Below is a software-assisted verbatim transcript of the October 18 NO KINGS rally in DC. My report and reflections on the event are forthcoming, but as I have been told today’s youth find showing up to in-person protests “Cheugy,” I wanted to give them the opportunity to relive it from the comfort of their own phones.
Pastor Delonte Gholston – Lead Pastor of Peace Fellowship Church (Washington, D.C.)
Deirdre Schifeling – Chief Political & Advocacy Officer, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
Sarah Parker – Executive Director of Voices of Florida and 50501
Oliver Merino – Immigrant rights advocate, Immigrant Legal Resource Center
Afeni Evans – Community Organizer with the DC Fair Budget Coalition
Ai-jen Poo – President of the National Domestic Workers Alliance
Randi Weingarten – President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)
Nee Nee Taylor – Executive Director of Harriet’s Wildest Dreams
Keya Chatterjee – Co-founder of the Free DC movement and former head of US Climate Action Network
Leah Greenberg – Co-founder and Co-Executive Director of Indivisible
Ezra Levin, Co-founder and Co-Executive Director of Indivisible
Pastor Delonte Gholston – Lead Pastor of Peace Fellowship Church (Washington, D.C.)
If you came because you believe in peace today, come on and make some love out here. Let every hate-filled heart know that we are gathered here today for the purpose of extending and being people of peace. If you believe in that, why don’t you make them hear it one more time in here today?
As has been stated, my name is Pastor Delonte Gholston. I am the pastor of Peace Fellowship Church in Northeast DC. I’m born and raised here. Went to elementary school eight blocks away at 3rd and D Street Southeast. I’m so grateful to be able to stand in this moment.
I want to first, before I say anything else, remind us that we are standing on holy ground. I know that you thought that you came just to stand on Pennsylvania Avenue, but before there was a Pennsylvania Avenue, before there was a 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, before there was a 3rd and Pennsylvania Avenue, there were the Nacotchtank people. There were the Piscataway people. There were the Powhatan people here in this region, trading and living in peace with one another until people wearing collars like me decided to displace them.
And so we gather to remember that the land that we stand on is sacred land, and we acknowledge those who have come before us. We acknowledge the descendants of formerly indentured servants who then became slaves and traded with those Indigenous Americans on this land. And so you are standing on holy ground. Amen.
I want to give honor and gratitude to our Creator God and to each representative of our Creator who has gathered here today. I especially want to thank the representation of DC clergy who stand behind me and stand with me on this stage today. Showing you—come on and give them some love.
Standing with me today is Pastor Mark Thomas. Standing with me is Rabbi Esther Lederman. Standing with me—yeah, come on, give them love—standing with me today is Pastor Christopher Zacharias, Reverend Anthony Moore, Reverend Gayle Fisher-Stewart, Ms. Stephanie Thomas Gordon, Brother Sim J. Singh Attariwala, Reverend Terrance McKinley, and Sister Nada Zohdy. If I butchered anybody’s name, as we say in our tradition, please charge it to my head and not to my heart.
In my tradition there is a story in the book of Daniel in the third chapter, a story that you can find in the Hebrew Bible. It’s about three brothers named Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And there was a king in the land in those days, and that king’s name was Nebuchadnezzar. He was a narcissistic king. He was a prideful king. He believed that neighbors should turn against neighbors instead of loving neighbors. He believed in the occupation of territory and not the blessing of sacred land. And he told everybody in the land that they had to bow down and worship him.
They erected a golden statue of him and put it on the National Mall—I mean, and put it in their land at that time. And those who were gathered there, those three sacred vessels of holiness, they refused to bow to that king. And I just believe that we have a few folk who are here today who are willing to stand with me and simply say we will not bow.
No, we won’t bow to any power that traffics in fear and division. We will not bow. We won’t bow to an empire or to a regime that believes in separating us by the documentation that we carry, or the faith that we witness to, or the people that we love, or the places that we come from, because our God knows the places that we are going. Our God is not concerned about where we came from. The God I serve takes us wherever we came from and tells us that you are the beloved of God.
I desire, I encourage you brothers and sisters, siblings, that are gathered here together, look to your right, look to your left. There is a simple principle that I learned from Bishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa, who stood for decades against apartheid. And he simply taught us to look each other in the eye with a principle that we call the Sawabona principle. The Sawabona principle means I see you. And right now, I encourage you, siblings that are gathered here, use your eyes. Use your eyes. Look to your left. You don’t have to say a word. Look to your right. Embrace that loved one that’s there with your eyes and show them even now as we gather here, I see you.
A people, a people who can see each other can remind each other of our collective sacredness. A people who can see each other cannot unsee it when our babies are being pulled out of cars on their way to be dropped off at school. A people who can see each other cannot unsee mass ICE agents pulling up in our city and cities around the country. A people who can see each other cannot unsee wickedness and spiritual wickedness in high places. But a people who see each other cannot unsee hypocrisy in the land. But a people who are determined to see each other will collectively say we will not.
And I can see those three boys standing there, standing in clear defiance to the edict of an unjust ruler. And I can still hear them saying with me, saying with you, saying with people gathered all across this country today, to say that because I see my neighbor, we will not bow. Because I love my neighbor, we will not bow. My neighbor, we will not. Because greater is the one that’s in me than the one that’s in the world.
I gotta say one name. That name is Bishop Kenneth Moles. None of you may know who he is. None of you may have never heard his name. But I was a boy, I was raised in the Baptist church. And every now and then we also whistled it down the street to Greater Mount Calvary Holy Church. And that means when folk fall out and folk, folk, folk, folk get happy and folk dance all over the church. And there was a man there named Bishop Kenneth Moles. And he simply said these words. He said, because our God is the greatest power, we will not be defeated.
And I’ll say it again. I know you may not have seen you in Sunday school or Sabbath school or at the mosque or at the temple, but our God is the greatest power. And any kind of religion that is bound up and caught up in fear, any kind of religion that is bound up and caught up in hate, any kind of religion that is not characterized by love, beloved of God, throw it away. Throw it away. Throw it away.
But I am believing that there are people rising up all over this nation. There are people rising up all over this land, this sacred land. I’m believing that there are people rising up all over this world who will not bow to hatred, who will not bow to corruption, who will not bow to hypocrisy, who will not bow to fear, who will not bow to suspicion, who will not bow to political violence, who will not bow to a kind of religion that wants to be close to power but won’t empower anybody else. We will not.
[Announcer] Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the junior senator from Connecticut who is leading the fight against Trump’s authoritarian power grab in the Senate and understands the only thing with the power to stop would-be despots from converting a democracy to an autocracy is mass mobilization by the people. Welcome Senator Chris Murphy.
Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT)
You all know where you are, right? You are in the people’s capital. I want to bring you greetings from Connecticut, the state that invented the submarine, the helicopter, the hamburger, the wiffle ball, and PEZ. On our license plates, though, there’s a very simple statement. It says, Connecticut, the Constitution. We were the first state to adopt our own constitution. In my state, we couldn’t wait to be self-governed. We couldn’t wait to throw off the yoke of control and censorship from us. Before any other state, before our founding fathers, we wrote down in Connecticut the simple words, no kings.
And I’m here today to share with you some unsurprising news. We are not on the verge of an authoritarian takeover. We are in the middle of an authoritarian takeover. But Trump has not won. Our democracy is in peril, but it can be saved. But no one’s riding to our rescue. And I just want to be clear with you about that today. No one’s riding to our rescue. There aren’t establishment responsible Republicans that are riding to our rescue. The mainstream media isn’t riding to our rescue. There’s no oligarchs riding to our rescue. It is up to us to save us.
Now recently, when I gave this warning that we are in the middle of that totalitarian takeover, one of my colleagues said, well, you know, be careful. You don’t want to scare people, but you guys can handle the truth, right? You guys deserve the truth, right? The truth is that Donald Trump is the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America. The truth is that he is enacting a detailed, step-by-step plan to try to destroy all of the things that protect our democracy—free speech, fair elections, an independent press, the right to peacefully protest.
But the truth is also this: he has not won yet. The people still rule in this country. Today, and today all across America, in numbers that may eclipse any day of protest in our nation’s history, Americans are saying loudly and proudly that we are a free people. We are not a people that can be ruled. Our government is not for sale.
I want to be honest with you about what’s going on, and you know it. As we stand here today, the government is shut down, and shutdowns are painful. They hurt people. And frankly, that’s why there was not a single government shutdown when Joe Biden was president and Democrats were in charge of Congress. Because we acted like adults, we negotiated with Republicans, we found common ground, we kept the government open. But today, Trump is telling Republicans that they shouldn’t even show up in Washington, D.C. The House Republicans have been on an unplanned vacation from D.C. for five weeks.
