SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
nonviolence
No Kings: After the Splash, the Ripples Spread
From equality, to humor, to nonviolence, the values expressed at the protests will continue to energize resistance efforts in the weeks, months, and years ahead.
Mar 31, 2026
The numbers from No Kings protests made a big splash. Roughly 8 million people declared their opposition to the present administration this past weekend in over 3100 cities and towns across the nation. But in the long run the impact of quality will be greater than quantity. Beyond the splash, the values expressed in the protests will continue to ripple through our collective consciousness.
Here are some of those ripples that will spread out and energize resistance efforts in the weeks, months, and years ahead.
Harmony and Equality: Those who showed up on the streets joined as one, all equal, no person better or more entitled than the other. Their participation loudly reaffirmed cherished democratic values as expressed in the First Amendment and human values anchored in the world’s religions.
Mutual Respect and Common Purpose: Different views flourished among protesters, yet they shared a common purpose—a counter to the tide of divisiveness presently plaguing the nation. No Kings points the way to a community of diverse viewpoints that rejects demeaning attribution.
The message of No Kings could be deflected or demeaned by those in power, but its solidarity was indisputable.
The Power of Humor: Humor illuminated and emblazoned No Kings messages and lightened the despair associated with what many see happening in this country. Humor “unclothes the emperor,” revealing shallowness and frailty behind a façade of impregnability and bravado. Portraying wannabe authoritarians as buffoons added impact to the protesters’ messages, unmasking savagery and cowardice.
Clear-eyed Resilience: Enduring resistance springs from a grasp of the facts and rejects the temptation to deny or repress the severity of one’s current circumstances. Protesters did not mince words, rather offered direct, full-hearted, and cogent expression that accurately characterized the malignancy of the forces oppressing people.
Local Capacity: The protests had nationwide impact. Yet inherently they built local capacity. Participants garnered valuable lessons in cooperative action on a doable scale. Working together in this way becomes increasingly critical as large-scale institutions, spanning diverse functions, break down—the signs of which are already apparent.
Dignifying the Opposition: Peacefully and without rancor, protesters absorbed the jibes of those who see the world differently. Their overarching commitment was to honor the dignity of all humans, even amid a belief that others’ mindsets are flawed, their actions harmful. The message of No Kings could be deflected or demeaned by those in power, but its solidarity was indisputable.
Appreciating Ancient Wisdom: Free exercise of religion is not only central to the cause represented by No Kings, it was generative of ideas that motivated the protests. The messages conveyed are founded in Jesus’ unyielding embrace of human dignity and opposition to systems of domination, Jews’ commitment to the word and to social justice, Islam’s emphasis on charity and the reverence of pilgrimage, and the Dalai Lama’s expressions of compassion and loving kindness.
Nonviolent Direct Action: No Kings defies the inhumanity and injustice of systems of domination through nonviolent direct action. It serves as a “pilgrimage” for goodness of heart, reverence, compassion, and humor. It illuminates a different way of being and doing with one’s fellow human beings. The way the Minneapolis community reacted to the invasion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a case in point. People from all classes and backgrounds demonstrated mutual regard, materially supported each other, and salved each other’s pain and suffering—an ennobling of what it means to be a citizen of the world.
Keep ReadingShow Less
On Palm Sunday, Christians Across the Country Will Reclaim our Faith Through Love
The Trump administration carries out policy violence that directly contradicts everything that Jesus taught. It’s time to make some noise.
Mar 27, 2026
On Palm Sunday, March 29, thousands of Christians across denomination, geography, culture, and race will be out in the streets. We will sing. We will pray. We will march. We will magnify our God in Jesus Christ who came among us to love, liberate, teach, heal, and give us abundant life. We will renounce the death-dealing cruelty, lies, and greed of our federal administration and demand a society that is rooted in love of neighbor—in feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, and welcoming the stranger.
