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After No Kings Day, Feed Your Head
We should commit ourselves to becoming students of struggle because there is so much to be gained not simply from action, but from deliberative, informed, and educated action.
Oct 20, 2025
Now that No Kings Day October 2025 has come and gone, what should we do with all our energy?
The carnivalesque atmosphere of protest across the nation on Saturday fed a hunger for political community and solidarity in the face of the relentless assault on our basic democratic rights that has been raging since the start of this year.
The signage alone—from cats kicking crowns to “We in Danger, Girl: Resist”—called us to move from words to action. Now.
Act we should.
For there is plenty to do.
Histories of anti-authoritarian struggle are an indispensable storehouse of knowledge for the days and weeks after the protest is over.
Join the American Civil Liberties Union. Work to support anti-Trump candidates in the 2026 midterms. Write your elected representatives, including judges, to let them know you support their efforts to defend the Constitution. And find out what the local organizers of your No Kings Day have planned next.
We should do all these things.
But we should also read. And study. And debate. And learn.
I’m not kidding.
We should commit ourselves to becoming students of struggle because there is so much to be gained not simply from action, but from deliberative, informed, and educated action.
And history, especially Black history, is a crucial resource in this struggle.
Consider Augustus Wood’s recent book, Class Warfare in Black Atlanta, which maps the ways that working-class African American men and women fought the neoliberal takeover of Atlanta from the 1970s onwards, pushing against both white and Black elites seeking to bulldoze their communities in the name of economic development and “progress.”
Get to know the stories of Phyllis Whatley and Eva Davis, Black working women who built “overlapping” movements across space, housing, and labor to beat back Atlanta’s takeover by urban power brokers. We have so much to learn from their courage and their strategies.
If a scholarly book like Wood’s is too much to pick up, go to your local library and find a novel which fictionalizes key moments and movements in anti-democratic history. Try Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer prizewinning The Underground Railroad. Or check out John Lewis’ memoir, Walking With the Wind.
Or if fiction doesn’t appeal, follow a short form like an op-ed. Top of that list right now is Bobby J. Smith’s piece, “Chicago Restaurants Using Civil Rights-Era Playbook to Fight ICE,” which reminds us how prescient, and present, the tactics of the recent past are.
And if reading per se isn’t the way you want to access lessons on how ordinary people fight the power of the state and its legal and carceral systems, check out the website of the MAMAs project, which documents in word and image how the mothers of unjustly incarcerated sons have developed powerful pedagogies over a decade-long struggle for the freedom of their kids.
History comes in many forms and formats. So, as the 1967 Jefferson Airplane song “White Rabbit” exhorts us, “feed your head.” By whatever means possible.
Because after we put away the No Kings signs for now, we need recourse to concrete examples of how to counter government-sponsored violence and fascist takeover—partly so we can be inspired by those who have come before, and partly so we can develop models based on past patterns and present strategies that we can put into action now.
It goes without saying, of course, that for many communities in the US and elsewhere, these struggles are not new. They are intensified, yes, but they build on micro- and macro-aggressions that have been rending the social and economic fabric for decades if not centuries.
It’s important to remember that wherever violence has happened and the state has exercised lethal power against citizens and other subjects, people have resisted. We have to know these histories.
Luckily, there is a deep and rich archive of protest movements that historians, professional and otherwise, have labored to assemble and preserve precisely to serve us in these times.
Which is exactly why the current regime is banning books, coming after courses and curricula which amplify these histories, and seeking to remake the story of the last 250 years in their own image.
They want to erase the history of survival and resistance which can and will be activated to challenge their arrogation of power—activated to resist the dismantling of democratic foundations and to protect anew those rights which have been hard won over the last two centuries.
Histories of anti-authoritarian struggle are an indispensable storehouse of knowledge for the days and weeks after the protest is over.
We need to study them, with the present in mind. So get out there and read up on the practical examples that Black history especially has to offer us as we seek not just solidarity, but usable forms and portable practices drawn from the work of those who came before us.
When we do so, we ourselves will be making histories available to those who come after us to learn from, to mobilize, and to improve on.
Feed your head, and the rest will follow.
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Climbing the Mountain of My Emerging Life
Life isn’t preset. It’s an endless flow of God-knows-what, and it’s up to me—it’s up to all of us—to assign meaning, as best we can, to what’s going on.
Dec 29, 2024
Dig, ponder, dig some more.
A year ago I wrote a column about some of the early moments of my growing up—not just memories but profound moments of awareness; flickers, you might say, of becoming who I am. I was 77 at the time. Now I’m... oh yeah, 78. Can you believe it? Another year is almost over. Holiday season shimmers, the smell of pine is in the air. It’s Christmas: a perfect time to open, once again, the stocking known as memory.
In last year’s column, I wrote about three childhood moments that created me as a person—or informed me that I had changed, moved forward in the process of becoming. These were moments of self-awareness. Gosh! I had no idea such a thing existed, but there I was at age six, playing “Red Rover” on my elementary-school playground with a bunch of other kids and I realized: I was part of something bigger than myself; I wasn’t alone. Run and play, laugh and love! It’s called “community” (I later learned).
The interesting part, for me, as I write about it six-plus decades later, is to be able to feel the moment of becoming—to feel it as a new chunk of being, given to me almost as a Christmas present.
A second moment of becoming: I was 10 and had gotten into a fight after school—with a good pal. Huh? I rode my bike home, parked in the alley behind my house, and stood there rubbing my bruised elbow, aswirl in confusion. Fighting is so stupid! I decided I would never fight again—or rather, knew I would never fight again. I knew I had changed.
The third moment I wrote about was when I was 13. I had just seen a strange, disturbing movie with my mother and sister called Imitation of Life. We had car trouble on the way home and as we waited for the repair work to be finished, a puzzling awareness hit me, totally out of the blue. “I’m a genius,” I told myself—not with a smirk that I’m smarter than you are, but just the opposite. I was overwhelmed. Life isn’t preset. It’s an endless flow of God-knows-what, and it’s up to me—it’s up to all of us—to assign meaning, as best we can, to what’s going on. We’re all creating the future, moment by moment, whether we know it or not.
Yikes. This was far more responsibility than I was comfortable with, but I was stuck with it. I pushed on with growing up. These were all private moments, quietly “me” in a way that was no one else’s business. But some inner balloon (pardon the childish metaphor) was getting ready to burst. I had lousy penmanship, but I was turning into a writer, even though I hardly knew it. In fact, I got a “D” in English in eighth grade because I just couldn’t grasp the rules of grammar that were dumped on us out of the bag of marbles called education. What the heck is a participle? What’s an indirect object?
Attention, grade fanatics: We all learn at our own speed and in our own way. Two years later, in 10th grade, one of the books we were assigned to read was The Diary of Anne Frank. Birth of a writer! Well, sort of. I was riveted by her words, by the details of her life she bequeathed the world—and I felt a deep compulsion to start my own journal.
It literally took a year of trying. I’d buy a 39-cent notebook and start putting pieces of my life into words, usually prefaced with the warning: “Private. Do not read!” I felt compelled to pump up the importance of what I was saying, to write from the perspective that my life was significant. And the journal would never last more than a day or two. I could feel the phoniness in my words and would stash the notebook on a shelf, to be forgotten. But I kept trying! Something in me was determined to make this process work—solely for myself, of course. Turns out that may be the hardest audience of all to win over.
And then—I’m 16 at this point, in 11th grade—something happened: I was certain, I was terrified, that I had failed a solid geometry test one day. When I got home, I opened a notebook and scribbled the words: “God, I am worried. Scared to death is more like it.”
And the words simply flowed. I couldn’t stop. I went on for four pages, writing about the test, writing about how lousy I was doing in my English class, and then... yee-haw! I started writing about my “barren social life”: about the all the parties I hadn’t been invited to and my fear that I was a lousy dancer. I wasn’t “trying” to say anything; I was just letting it all out, spewing my feelings with unchecked honesty.
Two days later I wrote a second entry. Turns out I actually did OK on the math test, much to my amazement. And I was feeling good. I wrote about driving to a Junior Achievement meeting with some friends and singing a bunch of inappropriate songs on the way home. I even inserted the lyrics into the notebook. Something was happening: I wasn’t trying to churn out “good writing.” I was simply writing—giving words to my emotions and bringing them to life. I was finding, as I put it many years later, my voice.
And yeah, this is what growing up is all about. There’s nothing special or unique about any of this—it’s just a smattering of specificity. The interesting part, for me, as I write about it six-plus decades later, is to be able to feel the moment of becoming—to feel it as a new chunk of being, given to me almost as a Christmas present, not by Santa but by Anne Frank... and so many others: my parents, of course. My friends. My teachers.
