No Kings 2 is being organized by a big tent of grassroots and advocacy organizations. One of the most prominent players is Indivisible, the activist group that sprang to life in the early days of the first Trump administration, and which now counts 2,500 distributed, local chapters nationwide.
Rolling Stone spoke to Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin last week, in advance of No Kings 2 unveiling today. The protest is planned for Oct. 18 — in the aftermath of an unpredictable showdown over government funding that could lead to a partial government shutdown by the end of the month.
I expect No Kings 2 to be the largest protest of the year. We had 5 to 6 million people across 2,169 communities turn out for No Kings 1. It was wildly successful. People who might have been on the sidelines for No Kings 1 probably had some FOMO. And the good news is: We’re doing it again. We’re going to pull out even more people.
Examples?
MLK March on Washington - civil rights legislation
Montgomery bus boycott - desegregation
Women’s suffrage - equal rights to political participation
Delano Grape boycott - ending many exploits and abused of farm workers and new unions
Singing Revolution - helped lead some Baltic states out of USSR
Salt March - helped lead to Indian independence from Britain
Let’s go through this one by one.
What about the rest of the civil rights movement? The struggle for civil rights involved dozens if not hundreds of groups both peaceful and violent, and all of them contributed to the eventual success/“success” of the movement. Also I should note that desegregation was gained via a court case, not (just) protest. For one prominent instance of violence in the civil rights movement, see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_assassination_riots
Women’s suffrage in America was for the most part peaceful, but it was also not something the elites had any reason to oppose. This is an apples to oranges comparison.
Ths Delano Grape Strike (not boycott) is not relevant due to the government not being involved one way or the other. Also note that the reason the strike remained mostly peaceful was because the (very much violent) labor rights movement had given them the right to not be shot by private militias. The violence necessary for the strike to succeed had simply been outsourced to the past.
Weren’t we talking about American liberties here?
See above, but also the Indian independence movement was kickstarted by a violent uprising.
There’s a lot that cannot be quantified directly from bringing visibility to an issue. I’m not arguing against other tactics just that peaceful protests are not useless. The Trump administration wants a violent reaction to jumpstart everything on their list through martial law.
Sure, but then what? Visibility has already been brought, so tactics whose selling point is bringing visibility have clearly outlived their usefulness.
As opposed to what, exactly? To be clear the stuff Gandhi or MLK were doing would be enough of an excuse for Trump to impose martial law if done today. Effective resistance will beget violent repression by virtue of its effectiveness.
Most people dont realize almost every peaceful protest that got us where we are today was also backed up by lots of violence.