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civil disobedience
'Good Trouble Lives On' at Anti-Trump Protests in 1,600 Cities Across US
"They want to rule by fear," said one advocacy group. "We will respond with power, people, and purpose. "
Jul 17, 2025
As the Trump administration attacks immigrant communities, working families, and the rule of law and brings the United States "to a crossroads," as one organizer said this week, rights advocates across the country are set to attend the fifth annual National Day of Action in honor of the late congressman and activist John Lewis on Thursday—with plans to get into "Good Trouble" in defense of democracy.
This year's event, held on the fifth anniversary of the Georgia Democrat's death, is titled the Good Trouble Lives On National Day of Action, after a demand from Lewis—who worked alongside civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s—for Americans to get into "good trouble" by taking part in nonviolent protests to challenge in justice.
"Find a way to get in the way," Lewis said in 2020 said in 2020, just a few months before his death, at an event marking the 55th anniversary of the historic voting rights march in Selma, Alabama, where he was arrested in 1965. "Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America."
Lewis made his celebrated remarks in the final year of President Donald Trump's first term in office, and organizers this year are rallying around the growing nationwide opposition to Trump's anti-immigration, pro-billionaire agenda to encourage Americans to attend rallies and other events in every state in the country.
A flagship event will be held in Chicago Thursday evening, with a livestream of the rally set to begin at 7:00 pm local time. Other anchor events will take place in Atlanta; St. Louis; Annapolis, Maryland; and Oakland, California—but those are just a few of the 1,600 cities and towns where advocates plan to hold rallies and other nonviolent actions.
Good Trouble Lives On actions are being held in the wake of Senate Republicans' latest attack on programs that serve ordinary Americans and people around the world: the passage of a bill to rescind $9 billion in already-approved congressional funding for public media and foreign aid programs.
As Common Dreams reported Wednesday, the administration has also sparked alarm over voting rights and a potential plan to interfere with elections in 2026 by embarking on an "unprecedented effort to collect data on voters."
Trump's attacks on immigrants across the country are also continuing in full force, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents make arrests at courthouses and carry out raids at farms, schools, medical facilities, and residential communities. Despite earlier claims that the administration would target violent criminals in its mass deportation and detention operation, arrests of immigrants with no criminal record have surged—with the administration refusing to adhere to constitutional law guaranteeing due process for everyone in the United States.
"They want to rule by fear," said One Fair Wage, an advocacy group for service workers, ahead of the protests on Thursday. "We will respond with power, people, and purpose. We are not spectators to history. We are the makers of it."
Organizers said the "streets, courthouses, and community spaces" where the Trump administration has waged its attacks will be the sites of the protests.
The day of action also follows the passage earlier this month of Trump's massive domestic policy package, which includes permanent tax cuts for wealthy Americans and corporations—at the expense of low- and middle-income households. The package includes cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a $45 billion expansion of immigration detention facilities, and a termination of green energy programs, among other provisions.
"The attacks on our communities, the assault on the rule of law and democracy, and the greedy acts of corporations and billionaires have led us to a crossroads," said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. "And as a result, we are asking people around the country this Thursday to make good trouble."
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'We Will Organize Those People,' Anti-Poverty Crusader William Barber Says of Millions Set to Lose Medicaid
"They will not kill us and our communities without a fight."
Jul 02, 2025
Armed with 51 caskets and a new federal analysis, faith leaders and people who would be directly impacted by U.S. President Donald Trump's so-called Big Beautiful Bill got arrested protesting in Washington, D.C. this week and pledged to organize the millions of Americans set to lose their health insurance under the package.
Citing Capitol Police, The Hill reported Monday that "a total of 38 protestors were arrested, including 24 detained at the intersection of First and East Capitol streets northeast and another 14 arrested in the Capitol Rotunda. Those taken into custody were charged with crowding, obstructing, and incommoding."