Indeed, I must take a moment to honor Mom and Dad. They gave me life, home, family—and something more: the permission, you might say, to go my own direction. This was not easy for them, especially for my mother, who was a devout Lutheran, who had to watch her son break from the church and head off in his own spiritual direction.
Among the books I read in high school, three of them had a serious impact on my becoming: The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine, 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Their words were rocks for me to grab as I climbed the mountain of my emerging life. At one point, as I was writing in my journal, I made the declaration that I was a non-conformist. And one of the final tasks I had to fulfill before I graduated was to write my senior paper: a big-deal assignment. The topic could be of my choosing, but I had to quote a number of recognized authors. I chose the above trio. The paper was called “Is a Man’s Mind His Own?”
Yes, I wrote, it is.
I had sort of known this all along, though without necessarily even wanting it to be the case, except, as a boy, having the right to misbehave. But this was a serious step beyond boyhood. It was my first real step into the public domain. Uh oh. Now what?
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Judge Strikes Down Unconstitutional Parts of Arkansas Law Targeting Librarians
"The court has safeguarded the right of every Arkansan to access ideas and information without fear of censorship or prosecution," said the ACLU of Arkansas legal director.
Dec 24, 2024
In a blow to right-wing efforts to ban books and criminalize librarians, a federal judge on Monday struck down key provisions of an Arkansas law as unconstitutional—though the fight is far from over, with the Republican state attorney general planning to appeal.
Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed Act 372 in March 2023. A few months later, U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks temporarily blocked implementation of Sections 1 and 5 of the law—and on Monday, he ruled against them in a 37-page order.
Section 1 threatened Arkansas librarians and booksellers with up to a year in jail for providing minors with access to "harmful" materials. Brooks wrote that "if the General Assembly's purpose in passing Section 1 was to protect younger minors from accessing inappropriate sexual content in libraries and bookstores, the law will only achieve that end at the expense of everyone else's First Amendment rights."
"The law deputizes librarians and booksellers as the agents of censorship; when motivated by the fear of jail time, it is likely they will shelve only books fit for young children and segregate or discard the rest. For these reasons, Section 1 is unconstitutionally overbroad," added the judge, who also found the provision "unconstitutionally vague."
Section 5 created a process for challenging books in public libraries that critics called burdensome. Brooks found the provision unconstitutional because it is problematically vague and "unnecessarily imposes content-based restrictions on protected speech."
The state's Republican leaders plan to keep pushing for the law. Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said in a statement to The Associated Press that "I respect the court's ruling and will appeal," and Huckabee Sanders vowed to work with him on that effort.
"This victory over totalitarianism is a testament to the courage of librarians, booksellers, and readers who refused to bow to intimidation."
Meanwhile, the broad coalition that took on Act 372—including booksellers, librarians, patrons, and professional associations—celebrated their latest legal victory, which comes as right-wing policymakers in other states work to force through similar policies.
"This was an attempt to 'thought police,' and this victory over totalitarianism is a testament to the courage of librarians, booksellers, and readers who refused to bow to intimidation," ACLU of Arkansas executive director Holly Dickson said in a statement. "Arkansans deserve a state where intellectual freedom thrives, and this ruling ensures that libraries remain sanctuaries for learning and exchange of ideas and information."
John Williams, the group's legal director, declared that "this ruling reaffirms what we have said all along—Act 372 is a dangerous and unconstitutional attack on free expression."
"Our libraries and bookstores are critical spaces for learning, exploration, and connection," Williams added. "By striking down these provisions, the court has safeguarded the right of every Arkansan to access ideas and information without fear of censorship or prosecution."
Democracy Forward also represented some members of the coalition battling the law, including the Arkansas Library Association.
"Laws like Arkansas' that seek to threaten librarians and booksellers with jail simply for doing their job are dangerous for people, communities, and our democracy," said Democracy Forward president and CEO Skye Perryman in a statement. "Our team is honored to represent librarians in Arkansas to stop this attempt to impede the freedom to read and we will meet further attempts in Arkansas and elsewhere with legal challenge."
Leaders of the American Booksellers Association, Association of American Publishers, Authors Guild, Freedom to Read Foundation, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, WordsWorth Books, Pearl's Books, and WordsWorth Books said in a joint statement that "together with librarians, authors, publishers, booksellers, and readers everywhere, we applaud the court's carefully crafted decision upholding the constitutional right to access books."
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