And there’s a couple reasons for that. First, they’re trying to cover up for rich billionaire pedophiles. But second, because Trump does think that he’s a king, and he thinks that he can act more corruptly when the government is shut down. But he cannot. He doesn’t have new powers, extra powers in a shutdown. The president of the United States, during a shutdown or even when the government is open, does not have the power to send masked men into our cities and pull off the streets our peaceful neighbors and throw them into the back of vans and into prisons. He never has that power. Whether it’s a shutdown or not, the president of the United States does not have the power to use the FCC and the Department of Justice to censor our speech, to tell us that we cannot speak truth to power when we are protecting our democracy. He never has that power.
And let me just say that I’m very proud of my Democratic colleagues who have drawn a line in the sand. And let me just speak for myself for a moment about this shutdown. I will not vote for a budget that throws millions of people off their health care just to pay for a tax cut for billionaires and corporations. And I will not vote for a budget that doesn’t put some serious checks on President Trump’s destruction of our democracy. In fact, no Democrat has a moral obligation to vote for a budget that just pays the bills for Donald Trump’s political witch hunts. So this is a moment for the people to work with me in this Capitol to draw a moral line in the sands. And this is a moment for all of you to stand up and speak up.
Listen, President Trump thinks that he can bully us into silence. He thinks that he can intimidate us into sitting this fight out. But judging by the number of people here today, judging by the number of people standing up all across this country, he thinks he can silence us, he thinks he can bully us, but he cannot and he will not.
And the last thing I want to say to you is this. It’s a simple thing. I get it that when you wake up in the morning, like me, you are filled with anxiousness, with anger about what is happening in this country. But I also want you to feel something else. Because this experiment, 250 years in, this bold, revolutionary experiment of self-governance in a nation that is a melting pot, where we are stronger because our difference is from each other—that is a miracle that it has lasted for this long.
And every single one of us needs to understand that when we wake up every day, we have an obligation, a duty, a responsibility to fight hard to protect that bold experiment. So I wake up every day filled with that same anger and anxiety, but I feel lucky that I am on earth at a moment where I can stand up on my two feet and have something to say about maybe the most defining fight of our lifetime—to protect American democracy from ruin. I feel anger and anxiety, but I frankly feel joy that I have something to say and that I can tell my kids and my grandkids that when the moment came, I stood up to protect and save American democracy from ruin.
And so you got a lot of awesome speakers here today. I heard a rumor that a guy named Bernie Sanders is in the house. I understand the role that I play. I’m just the opening act for Bernie, all right? But listen, I’m just, I’m super proud of being here with you. I’m optimistic. I’m bullish about our ability to win this fight, and it’s because 400 years ago, in the small but mighty state of Connecticut, we wrote down on a piece of paper a really simple idea: In America, the people rule. In America, there are no kings. Thanks, Washington, D.C. I appreciate it. Go out there and fight for our country.
[Announcer] And now, let’s give a warm welcome to Mehdi Hassan, founder and CEO and editor-in-chief of the new media company Zateo.
Mehdi Hasan – Journalist and Editor-in-Chief of Zeteo
Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, friends, my name is Mehdi Hassan, I am a journalist, I am an immigrant, and I am a Muslim. I am everything Donald Trump loves. I am the Trump trifecta. I’m also a bit of a socialist. But shhh, don’t tell Stephen Miller, he alarms quite quickly.
Can I just say it is so heartwarming to see so many of you out here in DC today. DC make some noise! We need to make sure today that they hear us in the White House and in the Capitol. All week I’ve heard Speaker Mike Johnson and Republican members of Congress say this rally, the No Kings rally, is a hate rally. A hate rally. The people who can’t get through a single day without hating on late night comedians, and overweight soldiers, and Muslim politicians, and Mexican immigrants, and Palestinian refugees, and black women, and transgender kids, and peaceful protesters, and Mr. Fucking Potato Head, they are lecturing us on hate? Really?
I’m not here out of hate. I’m here out of love. I’m here because I love this country. I love America. I love the First Amendment. I love our democracy. I love our diversity. Yes, our diversity. And I am not willing to sit back and watch our glorious American multiracial, multicultural, democratic experiment, our constitutional republic, destroyed by the guy from Home Alone 2. Not going to do it. Because I did not inherit America. I did not inherit America. I chose America. I wasn’t born here. I immigrated here. And we immigrants, we love this country often more than the people who were born here. Because we chose to move here, live here, swear an oath to the constitution here. An oath that the guy down the street violates every morning and every night.
The great irony is, of course, that Donald Trump is the son of an immigrant, the grandson of an immigrant, and married to an immigrant. In fact, two of his three wives were immigrants, proving yet again that immigrants will do the jobs that even Americans are not willing to do. I immigrated here from the United Kingdom. You want to talk about no kings? The UK still has a king. King Charles III. But even he has less gold in his palace than Donald Trump has in the Oval Office right now. Even King Charles has more respect for democratic norms and traditions than the whiny authoritarian manchild trying to send troops into as many blue cities as he can.
This is a president who says he wants to be a dictator, but only for a day. Well, we are now 271 days into his wannabe dictatorship. He just went to see the Egyptian President Sisi, who is a military dictator, runs one of the most repressive regimes on earth. And he went there and he said, I want to praise your fantastic leadership and your low crime rates. This is who he loves. This is the autocratic leader he aspires to be. And of course, he was in Egypt hailing his Gaza peace plan, which is a ceasefire, yes, but not a peace plan.
Donald Trump, the man who uses Palestinian as a pejorative, as a slur, has no plan for Palestinian freedom, no plan for Palestinian statehood, no plan for justice for the Palestinians who have been massacred and starved and genocided and ethnically cleansed for the past two years, including the past night. Meanwhile, Israel for the past week has violated the ceasefire again and again, killing Palestinians with impunity. Yesterday they killed seven Palestinian children during the ceasefire. There is no peace in the Middle East because, as Dr. King said, peace is not just the absence of violence, it is the presence of justice.
So these are dark times. Genocide abroad, fascism at home, which is why it’s so crucial that we gather, we organize, we rally like this. We mobilize, we pluralize, we bring people into the tent, we register voters, we defend voters, we become voters if we’re not already. And you know, they say we don’t reach out to the other side, we don’t reach out to Conservatives or Republicans, that we’re in an echo chamber. Well let me say to every Republican and Conservative watching, aren’t you the ones who said no more big government, no tyranny in America? So if you believe that, what are you doing, defending masked federal agents in unmarked cars, bundling people off of the streets, including American citizens, and disappearing them? How are you okay with that?
And if you’re not okay with it, then come over to our side. The side of the Democrats. The small D Democrats, not the big D Democrats, not the Democratic Party. Those of us who are from all parties and none. But those of us who care about saving America so that we can get to our 250th birthday and still be free when we reach 250 years. Come over to our side, the side of no crowns, no thrones, no kings. The side of freedom, of liberty, of the constitution. The First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, the Twenty-Second Amendment, which says two terms means two terms.
And if you’re not worried about Donald Trump trying to stay on for a third term, you should be. He’s literally selling merch. So I worry about free and fair elections in 2028. But then I say, why should I worry? I see all of you here today. What is there to worry about? We here today are not spectators. We are citizens. We are not bystanders. We are proud and patriotic Americans. And we Americans, we the people, will not allow our country to be taken over by demagogues and dictators. We will not stand for it.
So let me ask you this. I need to hear you. Are you willing? Are you willing? Up to this, are you willing to sit back and let Trump shred our freedoms? I can’t hear you DC, they need to hear you in the White House. Are you willing to let Trump shred our freedoms? Are you willing to sit back and bend the knee to fascists and white supremacists? Are you willing to be the Americans on whose watch democracy died? Good, because people power is our last line of defense.
Remember this, Donald Trump has never, ever, not in three elections, won a majority of the vote. Never. And I’ll say this to you. I’ll say this to you. Here’s the matter they are scared of. There are more of us than there are of them. We are the majority. Say it with me. We are the majority. They’re not loud enough today. Come on, louder. We are the majority. Yes, we are.
