It was five months after Donald Trump’s second inauguration before Americans returned to the streets in protest of his administration’s growing misdeeds. The first No Kings protest occurred on June 14th (~2,100 separate events) with an estimated 4.5 million people attending. The second was on October 18th (~2,700 separate events), with an estimated 5-6.5 million people in attendance. Depending on methodology, No Kings, the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020, and the Women’s March in 2017 (also in opposition to Trump) rank as the three largest protests in U.S. history.

Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, coined the “3.5% rule” which suggests that when 3.5% of a country's population participates in nonviolent, sustained protest, it is highly likely to succeed in its goal of creating significant political change. In the U.S. context, this means 12 million Americans would need to participate. Michigan is a reliably purple state. Over the last 3 decades, its widest presidential margin was Bill Clinton’s 13-point margin over Bob Dole; Barack Obama’s 9.5-point win over Mitt Romney was a close second. Across the remaining six elections, the median gap between parties has been just 3.5 points.

I attended the Detroit No Kings protest in the hopes of interviewing participants about their views of the administration and the role young people can play in pushing against it. What I found was a patchwork of pet issues being elevated above the messaging about any particular wrongdoing of Trump and his cronies. Signs invoked everything from the Second Coming to the Epstein files; beside them, many flags without Stars and Stripes. This made me question how the movement could double its numbers to the required 12 million, given the catch-all banner No Kings garnered.

I spoke with a Rank MI Vote volunteer named Marilyn. She described her motivation for volunteering with Rank MI Vote as having come from a feeling of “disgust with everything that was going on in the world” and needing “to find a way to be doing something to bring more good.” But her motivation for attending the No Kings protest was “Trying to get signatures.” To qualify for the ballot, Rank MI Vote needs 600,000 signatures.

I then interviewed a young man named Luke, who represented the International Youth and Students for Social Equality Party, a self-described Trotskyist group, inspired by Marxism. When I asked what motivated him to come to the No Kings protest, he emphasized “the threat of dictatorship,” but that the Social Equality Party feels that “the kind of impetus to come out isn't enough– it's not enough to protest. There has to be a perspective. We're going to be speaking with workers in youth about actually fighting to organize their leadership in the working class to end the Trump administration.”

This was the most explicit reference to opposing the Trump presidency I heard. I added, “And by what mechanism are you hoping to hasten that dismantling?” Luke repeatedly referenced the revolutionary quality that the Social Equality Party aimed to provoke. “Understanding that they are a class; that they're opposing, not just Trump, but the Democratic Party as well. The whole of the ruling class. We're fighting really, to overthrow the capitalist system, which is the origin of fascism,

dictatorship, war.” This was followed with several minutes focusing on “anti-Imperialism” and the Russia-Ukraine war, with varying veracity; an acknowledgment that Russia invaded Ukraine, but that their hand had been inevitably pushed by Ukraine’s aim to enter NATO. A purely defensive alliance that they have the right to join without Russia's approval.

The dubious characterization that “they (America) dumped tens of billions (into Ukraine)…just a month before Russia invaded” heavily overstates the pre-invasion flow of funds, conflating aid delivered before vs. after the invasion. Claims discounting both the moral obligations and security imperatives that the U.S. and NATO have in providing substantial security assistance to Ukraine. And the completely fabricated assertion that the U.S. “positioned 100,000 U.S. troops along the Ukrainian and Russian border.” The U.S. sent several thousand troops to NATO allies in Europe, not into Ukraine, and never deployed 100,000 U.S. forces to the Ukraine/Russia border.

Luke referenced methods within the preexisting political system, “a political general strike,” and purely revolutionary means “to build a new society.” Trump was not the focus at any point; the whole of capitalism and the lack of class consciousness were highlighted. “We're fighting for a class perspective that understands that your identity is really the identity of oppressed groups if you're black, if you're Latino, if you're trans, if you're bisexual, etc. These are elements that the ruling class is generating xenophobia against, in using that to divide the working class.” In many ways, 2024 was a cost-of-living election; both Gallup and Pew research show that the economy was the biggest issue for voters.

Further into the crowd, I came upon two young women in magenta t-shirts. Emily from Planned Parenthood offered to answer my questions, and we sat down in the grass beside her table. She stated her motivation for attending No Kings as “the Trump administration's cut to Medicaid.” She expanded further by saying the (potential) cuts “are both defunding our clinics and leaving some of our most vulnerable community members without access to any reproductive healthcare.” 2.6 million residents in Michigan depend on Medicaid, and the Washington Post estimates that if Planned Parenthood in Michigan were to close, case loads for contraceptive appointments would triple.

Emily, more than the previous interviewees, emphasized the importance of voting in the midterms. “Even though we are better off than a lot of other states, we're still not completely safe. These cuts from the federal government are framed as less access to abortion, but it's stripping people of their access to all healthcare.”

I wanted to understand better what action Emily encouraged. She responded, “We've seen a resurgence of grassroots efforts. And that base in the community is really how we fight back against this individualistic and overreaching regime. There really is power in numbers and strength in community.”

In spirit, Emily’s words ring true for any successful democratic movement. However, I was left wondering how, with such diffuse, “individualistic” rationale for attendance, the No Kings movement could be galvanized? Of the three people I interviewed, none explicitly stated that their reason for joining the protest was broadly opposition to Trump; the framework being their personal aims rather than the health of American democracy and governance.