The "Moral Monday" action was organized because of the "dangerous and deadly cuts" in the budget reconciliation package, which U.S. Senate Republicans—with help from Vice President JD Vance—sent to the House of Representatives Tuesday and which the lower chamber took up for consideration Wednesday.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the megabill would result in an estimated 17 million Americans becoming uninsured over the next decade: 11.8 million due to the Medicaid cuts, 4.2 million people due to expiring Affordable Care Act tax credits, and another 1 million due to other policies.
"This is policy violence. This is policy murder," Bishop William Barber said at Monday's action, which began outside the U.S. Supreme Court followed by a march to the Capitol. "That's why we brought these caskets today—because in the first year of this bill, as it is, the estimates are that 51,000 people will die."
"If you know that, and still pass it, that's not a mistake," added Barber, noting that Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.)—one of three Republican senators who ultimately opposed the bill—had said before the vote that his party was making a mistake on healthcare.
Moral Mondays originated in Tillis' state a dozen years ago, to protest North Carolina Republicans' state-level policymaking, led by Barber, who is not only a bishop but also president of the organization Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.
This past Monday, Barber vowed that if federal lawmakers kick millions of Americans off their healthcare with this megabill, "we will organize those people," according to Sarah Anderson of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).
In partnership with IPS and the Economic Policy Institute, Repairers of the Breach on Monday published The High Moral Stakes of Budget Reconciliation fact sheet, which examines the version of the budget bill previously passed by the House. The document highlights cuts to health coverage, funding for rural hospitals, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
The fact sheet also points out that while slashing programs for the poor, the bill would give tax breaks to wealthy individuals and corporations, plus billions of dollars to the Pentagon and Trump's mass deportation effort.
"Instead of inflicting policy violence on the most vulnerable, Congress should harness America's abundant wealth to create a moral economy that works for all of us," the publication asserts. "By fairly taxing the wealthy and big corporations, reducing our bloated military budget, and demilitarizing immigration policy, we could free up more than enough public funds to ensure we can all survive and thrive."
"As our country approaches its 250th anniversary," it concludes, "we have no excuse for not investing our national resources in ways that reflect our Constitutional values: to establish justice, domestic tranquility, real security, and the general welfare for all."
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Making ‘No Kings’ a Turning Point
What should or can we all do next? And beyond stopping or toppling Trump, what is the larger goal and vision?
Jun 19, 2025
The June 14 “No Kings Day” outpouring was truly historic. An estimated 5 million people (some estimates from organizers run closer to 10 million) flooded the streets in more than 2,100 cities and towns across the nation, peacefully expressing their outrage at President Donald Trump’s unrelenting assaults on immigrants, democracy, the Constitution, science, diversity, government services, and more.
To paraphrase the target of this uprising, we’ve rarely seen anything like this. “No Kings Day” protests, taking place in all 50 states, including massive crowds in Red states, may well be America’s biggest single day of protest against a U.S. president and his policies. (By some accounts, “No Kings Day” ranks third among all U.S. protests for a single-day turnout.)
Throughout the next day, the internet was wallpapered with photographs of huge red-state crowds, everywhere: Sugarland, Texas. Blount County, Tennessee. Omaha, Nebraska. Hot Springs, Arkansas. Jackson, Mississippi. Indianapolis, Indiana. Birmingham, Alabama. Everywhere.
This country will need more direct action and nonviolent civil disobedience, in far greater numbers, to stop or slow Trump’s grotesquely harmful and destructive agenda.
This immense upwelling provided a thunderous rebuke of Trump’s fascistic conjoining of his birthday and the U.S. Army’s military parade, replete with tanks rolling through the nation’s capital, an autocratic-style show of force. It was also a mammoth repudiation of Trump’s fascistic, Constitution-defying deployment of the Marines and the California National Guard to quell protests in Los Angeles.
If anyone doubts Trump’s push toward autocracy, consider his comments warning against any “No Kings” protests in Washington, D. C. during his military parade:
“We’re going to celebrate big on Saturday,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office right after he spoke about sending the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles to quell protests there. “If any protesters want to come out, they will be met with very big force.”
