America Haters

No Kings was a week ago. What did it mean?

I drove to my home town's modest downtown district last week, as I frequently do. I parked in a nearby parking garage and strolled past bistros and local coffee shops and so on. When I was a kid there wasn't much of anything down here except for government buildings and office buildings but in recent decades my stodgy little town has grown and now there are theaters and restaurants and bars and arenas and all the rest of the stuff. A young fellow stood on the corner with a temporarily inactive saxophone slung over his shoulder; he was on his phone. "Where you at?" he asked somebody on the other end. "I'm there already. You're missing the action." The "action" was evident to me before the sax music started back up. I took a corner, and there it was: a crowd of some thousands, each ready to do some modest bit in defense of our increasingly tenuous democracy, or anyway that's the story.

Going to No Kings felt like a pretty normal thing to do, honestly. It certainly looked like a normal crowd for Grand Rapids, Michigan. It could have been our summer arts festival if it wasn't for the changing leaves and the signs.

The signs were all over the place, both physically and philosophically. There were all kinds. Puns factored in pretty big, which I can't fault, mostly because of the old saying about glass houses and stones. THE FOUNDERS WOULDN'T HAVE WANTED THIS is something I saw. This seems questionable to me, given what I know of the founders, but I am terminally Midwestern and didn't try to start an argument. FUCK TRUMP is something I saw, and CRUSH CAPITALISM, and BILLIONAIRES ARE A CRIME, and ANTIFA=ANTIFASCIST. Those are sentiments I can get behind to one degree or another, even if these sentiments now make me a terrorist, according to people who terrorize Americans like the U.S. president. My buddy, who met me there, had asked me earlier what he should put on the back side of his sign; I suggested HUMANITY IS NOT A CRIME, and when we met up I was gratified to see that he had used it. It's not particularly pithy but it's what I believe. The other side of the sign was about getting the fascist clowns out. He dressed up as a clown, then wondered whether this confused the metaphor. I admitted it was a possibility, but I reckoned people would probably figure it out. I did not dress as a clown, nor did I carry a sign. I don't know why. Maybe I'm still, even at the improbable age of fifty, worried about looking cool.

None of us were particularly cool. I sure wasn't. As a member of Generation X, I know as well as anybody it's not cool to give a shit, especially not in public, and we gave a shit. On average that's what we were: a bunch of young and old and middle aged people, all sort of awkward, out on an autumn Saturday afternoon pissed off and scared because our country is being run by a bunch of bigoted bullies with scant credentials beyond their own meanness and even less curiosity than skill. Some of us sported inflatable animal costumes, which lent the proceedings a carnival air.

There was some discussion online before the event as to whether people should take pictures of themselves and post them on social media as a sort of awareness multiplier and memento of the occasion, and others who insisted that this sort of thing would be very unwise, and recommended instead that attendees leave phones at home or purchase burners and employ many other operational security (called "opsec," I have learned) tactics that I have no doubt would have been useful should the police have appeared and started brutalizing citizens (as is their clear function in a fascist nation such as this one). It might still prove wise should the FBI and ICE and police decide to add attendees to their lists and come knocking on your door to have a little chat about you being an enemy of the state.

Whether wise or not, this protest was definitely a "photos on Facebook" sort of deal. The proceedings were peaceful as far as I saw. This is no great credit to our demonstration or those who participated, nor does it in any way make us morally superior to those participating in any other demonstration where violence did occur—the opposite, I'd say. Other demonstrations over the decades have had more of a police presence, by which I mean other places have been targeted for public shows of fascist violence. When the brutality squads show up, you can be as peaceful as you want, but you're at a violent protest. Violence isn't something you get to decide upon when you're standing up to bigoted bullies, and those who face it are doing a lot more than you are, which is something I wish more people understood. I imagine there were police around somewhere, but I didn't see any. I see more cops before our professional volleyball team (the Rise) plays. I saw zero cops at No Kings. I saw three axolotls.