And we have no intention of losing our country, our democracy, our freedoms to that twice impeached convicted criminal and his gang of grifters. No way. We will out-organize them, we will out-vote them, we will outlast them. Because when I see you all out here today, when I see you all out here today in your thousands, in millions across the country, I have hope. I have faith that America can defeat this fascist threat, this authoritarian mania, this MAGA cult, and save our freedoms. And I also have faith and hope that one day, one day soon, the Palestinians will be free.
Thank you very much for your time. God bless you all.
[Announcer] Ladies and gentlemen, let’s give a warm Washington, D.C. welcome to Deirdre Schifeling, Chief Political and Advocacy Officer of the American Civil Liberties Union, who leads the ACLU’s policy, campaigns, and organizing work to fight for civil rights and liberties nationwide. And Sarah Parker, Executive Director of Voices of Florida.
Deirdre Schifeling – Chief Political & Advocacy Officer, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
Hello, everyone. Hello, D.C. You look so beautiful. I wish you could see yourselves from here. You look amazing. You look powerful. I’m Deirdre Sheafley. I’m the Chief Political and Advocacy Officer for the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union, and a proud Washingtonian. I’m so thrilled to be here with you, my community, today, doing the most patriotic and American thing that we can do—peacefully, lawfully protesting the Trump administration’s abuses of power and exercising our First Amendment rights.
After all, our country has a 250-year-old history of disagreeing in public, and we are not about to stop now. For more than 100 years, the ACLU has defended our country’s freedom, especially the First Amendment freedom of speech. It’s not just our opinion that everyone is entitled to their beliefs without fear of punishment. It’s in our country’s constitution. It’s the cornerstone of our democracy. Our basic American freedoms are not something that any president can take away from us.
So why is Trump trying? What is he so afraid of? This moment is so much bigger than a political disagreement. It’s about standing up for our rights and the future of democracy. The democracy we want is a country of freedom, a country of equals, a country of due process and laws that apply to everyone. Not a country where masked ICE agents kidnap people out of their beds in the middle of the night, where they zip tie terrified children together. No. Not a country that tells schools and universities to teach ideology instead of facts, and certainly not a country that sends armed troops into our cities to scare us into silence.
I refuse to allow that version of our country to be silenced, and I know you do too. The courage that we are creating here today across the nation is contagious, it’s powerful, and it’s exactly what they’re afraid of. I want to tell you something I’ve learned. The best way to protect our freedom is to act free.
I was in my hometown of Buffalo, New York a couple months ago, and I saw a new billboard up from the Buffalo Public Library. It said, Free People Read Freely. Free People Read Freely. Four words. I was so struck by the simplicity and the power of that statement and by the fact that the public library felt the need to make it. Free people read freely. They think freely. They protest freely. They act free.
The best way to protect our freedom is to act free. Thank you for doing that today. Thank you for your courage. It’s powerful, and it’s contagious. We live in a democracy, and we are going to act free. And with that, I’ll turn it over to Sarah Parker.
Sarah Parker – Executive Director of Voices of Florida and 50501
My name is Sarah Parker, and I’m the executive director of Voices of Florida and a national coordinator with 5051. But most importantly, I am a southern black woman, a proud Floridian, and a mother. I was taught to speak up for what’s right, and to stand against injustice, to place my little hands over my heart, and to believe liberty and justice for all amidst something real. But what I once believed America was, is being crushed under the boot of this administration.
I should be at home with my children, raising them to believe in the promise of this country, not standing here demanding the right that should never have been up for debate. I am honored to be here today, but this is not what I dreamed of. I never dreamed I’d be standing on a stage like this while millions of people are forced to march and protest peacefully in the streets because we refuse to stand by while this country slips into the iron grip of authoritarianism.
And I ask this administration now: when we say, with liberty and justice for all, who is all to this administration? Because this administration has made it painfully clear. It sure as hell ain’t the people who need access to abortion care. It damn sure ain’t the people and their families being ripped apart by deportation and kidnapped in the dead of night. It’s not our LGBTQ communities and BIPOC communities being criminalized just for existing. And it damn sure ain’t the people marching for justice while the National Guard is unleashed on peaceful protesters in their own streets.
Contrary to popular belief, the fabric of this country wasn’t woven by oligarchs, corporations, or power-hungry politicians. It was stitched together by workers, by immigrants, by black and brown communities, by women, by queer folks, and by people who refuse to stay quiet in the face of injustice. This movement was made by the people. This movement, No Kings, was named by the people. This movement is the people. And newsflash to this administration and for the people who need it, this country was built on protests.
Some of the most important changes in our history happened because of everyday Americans dressed like us. And now, those in power are trying to unravel it, thread by thread, taking away rights, stripping away dignity, rewriting what freedom actually means. They’ve tried to silence us with fear. They’ve tried to gaslight us with lies. And politicians have stood in front of the cameras, smugly, I may say, peddling smear after smear. Because it’s easier for them to smear the American people than to recognize what they’re doing to this country. And where I come from, we call that cowardice.
We refuse. I refuse to let this become our reality. It is our duty. It is our right as Americans to dissent when democracy is under threat. Let me be clear. Democracy dies when we are silent. But democracy is reborn when we speak with courage. And authoritarianism cannot withstand truth. It crumbles under the power of love and dissent. And as leaders before me have said, courage is not the absence of fear. It is the choice to act despite of it.
And for what it’s worth, I am proud of each and every courageous leader that is taking the streets today. We are peaceful because we know that’s how real change is created. We are fighting because we love our communities and we love our country. We are using our voices because it is our right and an American right. And anyone who says otherwise is not only lying to the American people, they are lying to themselves, and I don’t know how they sleep at night.
And like we say in the South, a hit dog will holler, and I’m hearing a lot of hollering coming from the Capitol building. The American people are pissed. And I would like to say before I go, I want to thank every last one of you. I want to thank all the organizers of 5051. I want to thank Political Revolution, who’s a national partner. But I want to thank our children. I want to thank our teachers. I want to thank your hearts for doing this and being out here in the street when they tried to make you afraid.
The message today will be crystal clear, and they won’t be able to ignore it. There will be no kings in America, not today, not tomorrow, not ever. Thank you.
[Announcer] Please welcome to our stage Oliver Marino from Immigrant Legal Resource Center and member of El Colectivo de Familias Migrantes. and Afeni Evans, Community Organizer with the Fair Budget Coalition.
Oliver Merino – Immigrant rights advocate, Immigrant Legal Resource Center
Thank you. Good morning. Earlier this year, as the Trump administration began its anti-immigrant attacks from the White House, the Colectivo de Familias Migrantes, a group of families and organizers, came together to find community and ways to protect each other. We knew what was coming, and why we needed to fight back, organize, and take care of each other.
In the last few months, we have witnessed masked ICE agents, National Guard, and DC’s own Metropolitan Police Department work together to abduct our community members. People have been detained while going to work, at local parks, in front of schools. Hundreds of people have been separated from their families, their loved ones, and our community. This is still happening.
Just a few blocks from here, people have been racially profiled, handcuffed, and put in vehicles and taken—sometimes transferred to detention centers hundreds of miles away, in states like Louisiana, Alabama, and Georgia, away from family and away from legal counsel. And to be clear, here in D.C., the anti-immigrant attacks have come not only from the White House, but also from our own mayor, Mayor Bowser.
Mayor Bowser tried to repeal D.C.’s Sanctuary Values Act, a local law that limits collaboration between MPD, the local police, and ICE. But while politicians have failed us, it’s been D.C. residents that have stepped up. We have seen our people go out and film acts of abuse in the streets, share know-your-rights information, provide mutual support to families of people detained, and organize to protect their immigrant neighbors.
This is the moment to show solidarity, to reject attempts to dehumanize and criminalize our immigrant community, to hold our elected officials accountable, and to force them to stand up to an authoritarian administration that does not care about due process and people’s constitutional rights. In order for the Trump administration to carry out its plans, it needs compliance from the public and from local governments. We must not comply.
We need to do all that’s in our power to protect immigrant families and our neighbors. We need us. We need you. We need each other to protect families, not feds. Thank you.
Afeni Evans – Community Organizer with the DC Fair Budget Coalition
Peace, y’all. My name is Afeni, and I’m a community organizer with the Fair Budget Coalition here in D.C. And this is my appeal.
In 1792, when the French monarchy was abolished, the people established a new, a new republic. And that one didn’t quite work out. It was a military dictatorship. Yikes. It was abolished in 1848, and a second republic was established. But that one didn’t quite fit. So the third republic was erected in 1870. That republic didn’t smell right, though. So they tried a fourth republic in 1946. And the republic that we are witnessing right now in France was established in 1958.
