In the four months since more than five million people took to the streets to protest President Donald Trump’s dictatorial policies and behavior, the administration has rapidly escalated its shock and awe campaign against American democracy. The No Kings protests were reportedly one of the largest political marches in U.S. history. On Saturday, millions are expected to participate in the latest round, with more than 2,500 events scheduled in all 50 states. 

The need for resistance is urgent. Trump has “pushed the country even farther into authoritarian territory,” as Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen and an organizer of the No Kings marches, put it. 

Trump, who promised to be a dictator on “day one,” is acting like a king — and he has been empowered by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority to behave as such. “He’s sent National Guard troops into multiple American cities against the wishes of their governors and mayors,” Gilbert said, “he’s threatened media organizations and comedians, pressuring ABC into firing Jimmy Kimmel for jokes on late night TV; and he’s blatantly ignored court orders. The state of the country and our democracy feel more dire than ever before.”

MAGA world has gone on the offense ahead of the protests. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson disparaged the protests as an example of “the scourge of left-wing violence.” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., labeled them a “Hate America” rally and told Fox News the protests were “pro-Hamas” and sponsored by “antifa.”

These lies, and the hostility behind them, reflects a larger dynamic: Trump is seen by many of his supporters as a type of god-king on a divine mission. In this worldview, resisting Trump and the MAGA movement is an act of evil — unpatriotic at best, and outright treasonous at worst.

But for Gilbert and millions of others, Saturday’s events “will be a peaceful day of unity and resolve.” She said, “Millions of people are coming together, fed up with an authoritarian regime that’s forgotten the people it’s supposed to serve, standing together in the belief that America belongs to its people, not to any king or dictator.”

As historian Adam Hochschild told me in a recent interview, when civil society was under attack by President Woodrow Wilson a century ago, the country “did not have millions of people in the streets.” The “overt resistance” created by No Kings, he said, is reason for hope. 

After the No Kings protests in June, a YouGov poll found that nearly half (49%) of Americans supported them, while 35% expressed opposition. These results were driven by partisanship. A large majority of Democrats (80%) supported the marches and an almost equally large number of Republicans (68%) opposed them.

Autocrats, though, are not highly responsive to public opinion — unless they can use it to legitimate their corrupt rule. They monitor the public mood for dissent and resistance, and in search of opportunities to crush it. Democratic processes and public opinion are treated as tools to manipulate, not mechanisms for accountability.

But America is still a democracy, albeit an increasingly weak one, and Trump still needs to maintain a veneer of public support. Protests and mass mobilization threaten his legitimacy. They counter the narrative that Trump and the MAGA movement enjoy unstoppable, popular momentum. No Kings will remind political bystanders — and the undecided — that resistance is not futile. Such protests can also send a signal to elites that it may be in their self-interest to reconsider their relationship to the regime.

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Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat highlighted the moral dimension of collective action. “[T]he history of resistance suggests that pro-democracy movements that claim the mantle of moral authority and show care and solidarity in the face of plunder and violence can have an impact,” she wrote. “In fact, even a tiny percentage of the population — often just 3.5 percent, according to one study of successful civil resistance movements — can make a difference if they mobilize on behalf of democratic values in situations of tyranny.”

Peaceful protests are vital, she pointed out, allowing activists the chance to “model the behaviors the authoritarian state wants us to abandon.”

In a recent essay, Ben-Ghiat emphasized how “Weak authoritarians fear empathy, a sense of justice and morality, love for others, and collective action. All they have is force and lies. They may feel immensely empowered right now, but those protesting them are on the right side of history.”

But protests and marches also provide an opportunity for autocrats to expand their power. Trump has repeatedly signaled his desire to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to bypass the courts and to “legally” deploy the military against the American people to put down “civil unrest” or a “rebellion.” Such a move could also be a prelude to de facto martial law, cancelling elections and suspending other civil rights and freedoms. 

Many have observed that Trump, with his actions against Democratic-led cities like Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Portland and Chicago, is looking to create a pretext for a much harsher crackdown. This makes Saturday’s No Kings protests even more consequential. In the event of any violence, whether from protesters or agent provocateurs, the president will doubtless seize on it to expand his power. 

