President Donald Trump surrounds himself with Gilded Age splendor and covets replacing the all-American Air Force One presidential aircraft with an opulent sky-high Versailles jet from Qatar.
On June 14, Trump plans to host a military parade in Washington, D.C. that will fall on the 248th anniversary of the adoption of the American flag, on the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army and on Trump’s own 79th birthday—but it may rain on Trump’s multi-million dollar parade.
Protests against Trump’s agenda have swept this country since he was inaugurated for a second term in January. On Saturday, June 14, the rallies and demonstrations will continue across America. Here in Athens on June 14, citizens will gather on College Square downtown from 5–7 p.m.
The date is indeed Trump’s birthday, but it is also the birthday of fiery activist and politician Robert La Follette, born on June 14, 1855. Until his death in 1925, the Wisconsin reformer’s crusade for a more equitable America earned him the nickname “Fightin’ Bob.” If La Follette could speak at the upcoming protests, his words from a century ago would still ring true: “The supreme issue, involving all others, is the encroachment of the powerful few upon the rights of the many.”
Dubbed the “No Kings Nationwide Day of Defiance,” the June 14 rallies will happen in big cities, small towns, rural locales and college campuses nationwide, just as previous protests have mobilized millions in the past few months. Washington, D.C. will be a focal point for protests, but those who cannot travel to the nation’s capital can find nearby anti-authoritarian actions in all 50 states on the nokings.org website.
The June 14 rallies “will be fun, pointed and most of all, huge,” says the website. “In America, we don’t put up with would-be kings… The flag doesn’t belong to Donald Trump. It belongs to us. We’re not watching history happen. We’re making it.” No Kings decries what it calls “increasing authoritarian excesses and corruption from Trump and his allies,” and adds, “We’ve watched as they’ve cracked down on free speech, detained people for their political views, threatened to deport American citizens and defied the courts. They’ve done this all while continuing to serve and enrich their billionaire allies.”
Another online organization backing the June 14 protests is the Indivisible Project (indivisible.org) which began during Trump’s first term and boasts “a network of thousands of local groups and millions of activists across every state. Together we fight to defeat the rightwing takeover of American government and build an inclusive democracy.”
Inclusiveness is a key component in the continuing protests against the Trump regime. At recent rallies, white-haired veterans of the movements for civil rights and against the Vietnam War have mingled with younger generations of activists and people of all ages who have never attended protests. Organizers especially want first-time protesters of all ages to come to rallies against the Trump agenda. Citizens who excoriate Trump on Facebook or over dinner with their friends are often conspicuous by their absence at street protests. They are urged to leave the cloistered confines of their homes and join their fellow Americans on the streets at rallies across the country on June 14.
Conservative columnist David Brooks wrote a timely and trenchant opinion piece in the Apr. 18 issue of The New York Times headlined “Time for a Civic Uprising.” It should be required reading for those who sit behind locked doors and closed curtains while their country hurtles toward an authoritarian regime. “It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising,” Brooks wrote. “It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.”
Brooks made an ironic allusion to Karl Marx when he called for conservatives like himself to respond to Trump’s agenda: “I don’t naturally march in demonstrations or attend rallies… But this is what America needs right now. Trump is shackling the greatest institutions in American life. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
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