Veterans decried Trump’s threats as contradicting the very principles soldiers are told to defend. Michael T. McPhearson, a veteran and director of Veterans for Peace and a protest organizer, told media, “President Trump threatened Americans coming to exercise their first amendment rights would be met with ‘great force’. We are the actual people who put uniforms on because we believe in the freedoms this country is supposed to be about, and we will not be intimidated into silence.”
There is no telling what’s next, but “No Kings” seems poised to be an important turning point in the rising nationwide resistance to Trump. While awe-inspiring protests in New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco exceeded expectations, even more portentous were the jam-packed streets and squares of red-state cities and towns.
These protests were no doubt fertilized by the “Against Oligarchy” tour of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who drew vast crowds of Americans fed up with Trump’s agenda of enriching the rich while scapegoating immigrants and poor people.
Robert Reich encapsulated the absurd contradictions neatly, writing: “Trump threw himself a $45M military parade birthday bash while trying to pass the biggest healthcare and SNAP cuts in history—all to pay for tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy. This is what oligarchy looks like.”
With the growing red-state upwellings, Republican politicians must now take notice, as growing portions of their own voters are displeased with Trump’s chaotic and autocratic ways. Any loosening or erosion of Trump’s tenuous hold over Congress could throw wrenches in his agenda by peeling away votes.
How do we build on this potent “Kings Day” momentum? What should or can we all do next? And beyond stopping or toppling Trump, what is the larger goal and vision?
The answers are still evolving. But coalitions are congealing, more and more Americans are rising up, and in addition to outrage there is an unmistakable politics of love and solidarity at the protests—from mutual aid to various expressions of a progressive patriotism, to desperately clarion calls for love over hatred and division.
Still, amid the excitement and inspiration, we must continue asking: What happens the day after the protest? Where is it all going, and how can we harness and organize this tremendous rising energy and impassioned concern? The Democrats remain adrift and often bizarrely bereft and still don’t show much clarity or momentum beyond their fairly unified opposition to Trump. Democrats’ poll numbers remain dreary, and despite the skyrocketing rage about Trump and his policies, their midterms prospects range from dubious to unclear.
“No Kings Day” was historic and could be a turning point in the proliferating resistance to Trump’s fascism and bigotry. In the view of many, including this writer, it is time to start organizing toward a truly effective General Strike, or at least a less-universal yet still huge “generalized strike” that can still have significant impact. There have been various random calls for this on social media, of course, but they haven’t been organized or well-thought-out. A real General Strike or generalized strike must involve major labor unions, supported and amplified by the many social and political movements arrayed against this regime.
There is a great deal to say about the history, strategies, and organizing of general strikes. The idea can’t be taken blithely and must be planned and coordinated over months to have a shot at being effective. There are ways to shut down ‘business as usual’ while maintaining critical, life-preserving services and public safety. A mass social strike involving at least large portions of organized labor can make a powerful statement about not only our numbers but our commitment to stopping Trump.
Trump’s fascistic crackdowns are growing more intense, horrifying, and horrendous by the day and week. Several major political opponents have now been either arrested or attacked. We saw Sen. Alex Padilla’s (D-Calif.) violent removal by Homeland Security agents for simply shouting questions at a press conference; before that, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) were arrested for attempting to inspect an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility; and on Tuesday, Trump’s ICE (including some wearing face masks, according to reports) arrested and detained New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. The country will need more mass actions that, while peaceful and nonviolent, go beyond protest. Things will likely get worse in coming days, weeks, and months.
This country will need more direct action and nonviolent civil disobedience, in far greater numbers, to stop or slow Trump’s grotesquely harmful and destructive agenda.
With “No Kings Day,” the resistance movements have arrived. We many millions rained on Trump’s little, failed military parade (photos showed Trump watching glumly across from empty bleachers, and he reportedly reamed out Defense Secretary Hegseth for the dismal event).
What we do now and next with this tremendous groundswell of outrage, concern, and love, is up to all of us. And as Trump’s fascistic flailing intensifies, we will truly need all of us. No Kings. Just we, the people.
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