When Peaceful Protests Are Everywhere
There were more than 2000 No Kings demonstrations on June 14, a record-breaking number: Why this ubiquity matters
Welcome to Briefings, a newsletter on organizing and strategy by L.A. Kauffman. Here I offer insights on the current pro-democracy movement and how everyday people can take effective action to promote freedom, dignity, and democracy amid rising authoritarianism. I hope you’ll consider a paid subscription to support my work.
The New York Times, today, told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.
Yesterday, demonstrators gathered in more than 2000 locations across the United States and around the globe for overwhelming peaceful, exuberant, and defiant anti-Trump protests, with the shared theme of “No Kings.”
With the possible exception of the early days of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, there have never been this many coordinated protests on a single day in the United States before. The ubiquity of these protests is historic.
Here's the organizers' map, capturing just how widespread they were:
And here's how The New York Times decided to report on it: They published this map with fewer than 100 dots, representing, ahem, “Confirmed locations”:
This minimizing horseshit is more than institutional arrogance and bad reporting. It's a continuation of a longstanding Times habit of downplaying both the scale and significance of protest, especially when it's overwhelmingly nonviolent, as the No Kings demonstrations were.
Rather than linger on the possible causes for this consistent distortion, I want to focus here instead on why it matters that demonstrations against the current Trump regime have been more ubiquitous and numerous than at almost any other time in U.S. history.
For not only have protests taken place in more locations on the same date than at nearly any time in the past, there have been way more protests against Trump since he took office than there were when he took office in 2017, which itself was a time of record-breaking protests. Here's a chart from Strength in Numbers (using provisional, early data on the No Kings events):
The big story of June 14, 2025 was the contrast between the small, listless turnout for Trump's D.C. military spectacle and the massive, energetic, nonviolent No Kings protests.
And in this time of authoritarian overreach and elite complicity (hello, New York Times), what's even more important is how this one big story produced millions of little stories, told by trusted messengers in dispersed locations.
For nearly every person who attended one of the No Kings protests – though it's way too early for an accurate tally, the number will be in the millions – has already told friends or families or neighbors about their experience, and will continue to do so in the coming days. That's millions of conversations, casual chats, and social media posts, rooted in thousands of local communities, telling the story of the peaceful and spirited gatherings that happened in each of those thousands of places — how millions have faced down fear to gather together and say no to the cruelty, corruption, and lawlessness of Trump’s deeply unpopular administration.
Trump's flood-the-zone strategy hit us all like a tsunami – violent, destructive, shocking. But note how our response has been like a rising tide: steady and inexorable in its spread.
On a far more somber note, the other big story of June 14, 2025 was the cold-blooded, politically motivated shooting of two Minnesota Democratic state legislators and their spouses by a heavily armed Trump supporter. I'm heartbroken by the murder of Rep. Melissa Hortman, a progressive champion killed in the attack along with her husband.
Make no mistake: Political violence in the United States comes overwhelmingly from the right (don't count on the New York Times to tell you that, either). Its steady rising is one of the most alarming features of this very alarming time.
But there are ways to make that violence backfire against its perpetrator. As we absorb both the shock of these shootings and the shot-in-the-arm of yesterday's grassroots mobilization, I strongly encourage you to check out this detailed playbook and guide, written by Hardy Merriman for the 22nd Century Initiative and the Horizons Project.
Thank you for being a reader. If you find this newsletter valuable, please consider a paid subscription to help support my research, analysis, and writing. If you prefer to make a one-time donation to my work, you can do so here or here.