No Kings Rallies, March 28, 2026
Americans — battered, aggrieved, outraged, and determined — arose as millions, gathering and marching today in “No Kings” events held from coast to coast.
From Maine and Hawaii, to Colorado and Washington, to New York and Florida, to the Carolinas and Iowa, to Alaska and the Dakotas, to Maryland and Virginia, to New Jersey and California, to Rhode Island and Nevada, to Michigan and Montana, to Idaho and Vermont, to New Hampshire and Connecticut, to Arizona and Wyoming, to New Mexico and Georgia, to Tennessee and Mississippi, to Oklahoma and Utah, to Arkansas and Louisiana, to Missouri and Illinois, to Pennsylvania and West Virginia, to Kentucky and Ohio, to Wisconsin and Nebraska, to Kansas and Delaware, to Texas and Massachusetts, to Indiana and Oregon, to Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, American Somoa, and Northern Mariana Islands, to Minnesota — and beyond. . . .
In total, more than 3000 rallies and marches were held in every state and major territory, perhaps 8 million persons in total strong.
I went too, a fitting means, I thought, to honor my father, who would have turned 95 this very day.
Together 75 years, my parents died just three weeks apart — he, on Sept. 24, my mother, on Oct. 17, 2025. They opposed tyranny in all forms and so also might have protested, I think, this damnable war, and its dire implications, including with respect to the “killing of civilians, especially children” that United Nations Messenger of Peace and Nobel Peace laurate Malala Yousafzai recently denounced as unconscionable.
It is a war, after all, launched on the whim of our most entitled psychopath, who now expands it for his own pleasure, that is, “just for fun.” It is for that reason that the signs I made — for myself and CPR Initiative supporter Arline Zeidler — read “Criminality & Delusion will not Suffice: End This War!”
That message, I thought on reflection, was to the point, and a bit ironic, yet lacking in creativity.
I came to appreciate this by way of comparison at the No King’s event we attended in Springfield, Oregon.
As an aside, I can note that there are at least 33 cities or towns named “Springfield” across the nation. The one in Oregon is famed as “the primary fictional setting of the American animated sitcom The Simpsons,” according to Wikipedia, though there is no pressurized, two-unit nuclear power plant in Oregon’s Springfield, so Bart Simpson would need to find other gainful employment. In any event, going forward Springfield, Oregon now may be known as a viable, friendly host for peaceful and respectful dissent against authoritarianism and heedless war.
Gathered there today to rally and march were a solid 5,000 persons, by my conservative estimate, and from virtually every walk of life. Many, it seemed, were of the graying or balding variety, which fact caused me to think, at several junctures, that the necessary defense of democracy need not await any wholesale rejuvenation of principled activism on college campuses.
In addition to people in their 60s, ’70s, ’80’s and ’90s, there were, in Springfield, a fair number of frogs and their supporters. At first, I didn’t quite get that. I mean, I understood the “No Kings” part, but not the “More Frogs” bit (see exemplar photo immediately below). And so, I inquired of one of their remarkably-inflatable number, asking, perhaps a bit rudely, whether it wasn’t all a bit absurd. “But indeed,” she croaked back, employing a decidedly Portland-like inflection, “that is precisely the point.”
Fair enough. There is, of course, so much to oppose, and so little time, and people across the planet have much to say. One organizer, speaking from what appears to me to be Paris, was interviewed by the NY Times. She delineated that she was protesting “all of Trump’s illegal, immoral, reckless and feckless endless wars.”
Her formulation was concise enough, yet still a mouthful. I question, moreover, her use of the term “feckless.” In any event, at “my” rally in downtown Springfield, a protestor summed it all up with even more concision, as her sign read, in its entirety: “NOPE.” Her “E” was shaped from a crown.
Others attending across the land, and across the ocean, were similarly pithy. Dr. John Birks, for instance, a renowned atmospheric scientist and member of the CPR Initiative Board of Directors, carried a sign at the Longmont, CO, rally, reading, simply: Resist.
For his part, Dr. Donn Viviani, the intrepid President of the CPR Initiative Board of Directors, chose to protest in Honolulu. His message raised the character issue, that is, whether our pretender-in-chief is a person of adequate competence and stability. By sidling alongside another placard, Donn also called into question the President’s fidelity to the truth.
He was not the only one questioning the veracity of pronouncements issued by the present U.S. leadership, though one protester’s message requires the reader of it to have acquired at least some familiarity with the classic Nineteen Eighty-Four. The dystopian 1949-published novel, by the masterful British writer George Orwell, was a cautionary tail about totalitarianism, perpetual war, obedience, self-deception, control, complicity, and the prospect of freedom. In one of its most telling scenes, a ranking member of the work’s fictional but allegorical Thought Police reveals to its central protagonist that The Party of Oceana, led by Big Brother, sought power for its own sake, and not for any other reason.
Back to the Springfield event, I can report that many other protestors there questioned whether the nation is now helmed by the best and brightest.
Others expressed deep regret for the chaos that our present leadership has unleashed on to the world.
A simple sign read “Government of and by The People.” That for me brought to mind President Lincoln’s formulation, in 1863, when, in honoring those who died at the Battle of Gettysburg, that literate leader called upon those assembled and a nation to pray “that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Swinging now back east, and northward along the eastern seaboard, John Fitzgerald, Vice-President of the CPR Initiative Board of Directors, called attention, at a too-little-covered but crisp Castine, Maine, gathering, to the present Administration’s many violations of law, including fundamental labor rights, as well as its failure to secure — or even recognize — the demands of climate justice.
By email, John later reminded me that “Castine is where Paul Revere made a huge mistake in failing to attack the Brits building a fort there while he had command of a land force and he also had naval superiority, but he and the admiral waited too long and a larger British fleet showed up and the Brits on land built a strong fort and the continentals lost ships and a chance to hold that important fort that is now the site of the Merchant Marine Academy of Maine.”
There is, then, such a thing as being too late.
What motivated so many from such a variegated and broad span of America to come out today to say their piece, to stand together? Clearly they harbored many reasons, but in my survey most sought to uphold values that have to date been deemed core to the American pantheon. I can enumerate some of them here: respect for the rule of law; basic human decency, compassion for the dispossessed; hope for a viable future; a demand for peace and justice; the democratic instinct; and equal treatment under the law.
Beyond those, however, I need to list another motivator: Minneapolis. That is, the heroism of ordinary citizens, standing up, in recent months, to an out-of-control but highly militarized federal force in defense of their neighbors. I made this point in January, during a Climate Emergency Forum program, at its minute 21:10, namely, that their example will not soon be forgotten.
It is also a point that another guy more recently made. He, like me, is from New Jersey, but considerably more lyrical. In Streets of Minneapolis, among other stanzas, Bruce Springsteen pronounced:
Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Crying through the bloody mist
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis