So glad you read it and liked it. I think Paul Krugman is The Bomb.
Are we allowed to say bomb while standing in line?
Republicans have a riot and attack public buildings and congress. ~1500 arrests and death ensues.
We show up in frog costumes and have a festival. I like us. Though one of these days, we may need to… I donno what. That’s not a threat, it’s just that the GOP is destroying the country.
Vote. Everyone VOTE! I don’t care if it’s for dog catcher. VOTE!
This Krugman article is worth its own thread – he makes many salient points that help explain a lot of what’s going on and how it’s highly, highly likely to unravel. Eventually.
I linked this upthread, but here it is again if you want a more general P&E thread on Peaceful Protest options.
The frog’s response was something like “I’ve had spicier tamales.”
That’s fantastic.
We’re a little short on hope? We’ll hop to it anyway.
My city had No Kings rallies in several locations, so I went to the one nearest my house. Before summer started, I was attending a recurring Take Down Tesla protest near the same place. I’d say the crowd was bigger and more diverse for this one, but not by much – still, we have 1 Tesla dealership, and we had 5 No Kings locations, so the total attendance was probably massive.
I came without a sign, and with no yellow, but I had my American flag and my repertoire of protest music, and I sang my ass off! I met a guy who had practiced all the verses of “Bella Ciao” in Italian, and he was able to teach me the first couple verses. I also sang “All You Fascists Bound to Lose” (A Woodie Guthrie song), “Rally 'Round the Flag” (A Civil War Union song), “The Ballad of Accounting” (a Ewan Maccoll song), and a couple more. Felt good.
Very cool!
I was just today thinking about how all the great revolutions had theme songs. The French had La Marseillaise, the Mexicans La Adelita, Cuba Guantanamera, the Peruvian miners had El Condor Pasa, etc. Mike Johnson seems to have expected everyone to be singing The International. Somebody needs to rework Kermit the Frog’s It’s Not Easy Being Green into a march.
Here’s a little something I came up with at the rally (to the tune of "If You’re Happy and You Know It):
If it’s fascist and you hate it, tell it no! (Tell it NO!)
If it’s fascist and you hate it, tell it no! (Tell it NO!)
If it’s fascist and you hate it, there is no need to debate it,
If it’s fascist and you hate it, tell it no! (Tell it NO!)
How about a Dixieland arrangement? A local band has rearranged the Muppet Show theme song into a Dixieland version. I’m sure they could do the same for “It’s Not Easy Being Green.”
Also, and, most importantly—“We Shall Overcome”.
And therein lies the problem for the No Kings movement.
Theme songs are part of popular culture–and the lack of one might mean that a cause is not as popular as it seems.
Now, one reason that theme songs were so important in the past was just the technology of the time ..no television*, internet or social media.
So singing together was a more important act of solidarity and spreading a message.
This thread, and especially Krugman’s article in the link, are (rightfully) full of optimism about the large turnout and the success of the protests.
But millions of people scattered at thousands locations need a theme song, to create an identity, and a unifying symbol that might give momentum to a political movement.A modern version of We Shall Overcome.
–
*(In the case of ‘we shall overcome’, of course television is the way we remember it today; but at the time TV was still a new technology, not yet understood as a political tool. The march on Washington and MLK’s “I have a dream” speech were a turning point, when TV came to be seen as an important force in society. But singing We Shall Overcome at protests had been a focal point for several years before.)
Call me a softie (because I definitely am one), but this brought tears to my eyes.
From The Atlantic online (gift link, I hope). I added italics for clarity.
Radicalized By Basic Decency read the sign of a middle-aged man in a ball cap and fleece jacket. Among the hundreds, maybe thousands, of people lining the main street of a small town in upstate New York on a perfect fall Saturday afternoon, this man and his words stuck with me. He was the sort of mild, ordinary-looking person you’d never notice in a crowd if not for his sign. And that was true of almost everyone. These were not the America-hating, Hamas-loving, paid street fighters that Republican leaders had dreamed up in the days before the countrywide “No Kings” rallies. Amid hundreds of American flags, I saw one Palestinian and several Ukrainian. The people were mostly over 40, many much older, some using walkers and wheelchairs, alongside parents with young children, like the woman with two small girls I saw standing slightly outside the crowd holding up a sign: So Bad Even the Introverts Are Here.
The tone of the protest was good-natured indignation, as if something these people cherished had been taken from them and defiled: This Is the Government the Founders Warned Us About; Make Orwell Fiction Again; Longtime Republican, First Time Protester; He doesn’t even own a dog; I
USA. So many signs referred to the patriotic events of 250 years ago that you might have thought you were at a Tea Party rally. There wasn’t a hint of unruliness, let alone violence. Three town cops looked on with nothing to do. (Down in New York City, 100,000 people marched without a single arrest.) At sunset in a nearby park, after listening to a gray-bearded man read out an updated Gettysburg Address beside a giant inflatable Donald Trump, the crowd began to leave. “Thanks, guys,” a woman called to the cops, who waved and wished her a safe trip home. By nightfall, the ruling party had changed its line, while keeping a straight face, to mocking irrelevant old white people.
I don’t know if No Kings will transform from an intermittent day of protest into a political movement. But if anything can rouse the stupefied mainstream in time to stop the collapse of everything good about America, it’s a spectacle like this: dignified, irreverent, driven by old-fashioned love of country. No Kings has no celebrated leaders. It offers no political platform or strategy, but instead a reminder, an example, and a rebuke. It presents a vision—perhaps a mirage—of what once was and might still be. Hope in a dark time is enough to make you want to cry, and I found myself on the verge of tears. There was something moving about the modesty of the idea, and the quiet depth of feeling—anger, longing.
…
Read the rest at the link.
Thanks ThelmaLou.
I still like the sign “If Kamala was President, we’d be at Brunch right now”
There are so many ways to play that - “If Kamala was President I could be mowing my grass” etc. etc.
A variation that I saw online: “I could be smoking weed and cleaning my apartment but these fucking nazis have ruined my goddamn weekend. Goddamn nazis”
I saw that upthread and immediately thought, “you weren’t going to clean your apartment.” 
You have to allow people their little delusions…
My sign (it won’t let me post it?) said “No Kings but Stephen King” and a little cartoon of SK. Just printed on 8.5x11, taped to a piece of cardboard, strung around my neck because I do standouts every week and it rains enough I need my hands free for an umbrella. I think I’m going to work on a picture of the destroyed East Wing with text saying something like “our house, not his house” for my regular standout. I saw that HOP one too elsewhere and I’ll probably print one out as well.
Oh and I made a modified “No Parking any time” sign for my kid with the “Par” whited out
Offered up as suggestions for Theme Songs…
- “Conservative Christian Right Wing Republicans” - Todd Snider
- “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven, Anymore” - John Prine
- “Ghost of Tom Joad” - Boss
- “Killing In the Name Of” - Rage
- “B.Y.O.B” - System of a Down
- “Peace Frog” - Doors
“This is why we fight” - The Decemberists
Come the war
Come the avarice
Come the war
Come hell
Come attrition
Come the reek of bones
Come attrition, come hell
This is why
Why we fight
Why we lie awake
This is why, this is why we fight
When we die
We will die
With our arms unbound
This is why, this is why we fight
Come hell