Timothy Snyder: ‘Loving your country means showing up’
Protestors believe that action has meaning. Protestors are exercising the rights enshrined in the Constitution. For me, protest is about love of country. I will be there on October 18th, and I hope you will be too.
#NoKings
snyder.substack.com/p/no-kings-f…— Timothy Snyder (@timothysnyder.bsky.social) Oct 12, 2025 at 9:08 AM
The American Prospect reports:
Millions of people will take to the streets again this Saturday to protest the autocratic regime of President Donald Trump, his government shutdown, and his demolition of Medicare, Medicaid, and other public programs in service of tax cuts for billionaires. The protests, under the brand No Kings, have the potential to be the largest ever in the United States.
As of last Friday, 2,500 events were planned across every state, Europe, and Canada, No Kings organizers said. They expect that number to grow. Multiple cities will host anchor events, including Bozeman, Montana, a college town that rarely makes national news. Other No Kings anchor protests will be in Atlanta, Boston, Kansas City, New Orleans, San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. The latter two have been burdened by a persistent federal law enforcement presence over the past several weeks.
“If you are cynical, you might not understand the utility of simply standing together and showing the massive agreement in this moment around our disdain for a president who believes he is a king,” said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the nonprofit Public Citizen and one of the rally’s organizers.
A goal of the protest is to engage more people to take a stand against America’s slide into fascism, and Gilbert’s recommendation for anyone who doesn’t know what to do is to take one extra action they’ve never done before. Never attended a rally? Go to a rally. Never called your senators? Call your senators.
“We’ve seen in other countries in the world that the thing that enabled people to fight back was an activated populace,” Gilbert said. “That’s what we’re trying to achieve here, just this groundswell of activation.” [Continue reading…]