possible. Withholding labor and withholding the desire to purchase is still a possibility in a hyper individualized society like ours, when the injustices are great enough and visible enough.

Now that we know general striking is possible, it is almost certain that these experiments will be tried more often. They will grow in scale, they will grow in effectiveness, they will grow in intensity. But they need to start somewhere.

Another note on this point. At these mass days of action, I have met lots of neighbors and heard about things I never would’ve heard about otherwise. When you march, when you rally, when you protest, don’t just go to say you went. Go to meet the people you are marching alongside. Look around you. Those people walking alongside you are not fellow protesters, they are comrades in the struggle. Get to know them, get involved, ask where else they are taking action and join them in it.

Mutual aid springs up from the bottom-up, not the top-down. Getting to know your neighbors and forming loose coalitions of information, of resources, of opportunities for action might be the most effective tool we have against fascism. Democratic politicians will not save us, we will save ourselves. Minneapolis is demonstrating this quite well — Signal chats of ICE watchers, deliveries of food and basic needs to immigrants’ homes too scared to leave them, clergy members kneeling in front of flights taking migrants back to unfamiliar and uncertain fates in the countries they fled — this is direct action. But it didn’t just emerge. It took neighbors taking the time to exchange information and get to know one another as comrades in the struggle. Mass days of action is one way to build these networks.

Last Notes

I believe that the ability to sit back and criticize any kind of action against a blatantly authoritarian regime is privilege at its finest. I believe that now is not the time to critique from a distance while people are being stopped on the street because they have an accent by masked men, while our social safety net is being actively snipped by the elite, while our institutions are uprooted and flooded with Trump apologists. If you critique No Kings, that’s fine (it certainly isn’t the silver bullet that will end Trump’s chaos overnight), but at least have some kind of alternative to show. People power is built slowly, over time, over a series of successful days of witness.