Shucking Oysters: No More Vile Cruelty
By Alex Allen
“After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid.” – Nate White
Eight in Florida. Eleven in Louisiana. Fifty-one in Georgia. Seventy-two in Colorado. One hundred in Michigan. On Saturday, March 28, over 3,000 protests will take place in all 50 states and every US congressional district. The largest protest is set for St. Paul, Minnesota with Joan Baez and Jane Fonda, among others joining state leaders at the capitol. This No Kings protest could be the largest protest in US history. For context, the Black Lives Matter protests of summer 2020 had an estimated 15 to 26 million protesters nationwide.
In June, around five million people took part in the first No Kings protest, followed by another seven million in October. Why? Let me count the ways…Sending masked agents into streets, terrorizing communities. Targeting immigrant families, profiling, arresting, and detaining people without warrants. Threatening to overtake elections. Gutting healthcare, environmental protections, and education. Rigging boundary maps to silence voters. Driving up the cost of living while handing out massive giveaways to billionaire allies. Spending billions of tax dollars on missile strikes while driving up the cost of living and handing out more massive giveaways to billionaire allies. In other words, protesting the cruel authoritarianism and sheer corruption of the Trump administration.
What began in June as a single day of defiance has become a sustained national resistance to tyranny, spreading from small towns to city centres and across every community determined to defend their democracy. Trump’s birthday parade was drowned out by protests. His attempt to turn June 14 into a coronation collapsed, and the story was one of a movement rising against his authoritarian grabs. Four months later, another nationwide uprising 14 times larger than both of Trump’s inaugurations combined happened in October.
Groups organizing the nonviolent and lawful No Kings protests across the country include ACLU, American Federation of Teachers, Common Defense, 50501, Human Rights Campaign, Indivisible, League of Conservation Voters, MoveOn, National Education Association, National Nurses United, Public Citizen, SEIU, United We Dream, and others.
In the first year of the second Trump term, Americans have adopted various protest strategies, especially when responding to ICE. When ICE agents arrived in Los Angeles in June, protesters chased them out of their hotels with bullhorns and a band playing Mexican songs. Amid the surge of federal agents in Washington DC in September, residents banged pots and pans in a tactic from Latin America. In Portland, thousands biked naked and confronted ICE officers in inflatable chicken costumes while blowing bubbles. Whistles, blown to alert neighbours, have become a symbol of ICE monitoring and an accessory at protests nationwide.
“President Donald Trump has promoted violence, hatred, lawlessness and chaos across the country, proving time and time again that he is not a leader,” said Public Citizen Co-President Lisa Gilbert. “Despite Trump and his administration’s incessant attacks on our communities and the rule of law, the No Kings movement has showcased the resilience of American communities, becoming a form of catharsis for the American people in a time of darkness. As we approach our country’s 250th birthday, we urge all fellow Americans to join the No Kings movement as a show of patriotism and a vision of the country we deserve.”
Leading up to March 28, the No Kings Coalition has also been holding “Eyes on ICE” training programs, nationwide virtual training sessions with tools to exercise their rights and legally monitor federal enforcement actions as safely as possible. Hundreds of thousands of people have taken the training. A core principle behind all No Kings events is a commitment to nonviolent action.
Trump and his Republican allies have not been fans of the demonstrations, obviously. Ahead of the October marches – which took place amid the government shutdown – Speaker Mike Johnson called them “hate America” rallies, and Trump’s “war room” account posted a mocking picture of the president wearing a crown.
“Based on how the regime is behaving, the fact of the matter is, everybody should worry about it,” Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible said. “I can’t guarantee that there isn’t a risk involved to show up and exercise your constitutional rights. It’s a terrible thing to have to say in 2026 in America, but it’s the truth.”
Whether or not the No Kings protests will alter the course taken by the Trump administration remains to be seen, though experts and historians say that in general protests do have the power to change policy and public opinion.
To be honest, “No Kings” is a tame tagline for the most arrogant, blundering, childish, delusional, erratic, greedy, hate-filled, ignorant, loathsome, monstrous, narcissistic, oafish, perverse, repulsive, shameless, thuggish, uncultured, vain, vicious, vile, and vulgar man in the world.
And in continuing its push to deport five-year-old Liam Conejos Ramos, the boy who was detained by ICE in January, the US government moved to end the family’s asylum case without holding a hearing. Liam and his family, who are from Ecuador, had a pending asylum application when he and his father were taken into custody. Meanwhile, a friend of Trump’s asked to get ICE to detain his ex-girlfriend who he was in a custody battle with – they did and she has been deported.
Diana Ravitch eloquently wrote: “This demonstrated lack of concern for others (for victims and survivors of natural disasters and war and disease) shows that Donald Trump doesn’t give a microbe on a nit on a rat’s tushy about anything but Donald Trump. Obviously, he cares only about money and about himself.”
In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.