I did wonder how I would acquit myself if the police or some random militarized right-winger decided to make things violent, as often happens at gatherings of their pro-democracy enemies. "Probably not very well," was my assessment of myself. I think I'm more of a flee-er than a be-er. I don't think of myself as particularly notable when it comes to physical bravery, but then I've given myself relatively few opportunities to prove that to myself either way. Maybe I'd surprise myself—every so often, I do. There were people around in more tactical gear, which to me marked them as more seasoned demonstrators. I imagine that some of these have seen protests that have gone bad, as so many protests do whenever cops decide to brutalize the citizenry for the crime of questioning their authority to brutalize the citizenry. These tactical demonstrator were probably right to be ready, but it wasn't that sort of party. If I had been dressed like that in this particular setting I would have felt awkward, much as I might if I were dressed as an axolotl.

This is a me thing, by the way, not a them thing. They're different sorts of people, and I like different sorts of people. I'm a different sorts of people myself, if you get to know me. My clown friend, who drew the comic strip that appears in my novel, he's a different sorts of people, too. He's dressing up as a zombie this morning, and he's going to participate in a Zombie Run, which is a 5K in which the runners pretend to be frightened by volunteer zombies who pretend to chase them. My friend is good at costumery, and he likes being among the people, so he does this every year. I don't like being among the people as much, though I do like being among him, so I'm not dressing up as a zombie, but I admire his joie de vivre, and his esprit de corps (I suppose as he's a zombie it will be esprit de corpse a wocka wocka wocka). I'll see him tomorrow and hear all about it, I hope. Sometimes an event needs both runners and zombies, you know. It takes all kinds.

There were clergy there, many of them Christians. They had their costumes on, too, which marked them as people of faith. It's sort of rough sledding these days if you're the sort of Christian who believes that the meek will inherit the earth and that God can be found among the prisoner and the sick, the stranger and the outcast, and that the best use of power is to give it away at your own expense to those who have none, and dying so that the world may live, and all of that.

Those were the things that I was told growing up, but the truly upsetting number of christians who have the ear of power and the levers of power believe a different set of propositions: They believe that they will inherit heaven and everyone else will inherit hell, literally eternal torment forever. These christians have come to the natural conclusion of such beliefs, namely that they, elect of God and inheritors of heaven, deserve the earth, too, and that this means that they can own and use and punish and kill whoever they want and call it righteousness and love. So the clergy at No Kings held signs that said things like THIS PASTER LOVES YOU and HATE IS NOT MY GOD.

I'm down with that. I do wonder at what point churches will realize that there can't possibly be room in their pews for both Jesus—that is, for the prisoner and the sick and the stranger and the outcast—and also room for people who belong to a militarized hate group like the Republican Party, who are actively engaged in excluding and terrorizing and killing all those other sorts of people, or (more likely) in hiring people to do it for them, so they can feel safe while they wait for heaven. Whenever I express this belief, I'm reminded by well-meaning Christians that the revolutionary and the tax-collecting Roman collaborator both ran with Jesus in unity and harmony, but I also recall the tax collector left his corrupt and collaborationist business behind. Maybe some of these clergy participating have already come to that realization. I didn't ask them. I realized it about eight years ago, and since the Republicans were being prioritized in the name of "unity," I bounced. Was that the right choice? For me it was. But it takes all kinds.

We listened to some folk music. We listened to some speeches. Then we marched down the middle of the street for a couple miles, led by the clergy. The thinking there I suppose is that a random Republican is less likely to run over a minister with their car, which is something Republicans really like to talk about doing to demonstrators, and every so often they do it, and some of them even receive pardons. So the clergy showed some physical bravery in doing this, or at least I reckon so. It must take some physical bravery to stop traffic. We stopped traffic for about an hour, though we did at once point quickly give way for an ambulance. We pissed a couple drivers off but as far as I could see those people just had to wait. Most drivers honked support, which I could tell because they had their windows down and they were cheering and such. Were they participating too? Kind of, though they didn't intend to. They found themselves confronting something, and they reacted. Others probably found themselves watching and confronting something within themselves. Maybe some of them wished they were with us. Maybe some joined.

