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No Kings versus Good Trouble Demonstrations: Are We Losing Momentum? [1]

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Date: 2025-07-19

My wife and i attended our fifth demonstration protesting the Trump administration’s authoritarian coup in progress. In the relatively small town of Watsonville, California, at least 1500 protesters participated at the No Kings demonstration. At the Good Trouble Lives On demonstration, however, no more than 100 attended. Estimates of crowd size across the country are nowhere near the level of the No Kings demonstrations. The Times Tribune in Scranton, Pennsylvania, ran a headline “Good Trouble Lives On’ rally brings large crowd to downtown Scranton.” The adjoining article estimated the crowd size to be about 100 protesters. Headlines across the country estimated crowd sizes in the hundreds (e.g., 300 in Detroit, 100 in Des Moines, 100 in Houston, 100 in Washington DC in front of the White House, and so forth). I’m sure there were some exceptions, but I can find no media coverage that estimates any protest in the tens of thousands of protesters as was typical for the No Kings demonstrations.

It is not my intention to denigrate the effort that was expended in organizing more than a thousand Good Trouble protests in cities and communities nationwide. The Good Trouble demonstrations honored civil rights icon John Lewis, and rightfully so. Nevertheless, I fear that we cannot afford many more sparsely attended national demonstrations. The No Kings protests had a brilliant theme. Participation numbered in the millions. Research familiar to most of us that identified 3.5% of a country’s population as the peak turning point for overthrowing an authoritarian regime also underlines that success is dependent on more than just numbers. Success requires momentum as well as organization, commitment, and leadership. When participation in national demonstrations begins to lag, the media can easily make loss of momentum the narrative.

I have already posted a YouTube video and a lengthy essay on my Facebook page that pushes for demonstration themes that are responsive to more immediate events. There needs to be rapid response demonstrations, not just locally as occurred in Los Angeles, but nationwide, in addition to carefully planned and organized protests on an announced schedule. I especially would like to see a No Police State theme for our next national protest. The ICE raids should be the focus. The increasing militarization of America should be our focus. The lack of due process for immigrants who are being rounded up in indiscriminate arrests should be the focus. The individuals who are assumed to be legitimate ICE agents but who wear masks and hide their identities and refuse to show warrants also must be our focus. All of these issues fall easily under the frame of No Police State. So again, I encourage organizers of national demonstrations to make this our next theme, and in future demonstrations to be nimble in responding to immediate events as they unfold.

***For those who might be interested, I have published a new book Willful Ignorance and Stupid Political Decisions (Amazon). I offer an abundance of strategies and tactics both top down and bottom up approaches to combatting the rise of authoritarianism and oligarchy in America.

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