My fellow Americans, I am here to tell you that the social contract in this country has been broken. Decades of movement, work, progress, and struggle have been wiped out by Christian nationalists who seek dominion over every aspect of our lives. Long before ICE started terrorizing our streets, the police were gunning down black people in their homes, their cars, and in the streets in front of their communities. The construction of cop cities and the strengthening police state have threatened our urban centers for years. This current escalation in state violence is nothing more than an extension of the violence that marginalized communities have been bearing the brunt of.
This republic was sold as our American dream, home of the free, land of the brave. Yet it has reduced the outcome that we are currently experiencing—a system that edifies oligarchs and creates false monarchs. The society that we live in is what got us here. It is what brought us to this fever pitch. But we do not have to stay here.
Now, more than ever, we need to reimagine a society that holds all of our humanity to the highest priority. We need a humane economy. We need well-funded public education. We need affordable housing and health care that does not bankrupt families that are just trying to get by. We need strategic youth investment in music, arts, and recreation. Our children need access to clean water and fresh food.
In this moment, we need community. We need compassion. We need love and radical imagination. And most, most importantly, we need each other. Because the social contract has been broken. But we, the people, must revive it. We, the people, can be stewards for a land of the free. We, the people, can be brave and make this broken house into a home for all of us.
Because we are the source of power in this country. Our labor, our taxes, and our faith keep this system going. So we must have the revolutionary hope that collectively we, the powerful people, have the capacity to create something better. I’m here to tell you that we must be audacious in our pursuit of fulfilling that generational mandate. Because with public sentiment, nothing can fail. And without it, this system cannot succeed.
[Announcer] And now welcome to the stage, an American science educator, engineer, comedian, television presenter, inventor, keynote speaker, and author. He is a respected champion of scientific literacy, who has challenged opponents of evidence-based education and policy on climate change, evolution, and critical thinking. Please welcome Bill Nye, the Science Guy.
Bill Nye the Science Guy
We love that song. Hello, DC. Fellow citizens. It is wonderful to see so many of us out here today. We are here for the same reason our ancestors gathered here in 1776. We want our government to run without a king. Our government is based on ideas, embodied in the Constitution. Among other remarkable features, it guarantees our freedom to speak, as we’re doing here today. Rather than doing one monarch’s bidding, we have agreed to form a democracy, to work together, and to follow the laws that derive from it. No thrones. No crowns. No kings.
As many of you know, I am a native Washingtonian. I grew up here within the city boundaries. And when you grow up here, the affairs of the federal government are very much a part of your life. I remember well sitting on my father’s shoulders and waving to astronauts as we as a nation celebrated their accomplishments back in 1964. In 1964, that was the first year my parents could vote for president as citizens of the District of Columbia. We still do not have voting representation in the district. Someday, perhaps.
I remember well Martin Luther King’s dream and Resurrection City, the plywood structures on the National Mall erected to house protesters who came to town demanding equal rights and opportunities, barely a month after Dr. King had been assassinated. I remember well the Vietnam War. The mall was shoulder to shoulder, much as it is today. Traffic stopped citywide. The protest movement expanded. There were protests around the country, and the war was ended. We are protesting in the same fashion today. Only today, the stakes are higher. Rather than abandoning a war against an elusive, perhaps sometimes imaginary foe, we are confronting the possible end of our republic.
We are here to tell our lawmakers that what’s going on in our government is wrong. They must stop the abuses of this petulant president and his circle of sycophants. No thrones. No crowns. No kings. This president and his associates cannot tolerate dissent. To them, our free speech is frightening. They are arresting people and denying due process in courts. They tried to silence television hosts. They’re trying to fire our indicted civil servants, prosecutors, judges, even their own cabinet members.
But in this land, these sorts of actions are not new. In 1776, our ancestors had had enough. They declared independence from a king by means of a document stored safely right over there on Constitution Avenue in the National Archive. Although it was conceived 249 years ago, the Declaration of Independence describes a train of abuses connected with an absolute authority, a king with absolute power. No thrones, no crowns, no kings.
Their king had refused to honor the law. Their king had refused to let lawmakers be elected. The king had made court judges dependent on his will. They cited the king sending, quote, swarms of officers to harass our people. Their language referred to, quote, cruelty and faithlessness scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous of ages. Their king was trying to, quote, render the military independent and superior to civil power. Our founders even censured King George for cutting off trade with all parts of the world. Did these actions sound familiar? 249 years later—no crowns, no thrones, no king.
In short, the founders believed their king was, in their words, quote, totally unworthy to be the head of a civilized nation. No thrones. No crowns. No kings. Although the United States has been the world’s leader in science for decades, this president … has failed to accept scientific facts. Contrary to Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, they do not promote the progress of science. They suppress it to the detriment of our health, well-being, and international competitiveness. It is a formula for failure.
How did we get here? It hasn’t been one instance of abuse of the power of executive order by this president. It hasn’t been just one twist in a court ruling. Instead, it has been years in the making. Enabled by this president, a group of Confederates has worked together to undo many of our traditions and understandings of fairness and of citizens’ rights. And they’ve done this through an odd legal tactic—to overwhelm our court system with legal game after legal game, trying to hold or impound money secretly in order to let legal deadlines pass, to pretend that people they don’t know, from different backgrounds, are somehow not quite citizens and not worthy of respect under the law.
No thrones. No crowns. No kings. Let us now raise our voices. We are here demanding a return to the rule of law. Let the world know that we will suffer no king. We will put the United States to lead the world in fair governance. Together, no thrones. No crowns. No kings. Thank you all. Let’s change the world.
Announcer] Ladies and gentlemen, now please welcome Ai-jen Poo, a care advocate and organizer who serves as executive director of Caring Across Generations and president of the National Domestic Work Alliance and Care in Action. And Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.
Ai-jen Poo – President of the National Domestic Workers Alliance
Hello, DC! Let me hear you say, no kings! I’m so proud to share the stage today with my brilliant friend and sister hero, Randi Weingarten. And I bring greetings from the great city of Chicago. And I bring love from the caregivers all over this country.
Caregivers and workers who guard the safety and well-being of our children and enable the dignity and agency of older people and disabled people in our lives all over this country. We are out marching in cities and towns all over this country today because we see what’s happening. Parents unable to afford life-saving medicine for their children. Caregivers losing their health care and their ability to take care of the people they love. Disabled people forced into institutions because their caregivers have been taken by ICE. Mothers violently torn from their children by armed, masked men with no due process.
This administration has broken the law, lied, stolen our care, and is attempting to steal our constitutional rights and freedoms. They think they will get away with it. They will not. There are no kings in America.
And you know what else I see? I see parents, caregivers, and teachers working together to make sure that immigrant children can go to school safely. I see unions and families organizing together and winning in states like Michigan, where 32,000 home care workers just won a union. And in New Mexico, where child care is now free for everyone who needs it.
It’s the bravery of everyday people coming together to protect each other, to push for a good life for our families in America. We can win! We are the caring majority, and we are greater than the cruelty of wannabe kings. So let’s remember the strength of our numbers today. Let’s remember that we are not alone. We are the caring majority. And let us continue to be brave.
Are you with me? Are you with me?
Randi Weingarten – President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)
Thank you, Washington, D.C. From up here, you cannot see the perimeter. There are so many people who want to fight for our democracy and say no kings. And what I’ve just been told, that in New York City, there are more people in Times Square than there are on New Year’s Eve.
I want to thank my colleague and friend and sister, Ai-jen, for all of her advocacy. And she knows, like I know, you cannot do any of the things that Ai-jen talked about if we do not have a democracy. And today, we are saying, we are fighting for our democracy. We in the labor movement are fighting for a democracy and a voice in it so we can secure a better life for all working people. All of God’s children. Better wages, affordable health care and child care, good schools for children, and a secure retirement. Tell me, what is radical about all of that?
But today, I speak not only as the proud leader of a 1.8 million member union of people who make a difference in the lives of others, but I speak as a teacher, a high school social studies teacher. Yes, let’s hear it for the teachers of America. A teacher who taught students about the Constitution and its underlying principle, we the people. We the people are a country that is governed by the rule of law, not the rule of one man. We are governed by fairness, not fear or favor.
Now this idea, as you’ve heard before—so you can go and say to your kids right now, this is your homework for the weekend, okay?—this idea has been a constant for 249 years, since the Declaration of Independence, and the notion made famous by the Gettysburg Address of a government by, for, and of the people. Say it again: by, for, and of the people.