We did the chants. We carried the signs. There were U.S. flags, and Palestinian flags, and union flags, and rainbow flags, and trans flags. Some of us had been right all along about a great many things, and most of us were somewhere on a journey of figuring out all the things we've been wrong about all along, and I would guess some of us—I dare hope a shrinking number—are only willing to go so far down that road. We were in each other's presence, and we all had something in common, which matters, and a great many differences, which also matters. This was sort of beautiful, or at least it felt beautiful. We moved down streets we had stopped, one step at a time.

Then the march was over, and we all dispersed. I bought a coffee from a local shop, which was very consumerist of me. We didn't issue specific demands, which has been pointed out. Everything was the same afterward, which has been pointed out.

I've been wondering ever since what it all means.

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Republicans are saying that all of us who participated in the demonstration hate America. This is laughable projection, of course; we don't hate America, we just expect it to honor its promises about life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and the separations of power, and the equality of all people, and the rule of law and equal representation under that law, and all of that stuff. I know that some people in the crowd never had the privilege of thinking that these fine myths were ever true of us, but they still do expect the realization of the promise. Some of us used to believe that's what the United States actually stood for and have since learned better. Some of us still believe that, and might someday learn better. As I said, all sorts marched. We all love the idea of an America that might stand for all of those fine things, even if many of us are still confused about the America that actually exists.

To Republicans, America doesn't stand for any of that. For Republicans, America stands for rich white christian men with property being able to do and own whatever and whoever the hell they want and everyone else had better shut up if they know what's good for them, and if they don't know what's good them then there will be a militarized cop along to teach them soon enough. This may seem like a strawman or a mischaracterization but I assure you if you listen to a Republican talk and ask them clarifying questions they'll teach you about it, better perhaps even than they know themselves. Anyway, Republicans hate and fear all those fine and decent things a lot of the rest of us used to think of as "America" and others of us still think of as "America" and all of us expect "America" to actually become, and they hate all the people who live in America who expect those fine things to flourish without being a rich white christian man with property, which I mention since the subject is who does and does not hate America, and I would say "hating Americans by the tens of millions" is a bit of a giveaway.

We all gathered in Rosa Parks Circle, which is a park with a modest stage and a circular slab of concrete in front of the stage for people to stand, bordered by terraced rings from which a gently graded hill falls back to sidewalk level. When my kids were little, we would go watch free concerts there, while our kids ran or rolled down those gentle hills and laughed and laughed. It's a nice spot.

The park used to be called Monroe Mall Amphitheater, probably because it abuts Monroe Center Street. Monroe Center Street is named that because it leads to Monroe Center, a pedestrian mall that has been a part of Grand Rapids for 190 years, which is a long time if you're a person. Back then, Black people in some parts of the country were owned as chattel; that is to say, as personal property, as if they were not human beings but farm animals. In other parts of the country, Black people were not owned as chattel, but roving gangs of slave catchers were permitted to go and snatch Black people up and drag them back to places where they would be property. It was a compromise.

James Monroe was a president of ours, you know; a Founding Father. He owned many human beings as slaves, as chattel. Was Monroe Mall Amphitheater and Monroe Center Street named after him? I couldn't find an answer either way, but it's not a bad guess. Many things are. He's one of the Founders who (per the sign I saw) wouldn't have wanted this, and maybe there are parts of this he wouldn't have wanted. Along with owning people as if they were farm animals, he wrote a lot of our founding documents about opposing tyranny and the equality of all people and so on—the words that many people today expect America to finally and for the first time live up to, the thing that Republicans hate and fear if you listen to them and ask enough clarifying questions. Many of us revere him for those words, but excuse him for the rest. It's a compromise.

Rosa Parks was a Black person and I bet you've heard of her. She didn't live at a time when Black people were owned, but she did live at a time very much like the time we're living now, where being Black meant that you could be treated as if you were lesser, could be brutalized and terrorized and punished and even killed if you challenged that treatment. Back then, the bigotry was justified by bigots on the premise that bigotry was a that racism was a practical necessity and a great and natural moral good. These days the bigots are more sly; they enact their bigotry under the auspices that bigotry doesn’t exist anymore, therefore nothing they do—no matter how bigoted—can possibly be bigotry, provided they claim they don’t see it as bigotry, and anyone who questions their motives about all the bigotry is oppressing them, is threatening them so directly that it justifies any violence they enact against their critics in a preemptive retaliation. They like to compare themselves to Rosa Parks while doing it, because they believe they deserve to inherit the earth, so they try to steal Rosa Parks' moral authority just like they try to steal everything else.

