Why We Resist

Preparing for the No Kings Protests in America and abroad

“The only thing we should fear is that we will surrender our homeland to be plundered by a gang of liars, thieves, and hypocrites. That we will surrender, without a fight, voluntarily, our own future and that of our children.”

Russian dissident Alexei Navalny wrote these words in his prison diary on Jan. 17, 2022. He was one year into a confinement for invented charges of fraud, embezzlement, and extremism that would take him to the Polar Wolf maximum security penal colony in Siberia in 2023, and to the grave in 2024.

In March I wrote an essay on Navalny and resistance and I am excerpting part of it here as we prepare for the second round of No Kings protests against the Donald Trump administration’s authoritarian aggressions.

Why We Resist

Navalny resisted the Kremlin police state and kleptocracy in many ways, for many years. Vladimir Putin had been in power for over two decades by the time the state killed him.

We are at the start of our experience with national autocracy, although we had a regional police state in the Jim Crow South before the actions of courageous civil rights leaders and ordinary protesters created a climate for its demise. Now, those gains and civil rights itself are at risk, and this nascent regime grows more brutal and corrupt by the day. Yet this is its weakness. It is so brutal and corrupt that the collective reckoning I forecast in February is now beginning.

Out of Chaos and Corruption, a Revelation and a Reckoning

More people are realizing that the intent of Trump and his collaborators is to shred our rights, create a climate of terror to subjugate us, profit personally from holding public office, and consolidate absolute power. More people are seeing past the absurd propaganda about their community members being “terrorists” or “Antifa,” and registering the reality that the destructive force of the state is being used against innocent people.

That is why there is momentum for our protests, with each one larger than the last.

Remember that no country ever constructed a national pro-democracy movement in a few months, and we have to keep our resolve and focus. This is a long game and we have to take care of ourselves so we don’t burn out.

Resistance today may be decentralized, and leaderless —or better, blessed with many leaders— and this model fits a country of the size and complexity of the United States. Over 2,500 different locations are scheduled to host No Kings demonstrations around the country, with millions of people participating, and demonstrations planned for Rome and other foreign cities as well.

Those protesting in other countries (the record-breaking Women’s March of 2017 and Black Lives Matter demonstrations of 2020 also had strong international dimensions) may be United States expatriates, or simply people who support our struggle for freedom, some of them knowing first-hand what it means to live under tyranny.

No Kings Protest, Lansing, MI, June 14, 2025. Jeff Kowalsky, AFP/Getty Images.

ICE and other state security forces are besieging us in our neighborhoods, so we turn those neighborhoods into sites of protest against abuses of power and retrograde models of leadership. Peaceful protest by millions sends the message that we are on the right side of history and will not be deterred.

As I wrote in March, each person has their own reasons for resisting and ways of resisting:

Navalny resisted out of love of nation, to improve the fates of others, and to honor his personal set of values. Those reasons recur throughout the history of anti-authoritarian action, and those in the United States who are thinking about what they can do in the face of the loss of freedoms can start by examining how they can model the values they want to see in the world, whether it is solidarity, justice, equality or something else.

We can also think about how we can be most effective, reviewing our personal skill set and talents and the level at which we want to intervene. Are you a community-oriented person? Could you step forth and take a role in your faith, business, sports, or other communities? Can you speak or act effectively at the state level? Have you thought about running for office or working to register people to vote? Are you a facilitator and persuader who can connect with those anchored in the MAGA world?

At a time when authoritarians seek to remove values and ethics from politics, rewarding amoral pragmatism and nihilism, we can lead with values and talk about values and let those principles guide the choices we make in our public and private lives.

We resist to say: this is not who we are, this is not who I am. We resist to restore our freedoms in the present, but also to bring a better future into being. In doing so, we follow individuals in America and around the world who stand up and speak out in very challenging circumstances. Our actions tomorrow will honor them as well.