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