Protest is as American as apple pie and baseball. Our nation began with colonists decrying an oppressive tyranny from across the sea. As soon as our Founding Fathers broke away and formed a government, they protected protest in the First Amendment. A nod to freedom of religion, speech and the press, then boom: Congress will make no law prohibiting “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
That doesn’t mean our current leaders aren’t blasting contempt at this most enshrined of American traditions.
Saturday, Oct. 18 is the second “No Kings” protest, which has been receiving volleys of condemnation. House Speaker Mike Johnson, doing his special mind-reading trick, looked into the hearts of millions of people, many who haven’t yet decided whether to go or not, and called it a “hate America rally” sponsored by the hidden hand of terrorists.
“They have a ‘hate America’ rally that’s scheduled for Oct. 18,” Johnson told Fox News. “It’s all the pro-Hamas wing and the Antifa people.”
And he knows that … how?
Oh right. He doesn’t. He’s just making stuff up. There’s a lot of that going around.
“This will be a Soros paid-for protest where his professional protesters show up,” said Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas).
George Soros is a 95-year-old Hungarian-American philanthropist whose name has become a dog whistle for “Jewish money.”
The “No Kings” organizers deny they are in the grip of the flailing tentacles of octopoid globalists.
“I am a volunteer,” said Kathy Tholin, on the board of Indivisible Chicago and an organizer of the local protest. “We are all volunteers. Every single individual; none of us are paid by anybody.”
Why would people venture out for a “No Kings” protest?
“One of the clear goals of the Trump regime is to isolate and depress us,” said Tholin [Mission accomplished! I thought], “and make us think there is nothing we can do to make a difference. It is incredibly energizing to spend time with the many, many people who refuse to submit quietly and are willing to speak out. That kind of solidarity, that kind of working together with friends and neighbors, is what is going to save us from this authoritarian suppression.”
While I haven’t attended a protest, as a protester, since the Northwestern University anti-draft registration protest in the spring of 1979, I can vouch for the accuracy of that statement. Rather like Mike Johnson, I also tend to take a dim view of demonstrations. Maybe because, growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, there were so many of them. For civil rights. Against the war. Some of them were stupid — yippies trying to levitate the Pentagon.
And what did they accomplish? Really?
Sixty-two years after Dr. King’s March on Washington, civil rights have been rebranded “wokeness” and are in full retreat.
But I blundered onto the first “No Kings” last June 14. We were driving through Des Plaines, saw hundreds of people gathered on street corners, and pulled over. I donned my figurative reporter’s hat, grabbed a pen and notebook and went to investigate.
Maybe because it was in Des Plaines. Regular, open, salt-of-the-earth people. No pretense, no showing off. Des Plaines is home to the Choo Choo Restaurant. They bring your basket of a cheeseburger and fries aboard a little model train. How can you not love the community supporting that?
The mood was summed up by a possibly pregnant woman (the journalistic rule is, you do not ask if a woman is pregnant unless you see the baby emerging) who held a sign saying, “I need to be able to tell my children I did not stay silent.”
A lot is going on now that people might want to speak up about. We are used to a free press allowed to report on the news — not reporters marching out of the Pentagon because the government wants to make breaking stories a crime. We are used to immigrants coming to this country and applying for citizenship, not being plucked from the courthouse steps by masked thugs. And we are used to presidents following the law, not breaking it, not suggesting they might illegally stick around when their second term is over.
Like a king.
You have to wonder, given how the Republican leadership has stood, shoulder-to-shoulder, venomously denouncing the “No Kings” protests in the strongest possible terms, whether they might not be a little afraid of what might happen Saturday.
“If you’ve been wanting to do something meaningful, this is it,” Tholin said. “The more we speak out, the more we show our opposition, the more courage others have to resist.”