I didn’t go to last Saturday’s #NoKings event.
There didn’t seem to be much point in it.
I spent the morning tilling the garden.
At least I can be pretty sure that having a big garden this year will make the world a better place, even if only for my family and neighbors.
I did go to the previous events.
After all, I too want this country to be free of kings and their ilk. And there really is value in people being able see that at least some of their neighbors agree with them on something.
But #NoKings isn’t useful beyond that.
The #NoKings events aren’t achieving anything other than to occasionally vent the pent-up frustration with the coup in a safe and non-threatening way.
They are:
- situated in public spaces that don’t inconvenience anyone
- scheduled, with published start and stop times
- basically street fairs
They need to be:
- located around federal facilities that are being actively used to advance the coup’s agenda, to forcibly isolate those facilities
- indefinite, refusing to disperse until the facilities are closed and abandoned, with a scheduled rotation of protesters so no one has to lose their job over participating
- more like strike picket lines
Because as they are now, it’s definitely more useful for me to stay home and make sure that me, my family and my neighbors will have food in six months than it is to go stand around on a sidewalk for a few hours.
When it’s a choice between actually achieving something and going to a public feel-good-a-thon, I’m going to stay home and get the tractor out.
I’ll go to the next #NoKings event if it looks like there’s really a chance that there will actually be no kings in this country at the end of it.
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