With the US feeling to many like it’s spiraling out of control — recklessly piloted by a White House in chaos — NO KINGS on March 28, couldn’t be coming at a better time. It’s a line in the sand.
We are living through a systematic betrayal of the American people. The Trump administration promised everyday costs would drop; instead, our economy is being siphoned away while families choose between heat or eat. We were promised peace; instead, we are embroiled in a war no one voted for. We were told immigration enforcement would target the “worst of the worst”; instead, ICE and Border Patrol are seizing working immigrants from their homes. Even five-year-olds aren’t immune. And then, the unthinkable: US citizens murdered by state actors.
This isn’t a drill. This is an “All Hands on Deck” emergency.
Our mission is straightforward: “Each One Reach One.” Veterans of the resistance movement are already coming to NO KINGS. But to spur on grassroots activists and everyday citizens to reclaim democracy, we need people who have never before stood on a protest line. We need our neighbors, our coworkers, distant cousins, childhood friends.
Last April, three million people across the country attended Hands Off! rallies. Rebranded in June as NO KINGS, attendance grew to five million. By October’s second NO KINGS, the numbers had swelled to more than seven million.
More than 3000 events in all 50 states are planned for March 28, including 1000 cities.
Imagine the impact if every previous participant brought one new person. Imagine if the “Each One Reach One” campaign contributes to millions more attending NO KINGS! Imagine the sight of 10 million people—or more—standing up for our democracy in a single, unified voice. That isn’t a crowd. It’s a mandate.
Many people are frightened. They aren’t alone; we share their feelings. They feel the betrayal of the Affordable Care Act being gutted. They see their hard-working immigrant neighbors illegally rounded up. They see legislation like the SAVE America Act as a brazen, antidemocratic plot to prevent citizens from voting. Many want to act, but don’t know how.
Let’s reach out, following these guidelines:
· Don’t underestimate their hesitation. Remind them it’s okay to be nervous. Tell them you’ll be right there with them.
· Validate the betrayal: They are observant; they see what’s going on. It’s not partisan to be angry about the cost of living, rising gas prices, the frightening reality of an illegal war.
· Help them see what’s involved: Explain where to meet, what to wear, and what to bring. Remove the mystery of the “protest.” Replace it with a plan.
· Focus on the goal: Remind them that NO KINGS means a government that answers to the people—and that includes them. That the American experiment in democracy means no monarchs.
It’s time to lace up our boots. Start calling and texting people on our phones. Emailing everyone we can.
Seek out at least one person who thinks their voice doesn’t matter and explain to them that it does. On March 28, we show not just the White House — but the world — that when you push the people too far, the people push back.
No War. No Kings. No Way.
~~~~~
Rob Okun (robokun50@gmail.com), syndicated by PeaceVoice, is editor emeritus of Voice Male, which has long chronicled the profeminist men's movement. The magazine is now published by the Canadian NGO, Next Gen Men.
The last embrace
by George Cassidy Payne
There are two scenes I cannot shake, and I need to be honest about why.
The first unfolds in the Oval Office, that carefully staged room where power is both exercised and performed. Donald Trump asks an aide to hand him a model bomber. He turns it over in his hands, smiling, admiring it, and then — almost tenderly — he hugs it.
“Give me that bomber… let me just hug that little sucker.”
I watched that clip, and something in me recoiled — not just at the moment itself, but at how easily it could pass as normal. How quickly the machinery of war can be made small, even affectionate.
Because I know what that machine is.
The real aircraft behind that gesture — the Northrop B-2 Spirit — was designed to move through the sky without being seen. Built by Northrop Grumman with partners like Boeing, it exists to penetrate defenses, to arrive without warning, to deliver payloads that can level entire structures in seconds. It can carry dozens of precision-guided bombs. It can carry nuclear weapons. It is engineering in the service of disappearance — disappearance of sound, of visibility, of warning.
And maybe most dangerously, disappearance of consequence.
The second scene is one I can’t stop imagining.
A young girl in Tehran is crying for her mother.
I don’t know her name. That’s part of what haunts me. I don’t know what her voice sounds like, what her favorite game is, what her mother used to say to calm her down at night. I only know that somewhere beneath broken concrete and dust, her mother is gone, killed in an airstrike, and that whatever the last hug between them was, it has already happened.
When I think about that clip from the Oval Office, I don’t stay in that room for long. My mind goes somewhere else entirely.
It goes to her.
It also goes, just as quickly, to the families of American service members. Because grief doesn’t recognize borders, and loss doesn’t check passports.
According to reporting by USA Today, the number of American troops injured in this war has climbed to 200. Ten are seriously wounded. More than 180 have already returned to duty — returned, as if nothing essential has been altered.
Thirteen are dead.
I find myself reading their names slowly, not as information but as interruption:
Maj. John A. Klinner. Capt. Ariana G. Savino. Tech. Sgt. Ashley B. Pruitt.
Capt. Seth R. Koval. Capt. Curtis J. Angst. Tech. Sgt. Tyler H. Simmons.
Capt. Cody A. Khork. Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens. Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor. Sgt. Declan J. Coady. Maj. Jeffrey O’Brien. Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan. Sgt. Benjamin Pennington.
I think about who spoke their names last. I think about the last time they hugged someone goodbye without knowing it would be the last time.
And I think about the children, because there are always children, who will grow up with that absence shaping everything.
When I put these images together, I can’t keep the usual distance that commentary seems to require. I don’t experience this war as strategy or policy first. I experience it as a series of human ruptures that keep multiplying.
A man in power holding a model of a bomber like something precious.
A child reaching for a mother who will never hold her again.
Families here, in places like Ohio or Kentucky or Florida, trying to make sense of a knock on the door that changes everything.
We are told that around 2,000 people have been killed across the region. More than 1,300 in Iran alone. The numbers rise, they are updated, they are absorbed into the rhythm of the news cycle.
But I can’t relate to the numbers.
I relate to the hug.
To the presence of it. To the absence of it.
War depends on a kind of distance that I don’t seem able to maintain anymore. Not emotional distance, not moral distance. Once you really let yourself imagine the moment after impact, the dust, the silence, the voice calling out, it becomes impossible to return to abstraction.
It becomes impossible to look at a bomber, even a small one, and not see what it does.
So, I keep coming back to those two scenes, even when I’d rather not.
A president hugging a machine built to erase.
A child calling out into the space where her mother used to be.
And somewhere between them, all of us, deciding — quietly, daily — what we are willing to see, and what we are willing to hold.
~~~~~
George Cassidy Payne, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Rochester-based writer whose work sits at the intersection of politics, ethics, and lived experience. A poet, philosopher, and 988 crisis counselor, he covers issues of democracy, justice, and community resilience.
