More than 3,100 anti-authoritarian protests are scheduled across the US and at least 15 other countries on Saturday. All these events will take place under a single banner: No Kings.
Formally launched in June to fight back against Trump administration policies, the No Kings movement has grown with astonishing speed – its second and most recent mass protest in October drew an estimated 7 million participants. Organizers expect Saturday’s events to be the biggest protest in American history.
But the movement is also leaderless, broad in cause and hasn’t advanced any policy demands. Some social movements experts recognize No Kings’ momentum but question if it needs clearer goals.
“There’s not any one way to get people into a movement. You want to have as many doors open as possible because you have to reach people wherever they are,” said Hahrie Han, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University and the co-author of Prisms of the People: Power & Organizing in Twenty-First-Century America. “The bigger challenge is, once they’re there, how do you keep them there, and then how do you channel that engagement in collective ways?”
But organizers say they are aware of such critiques and that these choices are all by design.
“The name No Kings is, in and of itself, a demand. It is a direct repudiation of this administration, of this regime, of its unconstitutional, illegal, immoral and frankly profane actions,” said Hunter Dunn, an organizer with the 50501 movement, one of the groups behind No Kings. “It’s a declaration of intent that we are going to return power back to the people.”



“It’s a declaration of intent that we are going to return power back to the people.”
I mean, that sounds good but, when did the people have power? Are you just trying to get back to the system that gave us Trump? Why did that system give us Trump and what effects was it having on Americans and people around the world?
You can tell that I’m British so I’m clearly not showing up to these protests. But we all have skin in this game as we’re all affected by the American Empire, especially today. We need you to get this right and not go back to a world that gave us Nixon, Bush, Bush, Trump and a president that promised hope and change and delivered a healthcare plan from the Heritage Foundation. We really need Americans to understand that the status quo has wrecked our planet and we need to try for something very different.
American here. You and I are on the same page
Also, No Kings is at least a way to meet people. I hope people use it for that