No Kings

On April 19, "We the People" carry the Revolution forward

Last Saturday I marched in Boston with my daughters. As we made our way off Beacon Hill toward the Common, we walked the cobbled streets where Paul Revere rode, where tradesmen rioted against taxation without representation, where an impoverished mob stormed a wealthy royalist’s house. Here the tea went into the harbor. Here We the People rose against tyranny.

As we reached the Common, it was thronged with people, their signs lifted, their spirits, too. No Kings, read sign after sign.

April 5 on Boston Common; photo by Kelli Pryor

Here, on this very ground, the colonial militia first mustered for the Revolution.

No Kings.

After weeks of being alone with our fears, We the People were here at last, together, with our hope lifted high. A band played. Children climbed trees. People wore souvenirs from when they had marched for civil rights, for women’s rights.

No Kings.

Here, on this very ground, we became Americans.

At one point, I looked off to my right, and the grassy hillside was covered with families. I had a sudden, time-warping memory of being on a grassy hillside like that fifty years ago. I was with my family in Joplin, Missouri, celebrating the Bicentennial of the United States. We gathered with our neighbors from miles around, as we were gathered now on Boston Common.

I was thinking, in 1976 as in 2025, about what it means to be an American.

What I remember from 1976 was a sense that I’d merely had the good dumb luck to be born into such freedom. It was simply my birthright. Someone else fought for me to have it, and what did I even do with it, really, besides wear hip-hugging star-spangled jeans and set off bottle rockets? I loved history even then and understood that two hundred years earlier my ancestors had fought for my freedom and had since fought among themselves to establish freedom for all Americans. Americans kept battling threats to freedom, foreign and domestic. My own uncles told stories around the supper table about the fight against fascism in World War II. The minister at my church preached from the pulpit about being among the American GIs who liberated Nazi concentration camps. My father quoted Martin Luther King, Jr, and I felt horror about how he had died. I knew what freedom meant, understood what it cost.

And I had a vague sense of guilt that freedom had never cost me anything. I worried that I might not know when to fight for it, that I might not have the courage. At age 12, I had never risked a thing for my life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

But, last Saturday, as I stood in Boston Common, I understood that my turn had come to defend freedom, to defend the Constitution, to defend our way of life.

Our time has come.

We live in a perilous period of history. We can feel the ground shifting under us, and a toxic miasma of fear is all that remains to breathe – fear for our families, fear about the economy, our livelihoods, our security. People worry in hushed tones that the president intends to invoke the Insurrection Act, decree martial law and effectively end our right to free speech, our right to gather, to protest…our very freedom, our way of life. Due process would be suspended for all of us as it has already been suspended for green-card holders and students with visas and even people with tattoos open to misinterpretation. I grasp at hope that it’s only our worst fears preying on our sleep-deprived minds. That it’s fearmongering, as Robert Hubbell says (and I trust Robert Hubbell). But this week no less than Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor sounded an alarm, writing in dissent on “Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, Et Al, v. J.G.G., Et Al”:

“The implication of the Government’s position is that not only noncitizens but also United States citizens could be taken off the streets, forced onto planes, and confined to foreign prisons with no opportunity for redress if judicial review is denied unlawfully before removal. History is no stranger to such lawless regimes, but this Nation’s system of laws is designed to prevent, not enable, their rise.”

So, sistering my voice alongside Justice Sotomayor’s and the other dissenting women on the Supreme Court, I rise against the lawlessness to halt it before it becomes general.

I feel the Revolution in my blood.

All the people who were out last week on Boston Common feel it, too, as do the millions of people who protested across the country. Last Saturday, in red states and blue, marches were held in cities and state capitals across the country but also on Main Street, at mere crossroads. Protesters in wheel chairs came out with signs in front of their nursing homes.

In Joplin, where I celebrated the Bicentennial, brave protesters faced rain and whipping wind. They put socks on their hands to bear the cold. And bear it they did.

The Revolution is in our blood.

The next call to rise is on April 19, when organizers are aiming for more than 11 million participants. Participation at that level would represent 3.5 percent of the population, a level of non-violent resistance that thwarts authoritarian regimes.

April 19 is an important date in American history. This year it’s the two-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of the shot heard round the world.

We the People have a democracy to save.

We are born of Revolutionaries. We have to confront this moment with Revolutionary bravery and commitment to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

No Kings.

Bring your friends with you April 19. Bring two more than you brought last time.

No Kings.

On June 14, the president plans a military parade in Washington D.C., in honor of his birthday and the 250^thanniversary of the Army.

No Kings.

April 19 is our day to rise against threats to freedom. Freedom is our birthright and also our responsibility.

No Kings.

It’s up to us now. All it takes is courage. And that’s in our blood.