WASHINGTON—From San Francisco to Sao Paulo, from Sequim, Wash.,, to Rome, Italy and from San Juan, Puerto Rico to Anchorage, Alaska, to Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands, a second and bigger round of “No Kings Day” marches, speeches and protests against the dictatorial regime of Donald Trump will sweep the globe on October 18.
And Republicans are freaking out about them. Their slander about the mass, peaceful protesters includes calling them “terrorists,” “antifa,” and “radical, small and violent.” Trump describes the coming protests in D.C. in particular as a “hate America rally.” All the claims are flat-out lies.
Many of the lies have been spewed by House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn. They have been rebuked by, among others, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind-Vt., a long and strong supporter of workers. He first backed massive national protests against the war in Vietnam in the mid-1960s.
“It’s a rally of millions of people all over this country who believe in our Constitution, who believe in American freedom and are not going to let you and Donald Trump turn this country into an authoritarian society,” Sanders said.
With big backing from the AFL-CIO and its member unions—plus the Teamsters, though they’re not an official endorser—millions of people plan to march in the streets to denounce Trump’s autocracy, his viciousness, his agenda against workers, and his policies both in the U.S. and abroad.
Those planning to march have more than 2,000 to choose from via a massive map and a long list at www.nokings.org and www.indivisible.org. They’re two of the organizations that have marshaled and are coordinating the mass protests. Various unions have also posted banners on their websites linking viewers to those two.
The CPUSA is among the many organizations backing the protests.
Addressing party leaders and organizers at a meeting in New York this past weekend, CPUSA Co-chair Joe Sims said, “In light of the current crisis, the No Kings Day protests will be an important measure of where our working class and people stand.”
Taking note of “the new level of involvement of unions,” Sims said the October 18 actions promise to be “big, militant and united.” He emphasized that the CPUSA will be a part of taking the fight against MAGA’s fascist surge “into the streets.”
Organizers of the first No Kings Day, in the spring and before Trump started his depredations against unions, hoped for two million people in the streets and got five million. Now they’re shooting for far more than that.
And they have plenty of reasons why people should protest the tyranny of Trump.
In a column posted after the first No Kings Day, May 14, Indivisible co-Executive Director Leah Greenberg elaborated on why everyone must hit the streets against the Trump regime.
Greenberg quoted the Rev. William Barber II, the co-director of the Poor People’s Campaign—whose Kairos Foundation is also a No Kings Day sponsor—as saying “A king is only a king if we bow down.” And the No Kings Day legions plan to show they’re still not bowing down to Trump, or his MAGA-ites, or to their right-wing ideological backers.
“You’ve heard us talk about the idea of autocratic breakthrough–a period when a would-be dictator basically sprints to consolidate their power, crush the institutions and people who could push back, and create a chilling climate for everyone else,” Greenberg elaborated.
“For the would-be dictator, success depends on projecting power and creating an aura of inevitability. They need you to believe Trump is the new normal, that the MAGA movement will be in power for the long haul, that the only rational move is to go along, keep your head down, and protect your own interests.
“Here’s the thing: The aura of inevitability is a lie. It’s all a lie. Power in American society doesn’t derive from the top down. Trump’s grasp is brittle, and he’s overreaching dramatically. He will only succeed if everyone agrees to believe the lie.”
People are going to hit the streets to show it’s a lie. A look at the U.S. map on the No Kings website shows it covered with black dots, except for the Great Plains, notably Wyoming. There are, nevertheless, five there, in the state which gave Trump his largest percentage in 2024.
The dots mark protests—including multiple ones in Chicago, New York, D.C., Boston, Atlanta, San Francisco, Los Angeles ,and Kansas City. All those cities have stars on the map, showing they’re protest centers. So does a city in a deep-red state: Bozeman, Mont.
D.C., with 710,000 people in the city and millions more in the suburbs, will have 61 protests. Alaska, with 740,000 in the whole state, will have 14. Honolulu’s protest will be labeled “No Dictators.”
Besides three protests in Sao Paolo and another in Saipan, “No Kings” or in some sites “No Tyrants” protests will occur in—among others–Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa, Canada; Paris, Nice and Lyons, France; London and Bristol in the United Kingdom; Rome, Turin and Milan, Italy; Guanajuato and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Medellin, Colombia; Grenada, Spain; Stockholm, Sweden; Zurich, Switzerland, and Gibraltar.
Local activist Joe Bernick of Tucson said No Kings Day organizers there got a permit for a small park holding approximately 5,000 people. But 20,000 have registered to march.
Greenberg adds that protest is only one of a range of tactics the mass movement must unleash against Trump’s tyranny. So on the evening of September 21, No Kings will host a national “debriefing” call via Zoom to plan next moves.
The protest in Chicago’s Grant Park—one of dozens in the Windy City and its metro area—will share top billing with another outside the controversial ICE detention center in suburban Bridgeview.
Chicago protesters won’t see Trump’s dragooned National Guards from Texas and Mississippi, sent to aid marauding ICE agents who beat, pepper gassed, roughed up, and detained Latino and other immigrants. Many victims are citizens. ICE kidnaps them and ships them to Broadview, a suburb of Chicago, or elsewhere. A federal judge in Chicago ordered the out-of-state National Guard to stay out of town.
Trump’s partial shutdown of the federal government will be another big cause. That includes his unilateral termination of 37 union contracts covering a million workers and his decision to make those sidelined go payless now and in the future—if he doesn’t fire them without cause, first.
That mass action led their union, the Government Employees, to urge its 325,000 members to march.
One D.C. march, starting from the Reeves Municipal Center uptown, goes far beyond Trump alone.
It’s entitled “Remove The Regime.”
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