Now, we know the founders were not perfect. But they had one abiding principle, and that is and was that we as a nation should never, ever again be ruled by a tyrant or a king. That was as true today as it was back then. And that is why, that is why millions of people today from all walks of life are turning out at these thousands of events. Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Black, Brown, White, this 68-year-old Jewish baby boomer, Muslim small business owners, Christian Gen Z-ers—this is, as Aung San Suu Kyi said, we are the majority of America.
And what do we want? What do we want? We want the promise of America for everyone. We want a voice in our future. We are standing up in peaceful, patriotic protest, just like our founders called out. No thrones, no crowns, no kings. We are standing up because we don’t want our streets militarized. We don’t want our neighbors disappeared by masked agents. We don’t want our colleges forced to sign loyalty oaths. We don’t want—wait, what?—we don’t want public officials arrested on trumped up political charges.
And, this is a little different, we want our federal government to fix the healthcare crisis that was created by the big ugly bill Republicans passed in July. We want a president who will keep health care premiums down, bring down the cost of groceries and housing, strengthen public schools, make college affordable, and embrace workers’ rights. Again, what is radical about any of that? Exactly.
We want the president to spend his time solving our country’s problems, not settling scores with political opponents. We want a future that is based on fairness and justice and the rule of law, not chaos, corruption, or cruelty. So, I’m going to end with a couple of labor slogans here. Because my friends, we are in an existential fight. And right now, we all have to organize and be stronger and bolder because no one is going to save us but ourselves.
We’ve got a lot of sayings in labor, but the first one is, when we fight, we fight. When we fight, we win. When we fight, we win. And the second is the people united will never be defeated. The people united will never be defeated. The people united will never be defeated or divided. Either one is fine. So, are we united tonight? Will we fight for our democracy?
[Announcer] Now, please welcome the co-founder of the Black Votes Matter Fund, and one of the leading voices of the Black Votes, Cliff Albright. He is joined by 10th grader Zion, a youth student advocate from the Trigger Project.
Zion Stewart
Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Zion Stewart, and I’m from Dabney Street, Southeast, better known as Trauma City. I grew up around a lot of trauma and violence, like many kids in my neighborhood. I got connected to the Sugar Project through one of my mentors. Going through Sugar University, I felt something I never felt before—a safe space. People who believed in me and a chance to learn the real causes and the disease of gun violence.
More police doesn’t fix what’s really going on. It just adds more confusion and chaos. It doesn’t heal our pain. It doesn’t give us opportunities or make us feel safe in our neighborhoods. Saying fuck Trump or fuck ICE will be what he expects from me, but that’s not what we need. What we need is prevention, support, and spaces where black youth can thrive.
If every home had the support it needed, if every community member was emotionally aware and mentally healthy, if schools didn’t push us towards the prison pipeline, and if the city investigated me before the first time I was profiled, we wouldn’t be here. You are the solution, not the problem. We deserve to be understood, not blamed or preyed upon. Free DC, we are prevention. Thank you.
Cliff Albright – Co-founder of Black Voters Matter
Last time I was here, speaking at a rally like this, was 2021, for the Freedom Rides, where Black Voters Matter and dozens of other organizations organized for voting rights legislation, like the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancing Act, and the For the People Act. And HR 51, D.C. Statehood!
When I say D.C., you say Statehood. D.C.! Statehood! We organized for those voting rights because we knew that we’d be in a moment like this. A moment where we have a wannabe dictator and a do-nothing Congress trying to take away our voting rights. Trying to cancel elections and purge voters from the rolls. We knew it was coming.
Just this week the Supreme Court heard a case that could put the final death blow to the Voting Rights Act. It could eliminate black representation for black communities, and it can create at least 19 seats that are currently protected by the Voting Rights Act that would be eliminated by many of these red states. And this is happening at a time when we are seeing mid-decade redistricting in places like Texas and Missouri, because we have somebody who wants to be a king.
We have somebody who, just like he said to Georgia, “Go find me 11,700 votes,” he’s trying to tell these states, “Go find me 10 extra congressional seats or 15 seats or 20 seats.” And this could create a permanent one-party rule, at the expense of black voters in black communities. But like so many other issues that are rooted in anti-blackness, that sickness won’t just stay within a black community—it affects this entire country.
And so we join you in saying, no kings. But we gotta go beyond no kings, because the last time that call was made in 1776, one fourth of this country’s population was enslaved. And so we’ve got to go beyond no kings. We’ve got to recognize that they have used divide and conquer ever since that time in 76—or ever since 1619—to keep us divided, to divide those who were enslaved from those who were poor whites, to divide us from those Indigenous brothers and sisters. They’ve been using that divide and conquer tactic, and they’re still using it today to keep us divided, all of our communities.
But I’ve got some good news for you. Because what I know is this: if divide and conquer is one of the oldest tricks in the books, then by definition one of the most revolutionary acts of resistance is simply to be united. For us to stand together, to stand together, to sing together, to laugh together, to fight together.
Power to the people, yes, because what I also know is this: their hate cannot beat our love. And when I talk about our love, I’m not talking about a Valentine’s Day kind of love. I’m talking about a radical love. I’m talking about a—you might have to flip over the money-changing tables—I’m talking about a love that is merged with power because those two things are not opposite; they go together.
As Dr. King told us, power without love is reckless and abusive, but love without power is sentimental and anemic. That’s what I’m talking about. He went on to say that power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. And justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. That’s what we need.
And when we have that kind of love and power, when we walk in that kind of love and power that sees all of our communities—from Vermont all the way to New York, from L.A. all the way over to D.C., especially Southeast D.C.—when we walk in that kind of love and power, there ain’t nothing that a wannabe small, petty dictator can do to stop us. Because when we walk in that kind of love and power, there’s nothing that we can’t do.
But we’ve got to believe we’ve got that power. Do y’all believe? Do you believe? Let me hear you say, I believe. Let me hear you say it with all your heart from the depths of your soul, say I believe. Let me see you put a fist up and say it so loud that the wannabe small man in the White House can hear you—say I believe.
And when we believe that, we will truly build the society that we want, and that society will have no kings. Thank y’all.
[Announcer] Now, please welcome Jay Brown, Chief of Staff for the Human Rights Campaign, and Shawn Skelly, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Readiness in the Biden administration and co-founder of OUT in National Security.
Jay Brown – Chief of Staff, Human Rights Campaign (HRC)
Hello, DC! My name is Jay Brown, and I’m with the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights organization in the country. And I’m here today as a proud transgender American. I’m here to say this is my country, too.
You know, like so many of you, I came here today with my family and friends. My twin sister is somewhere out there in that crowd of people. And growing up, we—you know—she fit the mold of what people expected. You could say I broke the mold. But our parents loved us just the same. You know, we didn’t know anybody transgender. We didn’t even know the word. But they gave us the love and the support that we needed to thrive, and now I’m a dad with an amazing family of my own. And I gotta tell you, that’s what freedom looks like—the freedom to live, and to be, and to raise our families as we see fit.
But this president, he has a darker vision for America. One where our families are told how to parent their children. Where doctors are forced to forego their oaths to do no harm. Where the government is ripping families apart and hurting our people. They’re cutting billions of dollars from HIV prevention and treatment. They’re banning our books. They’re firing teachers who use a student’s nickname. And they’re firing gay workers who put a pride flag on their desk.
But we’re all here because we believe in a better America. We believe in a country where kids can get equality and be free from bullying. Where love is love. Where freedom is afforded to all and not reserved for the wealthy few. That is America at its greatest. That is our America.
And on behalf of HRC’s 3.6 million members and supporters, I’m here to say that America does not and will not ever have a king. The truth is, no one rally is going to save us. No court ruling, no single election will save us. We have to save ourselves. We have to build workplaces that are safe, classrooms that are welcoming, communities where we see each other not as our enemies, but as our neighbors.
And we must always resist the temptation to believe only in the worst of this country. That’s what he wants. He wants us to be defeated. Are we going to be defeated? No. He wants us to be silent. Are we going to be silent? He wants us to be scared. Are we scared?
You know, we have the power to build a better tomorrow. LGBTQ plus people, we live in every zip code and are from every background. We were born here and we immigrated here. We come from red families and from blue families. And we are here to say that this is our America too.
No one knows that better. No one knows that better than my friend and a tireless public servant who’s on stage with me today. A true patriot who knows the cost of freedom. I’m proud to pass the mic to former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Readiness and our HRC board member, Shawn Skelly.
