Impressions of the "No Kings" Protest, October 18, 2025

 

View at Rosa Parks circle near the art museum, 18 Oct. 2025

Around the USA, and maybe among expatriates outside the USA, there were about 2600 rallies and demonstrations planned. Estimates put the June "no kings" protestors at five million. First estimates for the next "no kings" protest of October 18 at seven million. That works out to just over 4% of the 174 registered voters in the country, more than the critical mass of public dissent declared of 3%. What all this means in the short, medium, and long term is hard to know in the moment, but future observers of USA political and social life will be able to trace a line from this, the avowed largest single public protest in the almost 250 years of national history, to the course of events that follow.

What was it like to attend the protest? In the case of Grand Rapids, Michigan the Saturday morning began with rain showers, but was drying up around the start time of the festival event at Riverside Park from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. inviting young people and families, in particular, but open to all ages. Then the rally of speeches and songs, followed by a downtown circuit of chants, began just before 1 p.m. in the city center at the Rosa Parks open space and stage. The above sign was among the fancier ones. Many others were hand-drawn on cardboard or poster board. Maybe 1 in 10 people had some form of sign, many with a message taken from a common pool of two or three dozen phrases, but others straight from the marcher's own mind. Impressionistically, over 1000 people participated at the morning event and three times as many came for parts or the whole of the afternoon proceedings. Both were well organized, thought through, and had contingency plans for weather, health difficulties, or attacks by agitators. Technical difficulties with sound, documenting, featured acts, speeches, and so on did not appear. All went smoothly in the end.

"The revolution will not be televised" is a famous phrase during the Vietnam War protest years from two generations earlier [attributed to Gil Scott-Heron]. The idea is that you cannot sit in your living room to be a spectator to events taking place around you. So get up and join your neighbors in protest. And yet, now that social media is becoming familiar to young and old alike, it seemed like every other person was taking photos and video at one moment or another, some more than others. Maybe 1 in 20 or 30 carried equipment more professional-looking than a cellphone: enthusiast or professional camera, or rigs to transform their cellphone into something capable of high production values (gimbal to avoid shakiness, tripod, external microphone). In other words, recording self and others, seeing how others dressed, protested (singing in loud or soft voices, joining the call-and-response, dancing, dressing in costumes) and behaved, including how others were snapping photos and capturing video, all this was integral to being present and participating - presumably then to share selected parts online for friends and also for strangers to see and hear, too.

Vietnam Vet (left hat band) snaps protest stage photo

There were several audiences and intended recipients of these demonstrations of disapproval for #TrumpConvictedFelon destroying the social infrastructure for healthcare, supports of vulnerable people, slowing down research and the production of knowledge and criticism, and enrichment of cronies, for example. Protestors both active and passive were there for each other: showing interest in each other's signs and/or costumes, bearing witness to the occasion by paying attention to speakers and entertainers, and watching out for each other so that no one put themselves in a precarious position (breaking property, laws, etc). But attendees also demonstrated solidarity for the hosting organizations such as #IGGR (Indivisible.org in the chapter for Greater Grand Rapids) and for the representatives of like-minded organizations and institutions that contributed expertise, promotional efforts, volunteers, and so on: area churches and non-profit organizations that serve the various demographic segments around the city and county, and so on. Then, too, the legacy news media were identifiable and were welcomed: TV camera person and accompanying Live Reporter, but also people from radio and from print media. City police were also part of the equation: would they interfere with lawful exercise of public protest described in the U.S. Constitution or not. A squadron of officers on sturdy bikes were visible at the edges a few times, but otherwise they could monitor things from overhead surveillance cameras on permanent venue poles downtown; maybe others were watching incognito (undercover). Fellow citizens were also meant to see and hear the protestors, either in person when driving by or later on social media. For every person who showed up, maybe another 5 were interested but lacked the motivation or circumstances allowing them to attend. Speculatively, for each attendee maybe another 20 or 30 were generally sympathetic, but perhaps also were ambivalent about the connection between political office holders and the role of constituents in making change, expressing approval, or demonstrating disapproval. A large bulk of citizens had no particular awareness, interest, or inclination for or against the sequence of slow-motion killing of U.S. traditions of democratic process. Also among the fellow citizens in the intended audience for protesters are those holding the diametrically opposite opinion of the world and the trail of destruction presided over by the "executive order" POTUS. All of these various neighbors were intended audiences of the solidarity being abundantly expressed.

