The growing “No Kings” street protests aren’t a new phenomenon.
They’re the nation’s social conscience, picking up where George Floyd left off.
By Erin Aubry Kaplan
Two weeks after the last “No Kings” day of protests that drew millions of Americans onto the streets, with crowds so thick in places that the streets themselves seemed to disappear, it finally hit me: It’s 2020 all over again.
It wasn’t just the striking visuals that put me in mind of the George Floyd protests five years ago, when people gathered over months in record numbers to agitate for racial justice. It was the realization that what fueled the protests then is still what’s fueling protests now — a demand that people be treated fairly not just as a matter of law, but as a matter of conscience and decency. As in 2020, Americans across lines of race, age and party affiliation are fed up with the inequality and indecency of the Trump administration and are coming together to force a change in direction.
On the surface the grievance has broadened: It’s the swift-moving authoritarianism of Trump, not the murder of a Black man by a white cop, that’s prompting people to take to the streets in the name of a whole host of democratic ideals that have been badly sullied. But Trump’s unrelenting attacks on diversity in all its forms, rooted in his longstanding contempt for Black people and their inclusion in American society, has always been at the core of that authoritarianism. His condemnation of “the radical left” in the streets in 2020, during his first term, has in his second term become a full-blown, government-sanctioned assault on Black-populated and Black-led cities. What happened then was a rehearsal for now.
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Such continuity sharply contrasts with the narrative Americans on the right and left have bought into since George Floyd: that the racial awakening of 2020 was a flash in the pan, a passing fad that, while sincere and even inspiring, retreated once the political winds shifted rightward. It’s a narrative that’s easy to believe because it fits a historical pattern: Well-meaning white people experience a surge of collective conscience and join people of color in support of passing new laws and initiatives. But they eventually move on, either distracted by other issues or (more immediately) cowed by a conservative white pushback that is a perennial feature of American politics. I confess that, like many Black people, I bought this narrative too. It made sense. How many times since the 1960s have we seen that when it comes to taking steps to achieve true racial justice — integrating public schools, investing in inner cities, giving Black farmers their due — America always chickens out?
I’ve come to believe that the chickening out is due less to the fact that Americans are racist than to the fact that they aren’t antiracist enough. We simply haven’t been conditioned to practice antiracism — questioning embedded beliefs and actively opposing racism, rather than just not agreeing with it. It isn’t mainstream. It’s no surprise that at critical moments we tend to fall back on our conditioning rather than hold firm to beliefs that, however righteous, feel new and untested. Conservatives always exploit this vulnerability, especially in the age of MAGA. Almost from the moment the George Floyd protests kicked off, Trump supporters loudly accused liberals and progressives of being soft on crime, which really means not being hard enough on Black people. An old strategy worked, again. And it kept working: After the disastrous 2024 presidential election, many Democrats, including Virginia Sen. Mark Warner and veteran strategist James Carville (both white men), began fretting and blaming themselves for losing voters to elitism and so-called wokeness rather than supporting antiracism on principle. In other words, instead of doubling down on beliefs they frequently claim to stand for — as conservatives almost always do, however hollow their beliefs — Democrats abandoned them.
But this moment is different. Growing numbers of “No Kings” protesters, disgusted by the rampant cruelty and lawlessness of Trumpism, are realizing that they don’t need the blessing of the Democratic Party to act on principle, just as protesters standing up against racism didn’t need it in 2020. Far from abandoning the George Floyd momentum, the country is extending it. Since the first demonstrations in June, “No Kings” has been expanding the indignation and passion that brought people out five years ago, expanding an understanding that the wrongs being perpetrated on Black folk, Latinos and other groups are being done in all of our names. Most importantly, the sheer number and diversity of protesters are proof that the Trump narrative upholding whiteness as the only true Americanness is simply wrong. The “No Kings” protests of Oct. 18 were notably horizontal, scattered throughout some 2,600 rallies in towns and cities from coast to coast, according to organizers, including Trump strongholds. It’s a refutation of the far right’s idea that hierarchy, from racial to economic to gender, is the bedrock of stability and prosperity that keeps us safe. In the last 10 months, nothing has been further from the truth as Trump has imposed outrageous tariffs, used the government shutdown to cut food assistance for the neediest families and pushed the GOP to strip people of color of congressional representation through blatant gerrymandering.
One dramatic change since 2020 has been MAGA Republicans’ increasingly unvarnished support for white supremacy — something Trump certainly advanced in 2020 but now embraces overtly and with zeal. From deploying the military to American cities, attacking universities and other truth-seeking organizations, pursuing retribution for his perceived enemies — Black, white and otherwise — to flouting the rule of law, Trump is showing white supremacy for what it is and has always been: volatile and unhinged. What’s always set off MAGA supporters are demands for racial justice, and the portal those demands created in the ’60s for other groups also seeking rights, including women, people with disabilities, the poor, veterans and the LGBTQ+ community. Yet all the people the far right insists are a threat “No Kings” has revealed as simply part of the human continuum that comprises America. Racial and social justice, and the people fighting for it, are not the enemy, but a definitive part of the country itself.
That foundational truth was reflected in the calm and resolve of the protests last month, which was quite a departure from the angst of 2020. It was also reflected in the joy and the humor. The inflatable frog, dinosaur and mushroom costumes, community spirit and block-party atmosphere were more than entertainment — they were a serious attempt to reframe the narrative, to publicly declare the type of nation we want to live in and already inhabit, not the imagined urban hellscape that Trump keeps pushing like an illicit drug. That scenario is, increasingly, ridiculous. Like the George Floyd movement before it, “No Kings” defies a strident, suffocating, entirely humorless idea about who matters and who doesn’t, an idea that seems determined to prevail. A big part of the country is showing up to say, in many different voices, that it’s an idea whose time is over.
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Erin Aubry Kaplan examines the persistent barriers to racial justice and opportunities for progress in an era of receding black presence in Los Angeles and California.