Parks famously engaged in a performative show of her own equality, which was a demand that America be what it claims to be, which put into stark relief just how wrong and hateful those who opposed her were, how unjust and cruel the treatment they subjected her to as what they insisted their natural right and moral right. Unlike me and all my fellow No Kings demonstrators, she put herself in significant legal and physical danger by doing what she did, to her eternal credit. This was a moment—one of many—in a long and violent struggle that helped change things, and now the park in which we gathered bears her name, and features a statue of her.

This movement was known as the Civil Rights Movement, so named because they demanded civil rights and eventually they even got many civil rights enacted as law. Many who engaged in this struggle were not violent, but their struggle was a violent one, because when brutal bullies are in power, violence isn't something you get to decide about. And they were called violent for any violence that came, even though the source of all violence was the injustice they opposed.

The would-be dictator of the Republican party called all of us who marched antifa, which means "anti-fascist," and which he has defined as terrorists. He suggested once again that we all hate America, that we are a violent threat from within. He has promised to murder terrorists, by the way, and he's murdering people right now that he baselessly claims are terrorists, and he's also been sending the military into American cities, and promising to send even more military into more American cities, and he's said that he authorizes full use of force, so I guess we should probably take all that as a threat, and also note that preventing violence and terror isn't his big concern.

I guess it's true to say, though, that we hate America—if we mean the Republican version of America, the one that is rapidly sprinting back past the era of Civil Rights and toward the antebellum South and its and roving bands of slave-catchers and its nightmarish slave plantations, those founding engines of profit and genocide; back, too, toward the Gilded Age, with its gross corruption and robber barons and factories full of children dodging machinery and sudden amputation; back too, to presidents who wrote of democracy and equality but owned many of their own children as one might own a cow or a pig; and back to a time when to not hew to the doctrines of pale christian puritans to their satisfaction meant punishment or expulsion or death.

So yes, if you love that form of America and long for its return, I suppose we are as the would-be dictator says. We are all the different types of people that they fear, because it is any difference whatsoever that they fear. It also exposes how much they hate the America we love. This is nothing new. Back in Rosa Parks' day they called people like her violent threats, enemies of America. Terrorist wasn't as popular a word then, so I don't think they called her that as much.

These days she is acknowledged as a hero, though there is a growing movement to strip that title from the civil rights heroes of the past, led by our would-be dictator and by the Republican Party. They're big fans of statues celebrating murderous confederates who killed their fellow citizens by the tens of thousands in order to defend and expand the evil cause of human enslavement. They're also big fans of erasing the contributions of Black people, and of anyone who isn't a white property-owning man.

Maybe the park where my kids played will be called "Monroe Center Mall" once again. We know there are many who believe that erasing a Black hero in favor of a white slaveowner would make America great again.

They are what they are.

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There are those who will say that the demonstrations across the country last week won't do much to change anything, and they may be right. There are those who say it's the bare minimum, which seems right to me—in fact, some of those who say it's not nearly enough were on stage at our event, and they said as much. There are those who will say that this was nothing but a performance to make comfortable people feel comfortable, and some of them were on stage at Rosa Parks Circle, and warned us that real change was going to involve comfortable people leaving their comfort. So I do think there is a general acknowledgement of the dangers of shallow advocacy.

There are others who say that No Kings was a useless show because democracy is already cooked, and there's no point in opposition. Maybe so. However, this seems like the most convenient position to hold if you don't want to be blamed for the alarming state of affairs we face, but you also don't want to do anything—not even the bare minimum. I think it's the posture that Republicans and other types of white supremacist and fascist would most hope for us to hold. I do know for a fact that finding a reason to not care won't change anything, and isn't nearly enough, and is something less than the bare minimum.