Shawn Skelly – Retired U.S. Navy Commander & former Assistant Secretary of Defense; Board member, Human Rights Campaign
Good afternoon, D.C. As Jay said, I’m Shawn Skelly, a retired Navy officer, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense, and I serve on the board of the Human Rights Campaign. I’m an out, proud trans woman who loves our country, who’s put my life on the line for our country and our rights, and I will fight for it now, using all the rights that the Constitution gives us, and I swore an oath to defend.
I was proud to recently serve alongside thousands of transgender service members who have served with honor, skill, and courage. They have protected us while their own Commander-in-Chief and Secretary of Defense have vilified them and denied their right to exist. Anyone who serves in uniform deserves so much better than what this tainted chain of command has to offer.
This administration targets these brave Americans because of its wanton campaign to drive me and all of my transgender brothers and sisters out of our country, out of our society, out of the protection of our laws, and into some dark, dangerous corner that they are inventing.
This wannabe autocrat can’t allow transgender Americans to serve honorably and successfully in our military, which is the highest regarded institution in America, when they have chosen all transgender Americans—already some of the most at-risk and vulnerable people in this country—to be their autocratic other. The people will be feared, scorned, and blamed because of their shameless lies, hateful lies that they tell about the danger that trans people supposedly bring to our society and somehow upset the utopia that the dear leader promised us is around every corner.
The American people respect those who put on their uniform, who protect them, and serve at the risk of their lives for people we don’t even know. We’re here today because generations of Americans have bet their lives and their families’ future on the promise of a more perfect union.
The oath I took ten times over 35 years of service in uniform and as a civilian means to every person who ever took it in good faith. And I’m going to quote the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley: We don’t take an oath to a king or a queen or to a tyrant or dictator. We don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator or to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution. And we take an oath to the idea that it’s America and we’re willing to die to protect it.
To put it simply, no kings. We demand justice for our transgender service members. We demand justice and civil rights for every transgender American. We demand justice and democracy for every single American. No kings! Thank you.
[Announcer] And now, please welcome to the stage Nee Nee Taylor, Executive Director of Harriet’s Wildest Dream, and Kea Chatterjee, Executive Director of Free DC.
Nee Nee Taylor – Executive Director of Harriet’s Wildest Dreams
I hear y’all say, welcome to D.C. I’m Nee Nee Taylor, I’m the co-founder and executive director of Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, named after our ancestor, Harriet Tubman. I am also the co-founder of Free D.C. I was born and raised right here in Southeast Washington, D.C.
As many of you know, we are in a state of grief for the loss of our freedom fighter, Assata Shakur. We honor her life, her courage, and her teaching. She told us that we need a revolution of the mind and a revolution of the heart. These words still lead me. Because this work begins in how we show up for one another, how we care for one another, and how we show up for one another.
Washington, D.C. is a Black home. We come here to Washington, D.C.—you came here to Washington, D.C.—that’s what you stepping in for. Home built by Black hands, held together by Black love, guarded by generations who refuse to leave. The people of D.C. have been teaching, protecting, and fighting for this city long before most of you stopped paying attention.
We have been living and breathing the consequences of racist policies, displacement, and over-policing since post–Civil War. We have been demanding and calling for D.C. to become a state. We need D.C. statehood now! D.C. statehood now! D.C. statehood now!
Our freedom watchers were up at the D.C. courts until the cell block closed, two o’clock in the morning. They were watching hearing after hearing after hearing of our neighbors being kidnapped over the weekend. We also have 300,000 Black women who have been fired in the last few months. Most of those are federal workers right here in the district. And we just listened to lawyers arguing at the Supreme Court that fixing the system to make it fair for Black people somehow harms white people. This is what we’re up against.
Black people’s freedom is being threatened by a felon democracy and punched by white fragile supremacy. Here in D.C., we have been organizing, protecting, and building long before cameras arrived. If you want to help, listen to those who have been doing this work before Trump came into office—before all of this came to play. Listen to the ones who’ve been on the ground ever since 400 years ago.
I see all of you right here, and y’all see me—all the applauses, and yet, when you are called to meet, when I call you to meet impacted Black people, where will you be? Ask yourself—where will you be? When our movements need funding, where will you be? When you are invited to teach, to share your skills, to support, strategize, and to defend Black people in public—where will you be? Think about what you do when you are called for it.
Community is responsibility, structure, and work. It’s both a noun and a verb. It’s the people, and it’s the people in motion. It’s how we build safety for each other. It’s how we keep us safe. Who keep us safe? We keep us safe. Who keep us safe? We keep us safe.
Black people have been carrying the moral weight of this world for generations. We have stood in the gap for every fight against oppression from Palestine to right here in D.C. because we believe everyone deserves to be free. We are not free until all of us are free.
And I’m gonna leave you with what a sister called me once again—”weapons of mass destruction and weapons of mass love.” She said it’s not enough to change the system, we must change ourselves. That kind of change requires that we hold the line for one another, protect Black people in public and in private. I see you, I see your faces, just like you see mine.
When I see you tomorrow, when I see you next month, when more of our rights are being stripped, and when more of our Black bodies are put in cages, don’t watch from the shadows. I charge you. I charge you to be on the front lines. I charge you to fight.
And we will not end because the day won’t end with this stage—when the stage comes down and the cameras leave. The fight for our collective liberation is not contained within the presiding eye of media attention today. So again, ask yourself, where will you be?
My charge is: you don’t comply. I want you to say no to the kings. We call them oppressors. And I want you to help us to free the land, to free the people, and free us all, and free D.C. Free D.C.! Free D.C.! Free D.C.! Free D.C.!
Keya Chatterjee – Co-founder of the Free DC movement and former head of US Climate Action Network
All right, my name is Keya Chatterjee. Thank you so much, Nee Nee. I am, with Nee Nee, one of the co-founders of Free D.C. and the executive director of Free D.C. And we are the movement to protect D.C. home rule and win lasting dignity for the 700,000 people of D.C.
Let me hear you, D.C.! Who out here is here today for a Free D.C.?
So, D.C. needs to be free because what we are doing here today, right now, would not be possible otherwise. This president wants to silence dissent. He wants to silence protest. He wants to do that everywhere—and we saw him try to do that this week. President Trump and his allies lie about this very event that we are attending right now. He tried to get us all to stay away from here, but did we do that?
Our right to protest is important everywhere, really it is, but there is nowhere that it is more important than here in the capital of the country. We know what authoritarian rulers do. Authoritarians try to prevent dissent in the capital. They want to control capitals. They have tried to control capitals through the history of time and space—because controlling a capital is a way to control a nation and a way to prevent the transfer of power.
This president is no different from those before him, and we saw that on January 6th, right? We saw that. And this president started attacking D.C. again the day he took office again. Today we are in our third month of military occupation by armed forces from multiple other states in D.C. There are gangs of federal agents who are attacking our communities.
And we’ve heard from so many people today that they’ve attacked our unhoused neighbors. They’ve attacked our immigrant neighbors. They’ve attacked Black and brown neighbors. They’ve attacked our cultural institutions. They’ve attacked thousands of people who serve as federal workers. They’ve tried to take over our local police department. They put a disgraced Fox News host in charge of our local prosecutions. And on top of that, their allies in Congress are trying to pass dozens of bills—more than two dozen budget riders—that take away basic rights from the people who live in the capital of this country.
This president is trying to instill fear among the people here. Exactly. Exactly. We won’t let him. We know better than that. We know what to do, right? We know what to do. The people of D.C. are joyful. If you could see what I see right now, you would see an amazing crowd all the way back to the White House—full of joy.
The people of D.C. are powerful. We are going to use that power. We have what it takes here in D.C. not just to resist this tyrant, but to actually take him out of power and win. And I want to say—I’m not just talking about voting. I’m not just talking about attending rallies. I’m talking about organizing now like our lives depend on it.
When we act collectively—just, I mean, if you could see the number of people here, plus think of all the people in all the other cities—when we act collectively, we have so much more power than we realize. We have way more power than they do.
We have power as workers. Who here is in a union? If you’re not in a union, get in a union. Talk to your coworkers about collective action. We have power as consumers. We can choose to either fuel the companies that are profiting off our oppression, or we can starve those companies. We have power as jurors. We have seen that these indictments they are trying to get—they are failing, right? Our people understand the assignment. We see that this administration’s charges are unjust.
We have power as taxpayers. We are all right now collectively funding this regime, and we have the power to slow that down, right? We know what’s on our license plates here in D.C.—what’s it say? That’s right.
