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Ezra wrote most of this on the plane ride back from the Twin Cities’ No Kings flagship event. What an incredible day, y’all. With more than 8 million people out at more than 3,300 protests on all seven continents, we collectively produced the largest protest in American history. Let’s reflect on this monumental feat and talk about how we build on the momentum.
No Kings 3 was a triumph of organizing. We brought friends, family, colleagues, strangers, and fellow community members out. We got permits and stages and lighting and traffic cones. We invited speakers, balanced coalitions, and ran safety marshal trainings. After producing one historic No Kings after another, it starts to look easy and inevitable, but every Indivisible group that helped make this happen knows that nothing about it this is easy or inevitable. A thousand dramas played out in the lead up to this historic day, and a thousand more on the day itself. The price of the hope and inspiration millions of people are now feeling is the burden that the thousands of leaders on the ground carried.
This is the product of organizing. And it’s why we do what we do.
Scenes from the flagship No Kings. There were more than a couple moments in the Twin Cities that felt transcendent, but let me highlight a couple. At one point, after Bruce Springsteen started playing Streets of Minneapolis, I turned from him to look at the sea of 200,000 Minnesotans who've gone through hell and were standing together with love, swaying, cheering, and chanting "ICE OUT". Later Joan Baez sang a duet of The Times They Are A-Changin, the song she sang with MLK Jr. at the March on Washington in 1963. Those artists, those songs, that crowd of battle-hardened American patriots -- for me, about the closest the political gets to the spiritual. Despite everything, we believe enough in a better world to demand it together.
What’s next. We all know that fascism does not announce defeat purely because an historic number of people come out on a Saturday. But it was more than a day of joy, courage, community, and headlines -- it was a welcome orientation for millions of new patriotic Americans to get connected to the fight where they live. That gives us an opportunity to build the movement and escalate.
So there are two main tactics Indivisible is focused on now:
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Nationwide, local “What’s Next” movement absorption events. We're advising every Indivisible group and local No Kings host to put together "What's Next?" events in the next couple weeks. Think of this as both a welcoming orientation for newly activated community members and strategic alignment for what's to come. More guidance in our toolkit here.
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May Day: a day of no work, shopping, or business as usual. The next major national action isn't another protest -- it's flexing our collective economic muscle. We're inspired by the Twin Cities' Day of Truth and Action, where teachers, faith leaders, workers, students, and business leaders refused work, school, and shopping on a single Friday in January -- preceding the regime's retreat. We're doing the same nationally on May 1. We know that when Trump tries to sabotage the midterms, we'll need this movement muscle. May Day is how we build it. The May Day Strong coalition is bottomlining this -- more from Indivisible in the weeks to come -- and it’ll be a big topic on tomorrow’s No Kings Mass call (register here).
I hope you take time this week to reflect on what you’ve been part of. Political commentators will argue about it, historians will write about it, artists will create art about it, and millions of people around the globe will be inspired by it. At a time when the world needed us, we did what we had to do. It’s why Indivisible exists, and I’m thankful, proud, and humbled to be part of such a historic force for good in the world with all of you.
In solidarity,
Ezra Levin
Co-Executive Director, Indivisible
Every Thursday 3:00pm EST Weekly Indivisible National Zoom Call