We believe that the time is now to publicly reclaim the heart of our faith with spiritual and moral clarity and with committed, disciplined action. Over these last months, I and my neighbors witnessed firsthand the terror of Operation Metro Surge. We saw constitutional observers harassed, followed, detained, and—in the case of Renee Good and Alex Pretti—killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. We saw neighbors—children, elders, mothers, fathers—abducted from bus stops, childcare centers, homes, and workplaces. We then heard government officials lie about what we witnessed with our own eyes.
Operation Metro Surge has ended in Minnesota, but our free fall into authoritarianism has not. When our government funds detention centers and war and gives tax breaks to the richest Americans, all the while making devastating cuts to healthcare, food assistance, and other programs that better peoples’ lives, we cannot stay silent. This is policy violence that directly contradicts everything that Jesus taught. It’s time to make some noise.
Our Palm Sunday Faith Actions are inspired by the story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on a donkey, surrounded by crowds who hailed Jesus as Lord and shouted “Hosanna!” meaning, “Save us!” The subversive nature of Jesus’ action here cannot be overstated. In a city under the grip of Roman rule, calling anyone "savior" or "lord" besides Caesar Augustus was dangerous. The imperial cult was the "religion" of the land, requiring submission to Caesar above all. And yet, as Jesus enters Jerusalem, the crowds make a bold public counterclaim with their shouts of “Hosanna.” Jesus is cast as a fulfillment of words spoken by the prophet Zechariah about a humble king of peace:
He will cut off the… war horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow shall be cut off,
and he shall command peace to the nations.
(Zechariah 9:10)
Jesus’ entry, then, was no mere parade—it was risky, disruptive, and tension raising. We read in Luke’s account that the Pharisees try to get Jesus to tone it down: “Teacher, order your disciples to stop!” These well-meaning words remind me of the white clergy in Alabama who told Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King that his direct action campaign to desegregate Birmingham was “unwise and untimely.” But like Dr. King in Birmingham, Jesus stays the course with prophetic clarity.
Matthew dramatizes the tension even more: “When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil” (Matthew 21:10). The Greek word here translated as “turmoil” is related to the word seismos, meaning earthquake. This connection helps us see a deeper meaning: Jesus came to bring about a seismic shift in the way we live, love, and perceive God’s work in the world. Jesus came to shake up the very foundations of human society. His way of humble service and self-giving love make the tectonic plates of empire rumble and crack.
If we keep reading in Matthew’s gospel, we find another seismic event—this time, on that early morning when the women come to the tomb that holds Jesus’ crucified body. An earthquake erupts as an angel arrives and rolls the stone away that had sealed the tomb up tight. In this resurrection dawn, we see that what seems solid and fixed in the eyes of empire can be changed, moved, and shattered in the light of God’s love.
This Palm Sunday, we will be part of the turmoil and part of the quaking. We will be part of the crowd, praising Jesus as the one who saves us and seeking to live out his command to love God and neighbor. Together, we will be a surge of love and nonviolence, care and compassion. We hope you will join us in the streets.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Time to Grow Out of 'Playing' War
By saying the quiet part out loud, Trump is revealing that war is based on the least of who we are, the least mature aspect of human nature.
Mar 14, 2026
Boys will be boys. Just ask the president.
At a gathering of Republicans a few days ago, Donald Trump talked nonchalantly about the recent sinking of an apparently unarmed Iranian frigate by the US Navy—in the Indian Ocean, more than 2,000 miles from the Persian Gulf. A total of 104 crew members were killed and 32 more were injured.
The president proceeded to make this more than merely another brutal, pointless act of war. He turned it into a glaring—shocking—revelation of truth... about the American-Israeli war on Iran and, quite possibly about all wars: about war itself. He was upset at first, he told the crowd, that the Navy sank the frigate rather than capturing it. But when he expressed this to the military officials, one of them responded, “It’s more fun to sink them.”
