All credit to our neighbors for this sign. We ran into them mid-march.

Some thoughts on No Kings in Kingston, NY

The entire day was peak Hudson Valley. The leaves are turning colors. Traffic was already bad because Saturday was also the country’s premier knitting festival, Sheep & Wool. Normally that festival, big enough to fill the county fairground, would also dominate the streets with an ad hoc fashion competition of attendees flexing on other attendees over who had the best hand knit sweater. But this weekend was dominated by No Kings and we could tell just by the traffic getting over the bridge into Kingston.

This is definitely reductive, but I find that there is a type of person that is driven to action right now by fatalism. And that there is a type of person who is seeking to be motivated by optimism. I can’t say that there is a right or wrong way or even how we could talk to each other better, but I can say that I’m in the latter camp.

So to see so many people in Kingston, to see so many signs, to see 7 million people show up across the country — it does fill me with hope. This is a country built on checks and balances and the people are the ultimate check. Seven million people represents 2% of the country, the largest demonstration ever, and that came together without any particular inciting event. I can’t think of anything last week that was worse than the week before. This is just latent “stop this bullshit” sentiment.

The rule of thumb is that if 3.5% if a population engages in peaceful protest, then a government will topple. I’m pretty sure the majority goal at No Kings is to protect our form of government, not topple it. But this show of support at 2% is a threat of sorts: stop eroding the rule of law or the people will topple whatever you replace it with.

My partner, Sarah, noted that the Kingston protest was extremely white and wondered if people of color were staying home for various fears. Did other people experience that? If so, it says that the 2% is undercounting current sentiment.

This was a peaceful protest by the way. In Kingston, the vibe felt like we had a quorum of the area’s farmers market customers. Just healthy, thoughtful, caring people who both care about the country and care about which vegetable is in season.

The gathering ended with a march through town and at that point I wondered if the Kingston event had been organized by the local chamber of commerce. We weren’t paid protesters, we were potential customers for the businesses on the route. Each coffee shop, boutique, brunch spot peeled a few folks from the march. To me, this made the day feel even more like a representation of mainstream American patriotism: it managed to be both pro Constitution and pro capitalism.

And yes, I did stop into a boutique to shop. This is how I really know how long the Kingston march was. I was in the store long enough to pick up a birthday gift for Sarah and also chat up the owner (turns out we both went to high school in San Francisco). Yet, the march was still going strong when I got back out onto the street. After the march ended, we spent even more money with local businesses, getting ourselves hot chocolates and cookies.

You can read a lot more on Medium about No Kings in the tag feed but the one that most resonated with me was The Day 7 Million Americans Marched and Their Media Looked Away.

There’s something we’re shooting for here at Medium and it’s who fills in the gaps of what the media can’t or won’t do? We want to hear from real people.

The thing that got me excited about the Internet was the idea that every person was going to have a voice. So it’s times like these that it’s nice to be able to double check Media or Politicians against people who were actually there. Does the narrative we are being fed fit what the experiences of the people?

In this case, I’m focusing on the description of the people as a counter to the narrative of antifa militants. The vibe was so normie, so non-revolutionary. It reminded me of a video I’d seen from earlier in the week “Band’s Clarinet player speaks out after her Federal Arrest in Portland.”

On the way home, we did stop at a farm stand to pick up some squash and pearl onions to roast for dinner. A few pics below, cropped to avoid peoples faces.

The fall colors from the farm stand stop on the way home

We would have peeled off of the march here for coffee, but it was already packed.

Yup.

The gathering ended with a Rage Against the Machine cover that went so hard.