“No Kings” rally at Kerouac Park, Lowell MA on June 15, 2025.

After the Rallies

By Rev. Steve Edington

Said Joe what they could never kill went on to organize.

                                          “Ballad of Joe Hill” by Alfred Hayes

As I went home from the two No Kings rallies I attended last Saturday (6.14)—one at Kerouac Park in Lowell and one in my city of Nashua, New Hampshire—I found myself humming those words. As energizing, uplifting, and necessary as I found those two rallies to be–which were just two of the thousands held across the country—I also knew that without some sustaining energy and commitment coming out of them they would have little continuing impact. They were galvanizing precisely at a time when our country needs their galvanizing effect.

The question and the challenge now is: Will that galvanizing translate into political power? Will the walking and the riding that brought out millions of marchers and rally-goers all around America also constitute walking and riding to the polls next year in the Congressional elections? Will it inspire local, state, and national organizing to counter the numerous debilitating and dangerous effects of a Trump administration that is barely six months old?

I see the June 14 rallies as Step One in a much larger and ongoing process that must take place if we are indeed to be delivered from the monarchial and dictatorial doings of Donald Trump and his minions.

But before going on with this thread, I’ll share some of the thoughts I brought to the two rallies I attended:

I’m going to date myself now by recounting a childhood memory from January of 1953. I was seven years old. A neighbor invited my mother and me over to watch the Inauguration of President Dwight Eisenhower on their little black and white TV. My family could not afford a television then.

I was captured by the majesty of the occasion. I felt a connection to this country I hadn’t known before. It was an early lesson for me in what it means to be an American. I saw Mr. Eisenhower as my President.

I’ve seen a lot of Presidents come and go since then. I have greatly admired some of them; while others, well, not so much. But for all of their many differences and levels of competence, everyone of them had at least one thing in common—a commonality that goes to every President clear back to George Washington. However great, so-so, or just plain lousy our 47 Presidents have been, they each and all knew that the Presidential Office they held was greater than themselves. They knew that they were caretakers of a democratic tradition that was only theirs for a time and that they would, in time, pass along.

I say “each and all” with one exception and that would be the current President. I’ll change that figure to 46 Presidents. Donald Trump actually feels he is greater than the Presidential Office itself in that he can define it, and its powers, however he wishes—Constitutional limitations notwithstanding.

By way of just one example: I came to the rallies against the backdrop of the preceding events in Los Angeles. While the anti-ICE demonstrations there were overwhelmingly peaceful, unfortunately some of them went beyond the bounds of non-violence. That should not have happened. But it was a situation the Los Angeles Police force was and is quite capable of handling.

But our would-be-King President conjured up a “foreign invasion,” federalized the California National Guard in defiance of the State’s Governor and sent in the United States Marines. That is Trump’s way. He manufactures an emergency and then bestows upon himself the authority to take care of it in whatever way he pleases whether the Constitution allows for it or not.

But while Trump manufactures emergencies to justify his Kingly ways, the real emergency we face today is the Trump Presidency itself as it threatens the democratic institutions that have—for all their many flaws—sustained us for nearly 250 years.

Thankfully, the Courts have reined him in to some extent, but Trump will continue to act like a monarch so long as a complicit Congress allows him to do so.

This is why we need to look beyond these rallies even as we celebrate their success. So long as a Republican controlled Congress accommodates Trump in his Kingly ways, then he will not stop with them. Until we have a US Congress that takes seriously its role and responsibility as a separate and co-equal branch of government that attends to the checks and balances on the Chief Executive that the Constitution calls for, only then will our democratic institutions and processes be able to function as they should and must. The current Republican controlled Congress is essentially an adjunct to Trump’s Executive Branch.

As troubling as all this is, now is not a time for mourning or despair. Keep in mind labor organizer Joe Hill’s last words as he was executed for a murder for which he had been framed: “Don’t waste time mourning—organize.”

And the spirit that has been generated by the rallies of this past Saturday cannot be killed if we take Alfred Hayes’ words to heart: “Said Joe what they could never kill went on to organize.”

Among the things that keep me going and that keep me hopeful these days are found in the lines two of my American heroes—Jack Kerouac and Woody Guthrie. They each hold up an America for me that I feel is still worth loving and caring about.

From Jack Kerouac:

“In America when the sun goes down, I think of all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievably huge bulge over to the West Coast and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it. The evening star must be drooping and spreading her sparkler dims on the prairie which is just before the coming of the complete night that blesses all the rivers, cups the peaks, and folds the final shore in…”

This is the America that Jack saw and loved, and is worth fighting, and organizing, for.

And from Woody Guthrie’s best-known work:

“Nobody living can ever stop me
As I go walking that freedom highway
Nobody living can make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.”

God bless you Jack and Woody. And blessings on all of us as we stand up for an America we feel is still worth saving.