No Kings

Yes, we went down to the “No Kings” event downtown yesterday, and it was awesome. Colorful, peaceful, joyous. The speakers were slightly rousing—with the exception of firebrand Keith Ellison, who was in a position to say “We’re suing the government and will meet them in court on November 5 —and the music was ho-hum. But the vibe was tremendous.

The space never got claustrophobic, yet there were so many people there that a half-hour after the actual march started, no one in our line of sight had moved, simply because they had started the marchers from the other end of the park.

I will be the first to admit that I was lukewarm about attending the event, out of laziness and the thought that “one person more or less won’t make a difference.” I know, I know. If everyone said that there wouldn’t have been a march.

Our plan was to park on the north side of the Mississippi in old St. Anthony and walk across the stone arch bridge to the gathering site. Hilary and I often park there during the film festival, but we drove down in the morning to double-check the parking signs on University Avenue and the side-streets nearby.

Back home, I went so far as to pay in advance for parking at the St. Anthony Ramp, just in case all the on-street parking was taken.

A friend of ours stopped at our house and rode down with us, and we met other friends at a coffeeshop two blocks from the park. By the time we reached the park, it was jammed with people as far as the eye could see. The weather was stunning. The signs were clever and also heartfelt. It was encouraging to see so many young people amid the crowd.

Marxists and terrorists?

Did our presence there make a difference? Did the march itself make a difference? Who’s to say? In his Substack column this morning economist Paul Krugman, my guru on all things political, had this to say:

“There is a solid body of research by political scientists like Erica Chenoweth about the effects of civil resistance -- nonviolent shows of opposition to those controlling or attempting to control the government. The clear answer from this research is that demonstrations like No Kings Day can make a big difference. They are a show of the depth and popularity of a movement, reassuring those who are opposed to a nation’s direction that many, many others share that opposition.

“Moreover, if a broad cross-section of society is represented in the demonstrations — and the crowds I saw consisted of a mix of seniors, middle-aged liberals, families with children, students and other unthreatening types — they can induce defections from the ruling regime, because the protestors can’t easily be ‘othered,’ portrayed as strange and alien. So protests with a wide base of support can ultimately pierce the regime’s bubble. In fact, in the aftermath of the massive scale and breadth of the demonstrations, the MAGA propaganda machine has gone remarkably quiet, although Mike Johnson has claimed that the demonstrators were all Marxists.”

You can read the entire column here.