And the crowd laughed. Uh... are we “playing” war or waging it, with that trillion-dollar annual military budget America has? No doubt we’re doing both, but normally the “fun” part of war—the dehumanization of the enemy, the abstraction of people’s deaths (including those of children)—is airbrushed from public discussion by politically correct strategic and political blather. But this is Trump, spouting the quiet part out loud—in the process, causing the global infrastructure of nation-states, borders, and militarism to tremble. Could it be that war is based on the least of who we are, the least mature aspect of human nature?
A “global structure of nonviolence” is emerging—pushing, pushing against the deeply embedded infrastructure of war and us-vs.-them consciousness.
In contrast, I quote from a recent essay written by my friend Laura Hassler, founder and director of Musicians Without Borders:
Well, guess what. There are other forces alive in today’s world. Decades of resistance to domination and colonialism, the learnings of movements across the Global South, the freedom that Western hegemony for a few decades inadvertently released on its majority population, and access through social media to some of the reality of the actual horrors perpetrated in our names have together led to a worldwide awakening to fundamental injustices, and a worldwide longing for a livable, connected, survivable future.
She calls this worldwide awakening “Radical Empathy,” a term in widespread use, which means a deeply rooted sense of connection among people, well beyond merely sympathy and shared feelings. We are one planet, one people, and we will survive together or not at all.
“Radical Empathy must be fierce, stubborn, creative, persistent,” she continues. “We must hold on to each other, build community, be willing to take risks and accept consequences. Seek alternatives. Stand in solidarity with all who resist oppression and the violence of power and greed...
“And we artists must nurture artistic bravery, using the power of the arts to tell truth, to build community, to turn our capacity for radical empathy into a force for good.”
In other words, Radical Empathy isn’t simply emotional. You can say it’s spiritual, but it’s also political. It’s a movement: ever changing, ever manifesting in the moment, ever addressing conflict by reaching for connection and understanding. Yes, global nationalism still maintains the power to wage war. And war is everywhere these days. As Jeffrey Sachs noted in a recent interview, “World War III is here...” from Ukraine and Gaza and Iran to Asia to the Western Hemisphere. And the fighting across the world is linked.
But at the same time the world is changing. A “global structure of nonviolence” is emerging—pushing, pushing against the deeply embedded infrastructure of war and us-vs.-them consciousness. Finding understanding with your enemy—connecting with “the other”—can be incredibly difficult, especially in the midst of conflict, but Radical Empathy is making it a reality across the planet.
Laura Hassler’s organization, Musicians Without Borders, exemplifies this movement. The organization was founded in 1999, in Alkamaar, a city in the Netherlands. Laura, who was a choir director and organized music events, had put together a concert for the town’s annual honoring of the dead of World War II.
But as I wrote in a column several years ago:
The bloody war in Kosovo was then raging: Thousands had died; nearly a million refugees were streaming across Europe. Its horror dominated the daily news, and Laura couldn’t ignore it. She couldn’t simply focus on the war dead of half a century ago, not when the hell of war was alive in the present moment, pulling at her soul.
She decided, "We’ll perform music from the people suffering from war now—folk songs from Eastern Europe," she told me. Her impulse was to reach out, to connect, somehow, with those suffering right now, on the other side of Europe. And something happened the night of the concert. When it ended, there was a moment of profound silence... and then, as the audience stood, applause so thunderous that the rafters shook. It went on for 20 minutes.
One of the musicians, a political refugee from Turkey, said to her afterwards: "This concert was special. We should put it on a train, send it to Kosovo and stop the war!”
And they went to Kosovo. Gradually, Musicians Without Borders became global, working with local people in war-torn regions all over the world—people on both sides of the divide—to create music that transcends the war of the moment. The organization currently has long-term projects in the Balkans, West Asia, Eastern Africa, and Europe.
This is Radical Empathy, or at least one example of it—our complex force of hope even as the world’s leaders continue bleeding away the planet’s resources in order to play war. Radical Empathy transcends war. It’s who we are—when we find ourselves.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular