From Maine to the Marianas, Americans Will Cry: “No Kings!”

In Lubec, Maine, the easternmost municipality in the United States, a significant portion of the community's 1,237 residents we'll meet at 11 I am Saturday deliver a message from exactly this side of the Canadian border, which, despite everything obsessive admirer of the British monarchy named Donald Trump might think, “This country does not belong to kings, dictators or tyrants.”

Time zones away, activists from Saipan will raise a cry of protest from the Northern Mariana Islands in the Western Pacific against the current administration's abuses of power, adding their voices to national declaration it says: “The President believes his rule is absolute. But in America we have no kings, and we will not back down from chaos, corruption and cruelty.”

Following the Constitution, which gives the people of the United States the right to assemble and petition for redress of grievances, Americans will also gather 26 miles above the Arctic Circle in Kotzebue, Alaska, and 90 miles from Cuba in Key West, Florida. They will gather in Massachusetts on Lexington Battle Green, where the first shots of the American Revolutionary War were fired, and near the Civil War battlefields of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. They will be in touch in the last border town Polebridge, Montanaestimated population 31, and on the corner of Broadway and 47th Street in Manhattan.

From the reddest villages to the bluest cities, true believers in the American experiment of Thomas Paine and Frederick Douglass, Alice Paul and Rosa Parks, Harvey Milk and Dolores Huerta, on Saturday, October 18, will raise the oldest and most patriotic of American cries:No kings!»

They will laugh at the pathetic attempts of Quisling Republicans during the Trump interregnum to brand nonviolent dissenters as “…upsetand “anti-American.” And they will accept a message from a Republican president from another time. Teddy Rooseveltwho warned: “To announce that there should be no criticism of the President or that we should support the President, whether he is right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but also morally treasonous to the American public.”

In the spirit of the best of this country's founders, most notably Paine, who preached that “as in absolute governments the king is the law, so in free countries the law must be king” – millions of Americans will join Saturday in a national “Kingless Day of Action.” They will do this at a time when Trump and his compromisers are attacking free speech and a free press; when they sent masked men and armed troops into American cities; when they threatened to jail Democratic political governors, mayors and attorneys general; and when scholars of totalitarianism warn that American democracy is in danger.

“If you're not afraid, you're not paying attention,” Ezra Levine, co-founder and co-CEO of Indivisible, a key organizer of the No Kings movement, speaks the increasingly authoritarian tone of Trump's statements. “These people are serious. They are actively trying to take away your constitutional right to peaceful protest, and that is how authoritarian regimes work. The one thing they fear most is a mass, peaceful, organized population resisting their unpopular plans for the system.”

With the support of religious and civil rights groups, labor unions and community organizations across the country, organizers attracted about 3 million people nationwide to the Hands Off protests in April and about 5 million to the No Kings protests in June. On Saturday, with more than 2,500 rallies and marches planned for Saturday, Levin says“The cavalry is coming… On October 18th we are witnessing the largest protest in modern American history.”

The very prospect that farmers and factory workers, teachers and nurses, students and retirees, government employees and small business owners across the country would gather in huge numbers to echo the words of Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. and Ruth Bader Ginsburg in defense of the Constitution and in support of the full promise of the American experiment, alarmed apologists of authoritarianism.

Last week the Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnsonwhich continues to reject credible proposals to call on Congress to act and end the federal government shutdown, attempted to blame the delay on the No Kings movement. It was a bizarre statement, even by the warped standards that Johnson set in his desperate attempts to shield Trump from accountability—and to shift blame for a shutdown that Republican congressional leaders contributed to from Day One.

A Louisiana Republican tried to dismiss the millions of Americans who will wave flags and recite the Declaration of Independence on Saturday as the “rabid base” of leftists gathering for “I Hate America” rallies. Trump Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy falsely claims the crowd will consist of “paid protesters“

Even from two of the most ridiculous people ever to join the presidential line of succession, these are comical statements, especially considering the fact that Johnson's hometown will host No Kings demonstrations on Saturday. Shreveport, Louisianaand at Democracy Corner in Duffy's hometown. Hayward, Wisconsin. Members of No Kings coalitionwhich includes groups such as the League of Women Voters, the Interfaith Alliance and Veterans for Responsible Leadership, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union, National Organization for Women Public Citizens, Sierra Club, Service Employees International Union, American Federation of Teachers, American Federation of Government Employees, MoveOn and groups such as 50501, were calm about misguided Republican tirades. “Speaker Johnson is running out of excuses to shut down the government,” organizers said. “Instead of reopening the government, preserving affordable health care, or lowering costs for working families, he is attacking the millions of Americans who come together peacefully to say that America belongs to its people, not kings.”