While important, attending No Kings protests is a beginning and not an end. It should be seen as a first step of sustained political activity to slow down the Trump administration and MAGA movement’s attempts to end multiracial democracy. 

Beyond the symbolic power of millions of people engaging in corporeal politics, one of No Kings’ most important aspects is how it provides spaces for political learning, relationship-building, agency and self-actualization, and coordinating resources that are necessary to affect long term political and social change.

Even small actions can make a huge difference when sustained over time,” Gilbert said. “Everyone should take one more action than they have done before, that is how we build a movement.”

Americans are an impatient people; we have a short attention span. To survive the remaining years of Trump’s presidency, we will need to unlearn those habits — and learn to sit with our discomfort. To paraphrase Frederick Douglass, power concedes nothing without a demand. 

The struggle to save American democracy will be long and difficult. It will not be resolved in one day, or even days and weeks, of marching and organizing. What awaits the American people is a generational struggle to save, rebuild and strengthen our democracy — and to inoculate it against the forces of authoritarianism. 

One of the most important things to have learned in life is that choosing joy in a world rife with reasons for despair is a countercultural act of courage and resistance, choosing it not despite the abounding sorrow we barely survive but because of it, because joy — like music, like love — is one of those entirely unnecessary miracles of consciousness that give meaning to survival with its bright allegiance to the most alive part of us. “We’ve all had too much sorrow — now is the time for joy,” Nick Cave sings in one of my favorite songs, and yet in a world trembling with fear and cynicism (which is the most cowardly species of fear), joy — the choice of it, the right to it — is in need of constant defense, none mightier or more delightful than the one Mario Benedetti (September 14, 1920–May 17, 2009) mounts in his poem “Defensa da la alegría” (“A Defense of Joy”), read here by the polymathic Chilean primatologist Isabel Behncke (who introduced me to this benediction of a poem) followed by my English translation and reading to the sound of Bach’s Cello Suite No. 4 in E-flat Major.

DEFENSA DE LA ALEGRÍA
Mario Benedetti

Defender la alegría como una trinchera
defenderla del escándalo y la rutina
de la miseria y los miserables
de las ausencias transitorias
y las definitivas

defender la alegría como un principio
defenderla del pasmo y las pesadillas
de los neutrales y de los neutrones
de las dulces infamias
y los graves diagnósticos

defender la alegría como una bandera
defenderla del rayo y la melancolía
de los ingenuos y de los canallas
de la retórica y los paros cardiacos
de las endemias y las academias

defender la alegría como un destino
defenderla del fuego y de los bomberos
de los suicidas y los homicidas
de las vacaciones y del agobio
de la obligación de estar alegres

defender la alegría como una certeza
defenderla del óxido y la roña
de la famosa pátina del tiempo
del relente y del oportunismo
de los proxenetas de la risa

defender la alegría como un derecho
defenderla de dios y del invierno
de las mayúsculas y de la muerte
de los apellidos y las lástimas
del azar
y también de la alegría.

A DEFENSE OF JOY
by Mario Benedetti
translated by Maria Popova

Defend joy like a trench
defend it from scandal and routine
from misery and misers
from truancies passing
and permanent

defend joy as a principle
defend it from bewilderments and bad dreams
from the neutral and the neutron
from sweet infamies
and grave diagnoses

defend joy like a flag
defend it from lightning and melancholy
from the fools and the frauds
from rhetoric and ruptures of the heart
from the endemic and the academic

defend joy as a destiny
defend it from fire and firefighters
from suicides and homicides
from vacations and ruts
from the obligation to be joyful

defend joy as a certainty
defend it from rust and smut
from the famous patina of time
from dew and exploitation
by the pimps of laughter

defend joy as a right
defend it from God and winter
from uppercase and the casket
from surnames and the pity
of chance
and of joy too.

Couple with the story behind Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” then revisit Benedetti’s wakeup call of a poem “Do Not Spare Yourself” (“No te salves”).