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Lookout’s recent newsletter article asking if the “No Kings” protests were just performative is totally and completely wrong and naive.
As a veteran of the 1960s-70s anti-war and Civil Rights movements, I can tell you that success did not happen overnight. History books and memory tend to dwell on the final change. In fact, both transformative civic changes took years.
At first, the anti-Vietnam War protests were rather small and frustrating and disparaged by the media, the political establishment and all the “smart people.” Yet in the end, we knocked out two presidents – Lyndon Johnson by popular power and Richard Nixon by challenging his ego and weaknesses and because of two crusading Washington Post journalists.
Whether we talk of Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers, George Wallace or Bull Conners, we always have to keep in mind the (much smaller and geographically more limited) halo of persistent public rallies and protests and preparation.
“No Kings” is not performative; it is power and social capital generating. It is democracy in action. Democracy will win.
Jeoffrey B. Gordon
Santa Cruz