No Kings Manhattan: A protest without the politics

Successful only in projecting “Trump is bad” optics, the parade left me worried for democracy.

Oct 18. — Manhattan, NY — By Jane Migliara Brigham

I went to the No Kings March in Manhattan looking for stories of resistance.  I left feeling more fearful for democracy than when I arrived.

The protest was meant to be a repudiation of Trump and his regime.  In that, it was a resounding success.  Everyone could agree that Trump is bad and he should go.  

The problem was how devoid of politics the whole event was.  

There was no attempt by the organizers of the march to connect the energy against Trump and the regime with any concrete steps that might be taken to fight it.  

Where No Kings failed, local organizers tried to take up the slack.  

All along the march route, a number of organizations were distributing leaflets for local activist organizations of all stripes, with an emphasis on fighting back against ICE.  They were largely ignored.  

Even the more liberal activists, whose message would be more likely to resonate with the overwhelmingly liberal protesters, were shunted away.  

The activists were doing noble work, but the masses didn't seem interested in them.  Activism takes hard work.  Marching for an hour, less so.

I don't see how a crowd like this will be useful in fighting fascism.  

The crowd was overwhelmingly old, with the most common hair color being grey. It must’ve been 95% white, in a city that is only 31% white.  

The crowd didn’t represent Manhattan or NYC. It represented a narrow set of old white liberals who are uncomfortable with Trump, but not the system that created him.

There were American flags as far as the eye can see.  Replace the name of Trump with some Democrat politician, and you would mistake it for a MAGA rally.

This is not the resistance, this is a Facebook group chat brought onto the streets.

If these protests cannot be used to funnel people from public street protests to some concrete form of resistance, I don't see what good they are doing.

I believe in the power of resistance against fascism.  I don't see a resistance here.