What did it mean?

Was it a beautiful gathering of a growing coalition, or was it pointless and desultory and ineffective? Was it simply a performative show that acted as a pressure-release valve on outrage, which dissipates resistance rather than increases it, or was it a show of numbers to demonstrate to a fascist movement that there are more of us than there are of them?

I'll tell you what I think.

I think this was the bunny hill of resistance, and I went down it. It wasn't my first protest, but it was the biggest I have attended.

I think many people probably will consider their duty discharged; they got their Facebook photo and now they're done. I think others, having learned the bunny hill, might move to the harder hills. They might build aptitudes and familiarities to deal with these new dangers.

I think there is a value to earnestness even when it's still confused about many important things, because earnestness cares in ways cynicism resists, and shallow caring can lead to deeper caring. I think there is a value to performance of virtue, if only because it helps the performer encounter the real thing, and can lead to deeper and less performative virtue. I think there is some bravery to opposing a bully, even though a bully is by definition a coward, and I think bravery often leads to deeper bravery. I think there is a momentum that a group of human beings creates that can't be created any other way.

I think I didn't go to the last No Kings march (I was too busy) and I did go to this one (though I was also too busy), and I'll go to the next (I will probably be too busy). It's possible verging on likely that I won't even wait for the next demonstration that is likely to be easy and safe. I think this made me more likely to make harder decisions, not less likely.

I think there are people who saw this demonstration—on the news or even marching right past them—and might have made a mental note to make sure to go to the next one, or to get involved in some way.

I think the axolotls and the unicorns and the frogs and all the other woodland creatures were there to make any cops that showed up with military gear to look ridiculous, and they were willing to look silly if the cops didn't show.

I think the seasoned tacticians in their gear were there to ensure that any cops that showed up with their military gear know that there are experienced people in our ranks, and in order to achieve that effect they were willing to look a little silly if the cops didn't show.

I think the clergy that were there were risking something. Perhaps they risked their reputations or even their faith, particularly if they exist within a religion whose mainstream increasingly paints empathy as toxic, and love as dangerous. I think they definitely risked their bodies to some extent by being in front. When cops show up, we now know for a fact they don't hesitate to brutalize clergy.

I think all the "normies" that showed up were there to put the lie to the president's claim that antifa is a bunch of people outside the norm of the American mainstream, to put the lie to the fascist Republican attempt to cast their open bigotry and fear and hate as normal, and opposition to it as abnormal. I also think it would be good for all us normies to graduate to something more.

I think there was a lady out there handing out water to everyone. She didn't have to do that, but she did. It wasn't much but it sure was something; a care for the needs of others. Another lady took a bottle, but her hands weren't up to the task of opening it. She asked me to open it, and I did. If I hadn't been there, somebody else would have, so my point isn't that I did anything worth praising. My point is that it literally the least I could possibly do, but I did it, not because I'm anything special but because the opportunity was there, and the opportunity was only there because we were all there together.

I think there were people circulating through the crowd, handing out flyers for an organization that is trying to put together a general strike, and I have it in my pile of weekly paperwork to deal with.

I think others were circulating with a petition to introduce ranked-choice voting, and I signed it. So did the clown I was with.

I think there were mutual aid groups there with information about getting connected, and people were getting connected. I think there are next steps to take, and if you want to take them, it was a good place to learn about it.

I think people met people, and some of them might keep meeting. I think people who still believe many of our foundational lies marched with people who know far better about the reality of our situation, and some of them might even have learned something from the exposure. What might come of that? Nothing in some cases, probably. Something new, in other cases, probably. Something more. The next step.

What did it all mean?

I think it's about what comes next. I think that's up to each of us, whether we turned up or not.

Which means it's up to me and you.

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A.R. Moxon is the author of the novel The Revisionaries and the essay collection Very Fine People, which are available in most of the usual places, and some of the unusual places. You can get his books right here for example. He is also co-writer of Sugar Maple, a musical fiction podcast from Osiris Media which goes in your ears. He lit out from Reno, he was trailed by twenty hounds.