ESSAY: At No Kings march, solidarity, defiance, and courage

A reflection on Saturday's march in New York

Before we set out for the No Kings march in New York on Saturday, my ten-year-old son had reservations. Would the crowds be enormous? Wouldn’t it be chaotic? He was nervous. He was right to be. But I had already bought him white posterboard and red and blue duct tape, and the hardware store might not take returns. Besides, I explained, it may feel overwhelming and even scary to march in such a big crowd. But the entire rest of your life will be far more overwhelming and scary if what people are marching against prevails. That seemed to stick. For some icing on the cake, I told him that his children will ask him whether he attended the No Kings march. I saw a look in his eyes that suggested the first moment a person is afraid of his children. Now you know how I feel, I chuckled to myself.

We marched down Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, from 50th Street all the way down to 14th Street, where some very kind organizers informed you that, while the work goes on, the march must end and you must disperse. The crowd was so endless that when I hoisted my seven-year-old daughter onto my shoulders and asked what she could see that I couldn’t, she said that wherever she could see, she could only see people. Nothing but people. It was a sea of people of every variety, which matters when the concept of human variety itself is under attack from on high. People of every color, age, faith tradition, back story, continent of origin, fashion persuasion. Donald Trump is presently waging a war on cities, because cities make him terribly afraid. I understood why marching through that crowd. It’s not the crime. It’s the transcendence. In cities like New York, which is not some satellite of America but in fact the place where more Americans live than anyplace else, every single day people defy the small-heartedness of Trump’s lost cause, by living together, by thriving not in spite of but because of difference, by living with people unlike them and loving them and working with them and creating with them, by making more room when someone squeezes into your subway car. Trump has staked his life on the idea that people cannot handle difference, cannot live together in peace. He should learn about New York.

It was a sea of signs, so many funny and colorful and trenchant signs. You’ve seen the pictures. If I had to synthesize a collective meaning from the signs, it would be this: they were, taken together, a bacchanal of humanizing. Because in addition to deploring Trump, the signs insisted on the idea of solidarity, of standing up for others you don’t even know, who may not share your story but still deserve your grace. Native-born people standing for immigrants. White people standing for Black people. Straight people standing for LGBTQ people. City people standing to defend rural hospitals threatened by Trump’s Medicaid cuts.

You could see the epidemic of bravery at work. You got the sense that in the crowd were many die-hards here who come to everything like this, and many people who were just dipping in. No one is born brave; we’re all born crying; if you’re not, the doctor worries. But we get bravery socially, by observing it. Bravery is contagious. And even though Trump has given Americans so many reasons not to be brave, every day he is waging his un-American war on bravery, through the terror of masked abductions and vengeful prosecutions and bogus investigations — in spite of all of that, the germ of bravery spreads. This is why, to answer another of my children’s questions, it’s important to attend these events. Those who find themselves with a little more courage give a kind of moral bridge loan to those who don’t, and then many of the people thus helped find their own.

The march was not a race, but Zohran won it anyway. In general, this has been an utterly leaderless movement. That is natural and to the good, because people have learned the hard way in this era that no one is coming to save them. Of course, it’s also a reflection of the fact that the Democratic Party is so rudderless, so voiceless, so insipid right now, that it offers none of the galvanizing power people so clearly crave. But in New York, a few weeks out from the mayoral election, there was so much palpable energy for Zohran Mamdani in the air. Signs, bags, badges everywhere. I didn’t take this simply as a preference in that race. I took it as a sign that people want something big and bold and real, even if they disagree with half of it. They want ferocity with a smile. For once in this era, they want the sense of being defended, but also of vision for things that can be dreamed, can be done, can be built. The march on Saturday was as clear a reminder as I’ve had that Trump does not own the story of who we are and what we can be. He is good at making us forget that. But we have other stories in us and other stories ahead. Maybe there are enough of us to win them.

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