In brief: the No Kings protests are meaningless political theater. Protests alone do nothing. They must signify more substantial action before anyone in power cares about them, and there have been no serious organizational efforts to expand the protests into coordinated action.

One of the greatest protests in US history was the Montgomery bus boycott. Everyone remembers Rosa Parks sitting at the front of the bus and her arrest, but the part that people then forget is that the boycott lasted a year and two weeks. Some of the additional context that gets lost is that in 1955, buses were far more important to the poor, Black community than they are today. It was a terrible burden on both the community and many individuals to refrain from using the bus for a year and two weeks. But it fucking worked. The Montgomery bus boycott was a significant factor that led the US Supreme Court to hear a case about racial segregation. In 1956, it ruled that racial segregation was illegal in the Browder v. Gayle case! It didn’t fix racism, obviously, but it created an enduring legal change. During the boycott, rallies and marches also took place.  I’m not saying they had no place, but not the place of pride.

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