And we have power as community members. We can engage in our sacred duty to protect one another, to support one another in solidarity, and to reject this cruelty agenda that we’re seeing unfold.
And if those are things that you want to be a part of, and you aren’t already, come find the Free D.C. Action Tents—they’re over to the right. I know it’s so crowded, you can’t even see where I’m waving here—but they’re in John Marshall Park, over to the right. And you can join the effort and the power it takes to win.
We’re also at FreeDCProject.org. What we have seen over the last 10 months is that every single time they attack us, if we respond, we grow stronger. Every time they attack us, we grow more united, we grow our people, and we grow our resolve—and we learn what it takes to take them down.
We’re building unity. We’re building power. And we are going to demand full power over our local money, our D.C. National Guard, our local laws—and ultimately, yes, we will be admitted as the 51st state of the United States of America.
It is not going to be Canada. It’s not going to be England. It’s going to be D.C. And our entire national democracy will always be at risk until that happens—until we actually protect the capital of this country.
That means that everyone across this country needs a Free D.C.—from Ward 1 to Ward 8, from Los Angeles to Chicago, from Memphis to Portland. We are more united now than we have ever been. We are united against deploying the military against our people. We are united against attacks on our democracy. And we are united against this agenda of cruelty that we are seeing unfold before our eyes.
Together, we—the people here today, and all our friends we organize—are going to bring it to an end. Free D.C.!
[Announcer] Washington, D.C., please welcome to the stage Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin, co-founders of Indivisible.
Leah Greenberg – Co-founder and Co-Executive Director of Indivisible
Hi everyone, it’s great to be here with you today. I’m Leah.
[Ezra Levin] Hey, I’m Leah’s husband.
[Leah Greenberg] And we are the co-founders of Indivisible. We support a movement of thousands of local Indivisible groups organizing in every state of the country. These are regular people who understand that saving our democracy is too important to be left to the politicians, and it’s going to take all of us.
Now I’ve got a question for you. How many kings do we have in America?
We are in the middle of a sprint by Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, their MAGA cronies, to consolidate power and bully American society into submission. They have come for corporations and millionaires, for law firms and universities, for media and civil society. They are ripping families apart, and they are shredding our Constitution while they line their pockets in the biggest heist of all time.
And the way they do it is they go on the attack. They make demands. They claim powers they don’t have. They bully, and they threaten to retaliate, and they see if anyone will push back. And if nobody pushes back, they win. And then they go on to the next attack. They are doing everything they can to convince us that they are all powerful, that they are inevitable, that they will win.
And I need you to hear me. It’s a lie. It’s always been a lie. And the greatest danger we face is not Trump. It is how we, as a society, respond to this bullying, to this chilling effect. If we preemptively obey, if we shrink back, if we make ourselves small, if we do what they want in advance—then they win.
Now we saw them try this play this week. Mike Johnson, Stephen Miller, their cronies on Fox News. They have spent the last week on the attack against No Kings, smearing all of us—smearing all of us as anti-American. They tried to scare us out of gathering here today.
And I’ve got a question for you. Are we afraid? Did they scare us off? Are we going to back down?
That’s right, because what we are doing here today is as American as apple pie. We are standing up for our rights. We are standing up for our freedom. We are here because we understand that when a tyrant threatens your right to free speech, you call his bluff and you stand up. In every action and every day, we defy the regime.
So I’ve got something to say to Mike Johnson, Speaker Mike Johnson, who spent all week smearing regular Americans. There are nearly a dozen protests happening across your district today. And since you’ve not been doing your job for over a month now, I bet you’ve got time to stop by.
Ezra Levin, Co-founder and Co-Executive Director of Indivisible
Leah Greenberg, everybody. My God. Look, Leah is my spouse. She’s my partner. She’s the co-executive director of Indivisible. She’s the real strategic brains behind Indivisible. We are indebted to her for her strategic vision. I’m biased, but I think we all agree.
Look, I’m just here to tell a story. And I think it’s important for us to tell the story of these First Amendment rights that Leah is talking about. And this story I want to tell is about the first No Kings Day.
Who here was at the first No Kings Day? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. No, no. I don’t think y’all were there. This was a quarter of a millennia ago. This was 250 years ago—1775. They called it the Continental Congress. They didn’t have the branding we did. But it was the first No Kings Day protest.
What they did—they brought themselves together in opposition to this would-be monarchical ruler who was steamrolling the American public. He was occupying and invading American cities. He was terrorizing American communities. He was picking out his favorites and persecuting his political enemies. He didn’t believe in democracy at all.
Can you imagine? Can you imagine such a ruler over America? It was bleak. It was bleak. So what did our fellow Americans do? They put together a No Kings rally to give us a Constitution. That’s what they did. That’s our history. Whose history? Whose history? Ours! Whose history? Ours!
Look, this is a big experiment in self-government—a government of, by, and for the people. Nobody here is under the illusion that this was a perfect union. That’s not what we created. This was a compromise—a compromise of rich men, of white men, of slave-holding men. But this imperfect union that they put together, it also gave us some fundamental rights to make it more perfect.
Who has been using those rights? The abolitionists. The suffragists. The heroes of the Civil Rights Movement. The leaders at Stonewall. The leaders in the Dreamer Movement. And all of us here. All of us here. Whose rights? Our rights. Whose rights? Our rights.
Ben Franklin—that lovely Benny—what did he say? Benny told us all, when asked what they had created, he said, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Who’s going to keep this? Who’s keeping this republic? That’s right. We love this country enough to demand more of it.
You know who doesn’t want us to make any demands? This regime. The tech fascists, the billionaire backers—they want us lazy and pliant and docile. They want us alone and afraid and powerless.
Are we powerless? No! Are we alone? No! Damn right we’re not. As I stand here today, Elon Musk—remember that guy?—he’s out of the White House. Jimmy Kimmel, back on air. And for the last week, this regime has been quaking in its jackboots at the thought of 200,000 people in D.C., outside the Capitol, where Mike Johnson isn’t working and hasn’t been for the last month.
You know what it turns out? You know what it turns out? It turns out that we’re braver than the billionaires. Who’s braver than the billionaires? We are! Who’s braver than the billionaires? We are!
This is my favorite part, folks. I get to name some names. Jeff Bezos—who took a respected pro-democracy institution that had the slogan “Democracy dies in darkness,” and he turned the slogan into corruption, capitulation, cowardice, shame.
Mark Benioff—y’all see this guy in the news? The head of Salesforce who’s welcoming troops into San Francisco. This guy, this guy who is begging, begging to give artificial intelligence to ICE to triple their size. Shame.
Daniel Ek—you don’t know who Daniel Ek is, do you? The CEO of Spotify, which right now is robbing from musicians and running ads to recruit for a secret police force that terrorizes our communities.
Mark Zuckerberg. End of story. Need I say more?
But we’re not just booing, y’all. We’re not just booing. We’re organizing. This is a movement of everyone in this country who is taking a side. We are taking a side. It is a time to choose that side.
Are you on the side of the MAGA forces, of the Nazis, of the billionaires? Hell no. So I ask businesses, universities, churches—which side are you on? We’re on the people’s side. Which side?
Look, nobody on this stage has told you there’s no need to have fear. We see what this regime is doing. We see them rattling their sabers. We see them sending troops into communities. We see them zip-tying children and dragging them out of apartments. We see this.
This movement—the 200,000 of us here—this movement is not a fearless movement. It’s better than that. It’s a brave movement. The other side wants to suppress dissent, chill free speech, and come after their opponents.
We’re not here because we’re fearless. We’re here because we’re better than fear. We’re braver than billionaires, and we’re bigger than ever before. We’re going to win this, y’all, because we believe, as all Americans believe, we don’t do kings here.
How many kings? None. How many kings? None.
Now, we had a little bit of extra time in the program, and a guy in Vermont with some ideas about this wanted to come up.
[Announcer] Washington, D.C. Are you ready? Here we go. Please welcome the senior senator from the great state of Vermont, the Honorable Bernie Sanders.
Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT)
Thank you, Washington. Thank you, Indivisible. Thank you to the millions of Americans. From our smallest towns to our largest cities, in every state in our country who are gathering today at thousands of rallies. Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the House, called these rallies, hate America events. Why does he have it wrong? Millions of Americans are coming out today not because they hate America. We’re here because we love America. We’re here because we’re going to do everything we can to honor the sacrifices of millions of men and women who over the last 250 years fought and sometimes died to defend our democracy and our freedoms.
