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Third No Kings protest to be held in March against ICE’s ‘reign of terror’
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2026
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As a reminder to people I already know will be furiously typing that these protests won't stop trump, or that they don't stop anything: that's not the point.
These protests exist to stop people from feeling hopeless, then to get them energized and motivated, then to give them ways to exercise their rights and free will to actually do concrete actions.
Holding a sign at a protest doesn't stop Trump, but giving millions of people booklets, cards, zines, and papers that direct them to their local ICE rapid response networks, get them canvassing for leftist politicians in their area, and giving them hope that lets them keep doing those things in the future is infinitely more valuable than saying "stay at home, these protests are worthless, now somehow organize your entire community to go raid an ICE facility or something, while you have no motivation or hope for the future because you feel alone."
These also exist to dispel narratives fascists use to justify their abuse of power. Nazis feel afraid when confronted with the fact that there are a lot more people that hate them than people that are with them. It's why ICE officers routinely leave scenes of arrests empty handed when enough community members show up. They're cowards.
At the last No Kings I went to, the organizers told everyone that they knew there would be people on the sidelines trying to agitate protestors, disrupt chants, and spread pro-Trump messaging. None of them showed up after they saw the size of the protest. The closest thing to it was someone in an apartment building too afraid to even put a sign outside their window playing a shitty rap song about missing a shot at Trump, with great lyrics like "B*tch, you missed", and "the left can't aim."
The alternative is everyone staying at home, getting progressively more angry and simultaneously hopeless, while the Nazis in power get even more emboldened from seeing only the few, more radical individuals willing to take action into their own hands while everyone else feels to hopeless to do anything, and I don't know about you, but that's not the world I want to live in.
I agree that these protests are very liberal and often convince some participants that the act of the protest itself is enough, that they've done their civic duty, but the people who are convinced by that are the same people that already self-limit the extent of their political action to holding an anti-ICE sign on the side of the road while people honk. They were never going to engage in any kind of actually disruptive protest in the first place.
Yes. It's about visibility. Both to each other and to our elected officials.
They don't care, holding signs and chanting for 2 hours on a random Saturday doesn't disrupt the system
Did you read the comment? That part that says that’s not the point then goes on to explain the point?
Neither does making these pointlessly demoralizing comments, but that hasn't stopped you.
Protests are powerful, especially in autocracies. This is because they undermine, in full view of everyone, a key source of legitimacy for autocrats: that they represent the true will of the people. It also undermines the instrument of power that all autocrats rely on: fear.
Those same people will go on to vote for that autocracy. They are not afraid of signs and chanting for a few hours on a random Saturday. They don't even have demands of change to be made. Today's rallies claim to be protesting Trump's ICE when they should be protesting ICE as a whole.
Until their power is threatened they don't care.
There is some truth in that. But we will not be able to gather a revolutionary mass in the near future, neither in the US nor here in Europe. One thing is certain, however: under a US as Trump envisions it, any work toward that goal will become impossible, or at least life-threatening. That is why I am in favor of forming alliances with liberals to preserve room for maneuver.
Protesting to replace a cog in the machine will not change how the machine functions. You're going to find that liberals are toxic liberation movements. They want to work within the confines of white supremacy, reform it into something that they are comfortable with. They have no interest in dismantling it