Ultimately, though, the chief audience of the "no kings" events are the henchmen of the POTUS who abet and enable his offenses, crimes, and infringements of the letter and the spirit of the system of federal government: showing them that nationwide there are a lot of displeased people prepared to judge the failures and harms by voting the scoundrels out of office and then prosecuting them for their crimes of commission and crimes of omission - failures to discharge the duties of their office according to the laws of the land. The natives are restless and those pretenders, playing at leadership, but too incompetent to perform basic functions of government, should be afraid of what awaits them.

From the time of the January 20, 2025 swearing in of POTUS #47 to now on October 18, there is nothing but obstruction of government function; destruction instead of creation. By the time of January 20, 2026 no doubt there will be fresh crimes and harm caused. It seems unlikely that the wrongs will slow down or be reversed, and there are absolute limits to the abuse that the voters and citizens of the land will withstand. One sequence of events is impeachment, criminal charges proven, and prison time. Then the business of building the housing, healthcare, and energy infrastructure of the future (not the past) can begin. The decades of litigation for liabilities of the Trump Disaster owed to claimants will also begin. Once full operation of the federal governance resumes, destruction is repaired, and new initiatives have begun, then an accounting for the lost generation of opportunity costs wasted by the nitwits will be documented and published.  

Bifocal vision - when the streets seem familiar and strange, memory-filled and yet foreign

 

County seat of Clinton County (MI), St. Johns (pop. 7000) with fire station mural of 1st responders.

Visiting a place once inhabited for decades after the space of several years, twin visions fill the imagination as memories superimpose the present-day sights and sounds. A few familiar friends and acquaintances add to this bifocal vision: seeing things no longer there but also seeing what is currently in view. Dozens of times I walked or biked past this building before any public art covered it. So I can see it in my mind's eye and also see it today.

Summing up the different experience of a place when you live there versus pass through as a spectator, tourist, or audience member, the local resident wakes up and conducts the business of daily life. He or she considers the grid of streets, the cultural landscape of landmarks and well-known events (seasonal cycles and one-time occurrences, too), and the social terrain (who is connected to whom, which paths offer least versus most resistance to organizing, collaborating, and getting things accomplished) as the field of play; a backdrop to the drama and stories of one's days and trail of decisions. But things are different for the outsider just observing the surfaces or intermittently paying attention to details but otherwise distracted by one's own preoccupations and pending matters of one's own home ground. For the visitor, only the tangible characteristics come into brief focus (buildings, sensory impressions, stories gleaned from readings or local guides or acquaintances residing in that place). All of the daily minutia passes unnoticed. In other words, local people traverse the local sea of meanings to make their lives thrive. All of the surroundings have consequence and value and comparisons to be made. All the surroundings are familiar; the opposite of exotic and strange. But outside people cross the local sea of meanings mostly unaware and uncaring about what lurks beneath the waves, what hazards are well known, and without the local lore that makes things interesting and memorable.

Jumping the elements of Proper Nouns (persons, places, things/events), a similar bifocal distinction occurs. Whereas a person you know well is three-dimensional and is part of many contexts and conversations and memories, a stranger seems only two-dimensional (lacking personal familiarity to the observer). Likewise of an annual event or a one-time occurrence: locals fit it into their quilt of many meanings, memories, and relationships, but outsiders lack these many personal interactions. Using the distinction of know (static: facts, data) versus know (relational: to people, places, software, tools, procedures/processes). The local person knows things in the relational sense of the word. The outsider knows things about the place, people, and things.

But when you are both filled with local lore, memories, relationships AND you are coming back as an outsider, having made daily living experiences for 10 years elsewhere, then the experience is double-layered: both insider and outsider at the same time. In anthropological terms, you have drifted to the middle position between familiar and exotic, between de-exoticized vision and de-familiarized/strangeness, being BOTH active participant and passive observer.

By extension, a similar familiarization process occurs when getting to know a rental car - at first strange, but eventually easily operated and familiar; ditto of a new piece of software (or app); ditto of the encounter of a new genre of food, music, or literature/film. 

In all of these parallel illustrations of the natural/normal/accustomed/automatic versus the strange/unfamiliar/awkward, a person's relationship to the new thing progresses, step by step so that what began as ungainly and static and lifeless can eventually become fluent and an organic extension of one's own body and mind.

The advice to a person traveling to a new place, entering into a new personal interaction, or learning from a new experience is to aspire to the middle position that is bifocal: able to see both the new AND the familiar, to be an outside observer AND an active player in the arena of activity. That way you have the best of both visions: local and outsider, always ready to expand what people say and do when you enlarge the conversation by drawing on your dual perspective.