NO KINGS, ONE MONTH LATER: DID ANYTHING CHANGE?

The "No Kings" Protests swept across the United States one month ago. Since then, has anything changed?

The impressive numbers for No Kings demonstrated the desperation that millions feel as the Donald Trump administration's “Big Beautiful Bill” deprives millions of people of affordable health care or any health care at all. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is terrorising immigrants and citizens alike as it raids apartment buildings, snatches minor children into the maw of detention, and inevitably kills people. Trump is preparing for war against Venezuela, while few in Congress or the public express any opposition.

However, the No Kings did not deliver anything substantial, certainly not taking any decisive political action to contend with the aforementioned, because it was not designed to.

The sponsoring organisation for No Kings, Indivisible, is run by Democratic Party operatives. No Kings was a classic astroturf operation, giving the appearance of emerging from the grassroots when it was a top-down effort, endorsed by the likes of Hillary Clinton, whose failure to get a handful of votes in swing states cost her the 2016 election and made Donald Trump president not once, but twice.

There can’t be an effective movement if most people still believe that having a supposedly lesser evil party in the white house or Congress is the answer to fighting Trump, or that Trump himself is the cause of every problem, or that all was well before he won a presidential election for the second time.

No Kings was a national get-out-the-vote operation for Democrats, a party that is committed to offering very little in the way of political change. Rallies bereft of political demands create exactly what the Democratic Party wants, energised voters who will show up at the polls determined to choose “blue no matter who,” and in the process give them carte blanche to do as they and their oligarchic patrons please.