In 1776, with extraordinary courage, The founders of our country announced to the world that they would no longer be ruled by the King of England, a king who had absolute power over their lives. They demanded freedom. And to bring that about, They fought a bloody war against the British Empire and the most powerful military in the world. Tens of thousands of Americans died in that eight-year war, but our forefathers fought on and they won. And in 1789, after winning that war, they did something extraordinary. They established the first democratic form of government in modern history. They said loudly and boldly to the entire world, No more kings. In America, they said, we the people will rule. And today. And today. Today, in the year 2025, in this dangerous moment in American history, our message is exactly the same. No, President Trump, we don’t want you or any other king to rule us. Thank you very much, but we will maintain our democratic form of society. We will not move toward authoritarianism in America. We, the people, will rule.
When he was sworn in as the nation’s first president, George Washington called this attempt at self-government, quote, an experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people, end quote. My fellow Americans, in an unprecedented way, that experiment is now in danger. It is in danger when we have a president who wants more and more power in his own hands and in the hands of his fellow oligarchs. It is in danger when we have a president who claims that peaceful protests in Portland, Oregon or Chicago, Illinois is an insurrection and calls in the U.S. military. And then threatens to arrest the mayors and governors who resist them. It is in danger when we have masked agents working for ICE breaking down doors, throwing people into vans without due process, and taking them to God knows where. It is in danger when we have a president who sues and intimidates the media, who wants no criticism of him and his policies, and who undermines the First Amendment of our Constitution, the very foundation of American democracy.
Our country is in danger when we have a president who threatens to arrest or imprison political opponents who stand against him, including the Attorney General of New York State, a sitting U.S. Senator, and the Governor of California. It is in danger when we have a president who undermines freedom of thought and dissent at our colleges and universities. and who attacks law firms that oppose him in court. It is in danger when we have a president who threatens to impeach judges who rule against him. It is in danger when we have a president who ignores Congress, refuses to spend money that Congress appropriates, and takes away money from states who voted against him. It is in danger when we have a president who demands we redraw congressional maps to ensure that his chosen candidates win future elections. It is in danger when we have a president who illegally fires tens of thousands of federal employees right here in Washington, D.C. and throughout our country and rips up union contracts. Workers have fought for and won.
It is in danger when we have a president who grossly violates the Constitution by accepting gifts from foreign leaders, including a $400 million plane from the royal family of Qatar, and then allows that family to build an Air Force facility in Idaho. Let us be clear. This moment is not just about one man’s greed, one man’s corruption, or one man’s contempt for the Constitution. This is about a handful of the wealthiest people on earth who, in their insatiable greed, have hijacked our economy and our political system in order to enrich themselves at the expense of working families throughout this country. Yes, yeah, I am talking about Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and the other multi-billionaires. who was sitting right behind Trump when he was inaugurated. Remember that? The very same billionaires who funded his campaign, who have bestowed gifts upon him, and who have seen huge increases in their wealth and power since Trump took office. Yeah.
Yes, I am talking about the insanity of one person, Mr. Musk, owning more wealth than the bottom 52% of American households. I’m talking about the incredible injustice of the top 1% in America now owning more wealth than the bottom 93%. I’m talking about the richest people in America becoming much, much richer while 60% of our people live paycheck to paycheck struggling every day to pay their rent and mortgages, pay for child care and education, pay for their health care and prescription drugs, afford decent quality food for their kids, and maybe, just maybe, put aside a few bucks for their retirements. I am talking about our nation. the richest country in the history of the world, having the highest rate of childhood and senior poverty of almost any major country on earth. I am talking about our great nation, having 85 million Americans uninsured or underinsured. and 800,000 people who are homeless, including people a few blocks from here.
All the while, while Mr. Musk is on his way to becoming a trillionaire, I am talking about the incredible danger of the richest people in this country pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into artificial intelligence and robotics, which in the next decade will decimate tens of millions of jobs for the American working class. I’m talking about a billionaire class who believe that they have the divine right to rule and who not only want massive tax breaks for themselves, but who reject any form of accountability or checks on their power. My fellow Americans, we rejected the divine right of kings in the 1770s. We will not accept the divine right of oligarchs today.
And now let’s take a look, a brief look, at where we are today, where we are today on the 18th day of a government shutdown which is depriving millions of federal employees of the paychecks they desperately need and deserve. Let me cut to the chase and tell you exactly what this shutdown is all about. As a result of Trump’s big beautiful, disgraceful bill, which made massive cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. Fifteen million, fifteen million low-income and working-class Americans are going to lose the health care they desperately need to stay alive. My friends, studies suggest that of the 15 million people off of the health care they presently have, 50,000 of them will die unnecessarily every single year. 50,000 Americans will die unnecessarily every single year.
But that’s not all. As a result of that same terrible piece of legislation, over 20 million Americans are going to see on average a doubling of their health insurance premiums through the Affordable Care Act. In my state of Vermont just the other day, people received notices from insurance companies that their health care premiums in some cases would triple or quadruple. And that is going on all over the country. At a time when we already pay by far the highest prices in the world for health care, millions of Americans are going to see outrageous increases in their health care premiums, which they cannot afford. Why is that happening? Why are the Republicans making a broken healthcare system, a dysfunctional healthcare system, even worse? Why are they bringing our healthcare system to the verge of collapse? We all know the answer. We all know the answer. It was to give a trillion dollars in tax breaks to Mr. Musk, Mr. Bezos, Mr. Ellison, and the rest of the 1%. One trillion dollars in cuts to Medicaid and the ACA, a trillion dollars in tax breaks for the 1%. That, my fellow Americans, is what this shutdown is all about.
And let me be as clear as I can be. No, I will not vote for a budget that throws 15 million Americans off their health care. No, I will not vote for a budget that doubles premiums for 20 million Americans. No, I will not vote for a budget that forces nursing homes, rural hospitals, community health centers to lay off staff and close their doors throughout this country. All to give huge tax breaks to the billionaire class. So today, right now, I say to my Republican colleagues, come back from your Monday vacation. Start negotiating and do not allow the American healthcare system to be destroyed. End this shutdown.
My fellow Americans, we are the greatest country. in the history of the world. And when we stand together and don’t allow demagogues to divide, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish. Yes, we can create a vibrant democracy by ending Citizens United and not allowing billionaires to buy elections. Yes, we can join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to every man, woman, and child as a human right. Yes, we can build millions of units of low-income and affordable housing and allow our younger generation to enjoy the American dream and own a home of their own. Yes, we can make public colleges and universities tuition-free. and have the best child care and public school system in the entire world. Yes, we can expand Social Security so that every senior in our country can retire with dignity. Yes, we can raise the minimum wage to a living wage. and guaranteeing every worker the right to join a union. Yes, we can lead the world in transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels and create millions of good jobs as we save the planet. Yes, we can guarantee that every woman in this country has the right to control her own body. Yes, yes, we can have a bipartisan policy that guarantees that never again will American taxpayer dollars be used to starve children in Gaza or any place else.
And now let me raise a question that I’ve been asked over and over again, you know. Bernie, great ideas, but how are you going to pay for them? Great question. Thanks for asking. And here is the answer. At a time when the wealthiest people in America have never ever had it so good, at a time when billionaires are paying an effective tax rate lower than a truck driver or a nurse. Yes, the top 1% in large profitable corporations will pay their fair share in taxes.
My fellow Americans, The establishment, including the corporate media and many of my colleagues in Congress, want you to believe that you are powerless. They want you to believe that you cannot change the status quo. But that is a lie. Throughout the history of our country, when Americans have stood up and fought for justice, they have prevailed. When the founders stood up to King George, they were told it was impossible, but they won. When abolitionists fought to end slavery, they were told it was impossible, but they won. When workers organized to form unions and stood up to their bosses, they were told it was impossible, but they won. When women demanded the right to vote, they were told it was impossible, but they won. When black Americans fought to end segregation, they were told it was impossible, but they won. When the LGBT community stood up for their rights, they were told it was impossible, but they won. Brothers and sisters, they did it then, we can and will do it now.
And how do I know How do I know that we will succeed? Take a look at this huge crowd right here in our nation’s capital. But it is not just here as I understand that today, October 18th, 2025, there are more people out on the streets in more communities all over our country. than we have ever seen in American history. Brothers and sisters, this is not the end. This is just the beginning. Together, when we stand united, When we don’t allow Trump or anybody else to divide us up by the color of our skin, or where we were born, or our sexual orientation, when we stand together, we will create the kind of nation that you and I know we can be. We can and will. create a nation devoted to freedom, justice, and democracy. Thank you all very much.