Let’s Do This: When Protesting, Remember the Two Essential Strategies for Reducing Trump’s Power

Never be afraid to exercise your democratic right to dissent, but remember who you are trying to persuade

Note: This article is largely a re-post of an article from June 14 with the same title. That article was written for the June 14 No Kings protests, and I have lightly edited it for the upcoming October 18 protests. I believe the message of the piece remains as important as ever.

With the No Kings protests happening on Saturday at thousands of locations nationwide, this will be the third significant day of protest during the second Trump administration. The first were the Hands Off! protests of April 5, which drew an estimated three to five million attendees, and the second were the June 14 No Kings protests, which drew an estimated four to six million marchers. Both were historic in terms of their size, and both were important as physical manifestations of the continued vibrancy of democratic action in the United States of America.

I encourage you, if you are willing, able and available, to find a protest near you and attend—although I also encourage you, as I wrote back on June 12, to behave, keep your eyes open, and be careful.

Whether or not you are attending, I also encourage you to think about the purpose of protesting. As I see it, there are two purposes, both of which should be kept in mind at all times in order to increase the overall effectiveness of the action.

First, one goal of any protest is to build up the courage of all those participating to exercise their democratic right to dissent. This is as true today as it has ever been in our country. In a wide range of areas, Donald Trump is attempting to use intimidation tactics in order to make his political opponents—whether they be law firms, universities, other countries, members of Congress, media organizations, immigrants, late night talk show hosts, or simply individual grassroots activists—back down and surrender their rights without a fight. Simply attending a protest can help stiffen your spine and reduce your fear of dissenting. Further, when Americans who might be intimidated by Trump see their fellow citizens participating in protests against him, your attendance at a protest can help provide them with the courage they need to either begin, or to continue, dissenting themselves.

Second—and this is just as important to remember—the goal of a protest is to increase the public support of the causes for which you are protesting. While this may seem obvious and intuitive, it can often be forgotten. In some cases, protests have a tendency to create a festive, carnival atmosphere, where the event is more like a street party for the participants to enjoy than it is anything else. Other times, protests can function as spaces for participants to shout and vent, often to the determinant of the causes they are supporting. Further, protests can sometimes be overtaken by agitators or counter-protesters, who attend rallies not with the goal of supporting the cause at hand, but of challenging it or changing it.

To put it more succinctly, the twin purposes of a protest are to build courage for those who support a cause and to broaden public support for that cause. These two purposes are basically the same as the two strategies that I outlined back on May 3 in an article titled: “The Two Essential Strategies to Reducing Trump’s Power: Lower his poll numbers, and don’t be afraid to dissent.” That isn’t a coincidence. The No King’s rallies are anti-Trump rallies, and if they are going to be successful, they need to employ the two essential strategies of reducing Trump’s power: providing people with more courage to dissent against Trump while also broadening public disapproval of Trump.

With these goals in mind, some best practices for participating in Saturday’s protest—and really any protest—come in to focus:

1. Leave the carnival behind. It can be tempting to treat a protest as a street carnival, replete with costumes, props, sideshows, and funny signs. However, stuff like that can make protests look silly or frivolous, and make the protesters look self-centered and clueless. Try to remember that you are protesting for something important that you really believe in. As such, it’s best to just dress regularly (whatever that may be for you), leave the props at home, and carry either a simple, straightforward sign or an American flag. This is serious business, and should be treated as such.

2. Leave the rage behind. Anger, rage and—especially—violence are unpopular with the American public. They are at best ineffective, and more often than not counterproductive, at broadening public support for a cause. Even relatively small amounts of violence can lead to protests being viewed unfavorably by a plurality or majority of the public, as happened in Los Angeles back in June. More recently, federal judges have seemed inclined to greenlight Donald Trump’s deployments of the National Guard because of violence that has taken place at some anti-ICE protests. Now, I am never really a fan of anger, as I have made clear in the past, but I recognize that anger is what often leads people to take political action. That said, even if anger is what led you to a protest in the first place, it is something you need to check at the door.

3. Be cheerful and hopeful. Instead of adopting a party mentality or releasing a primal scream, what you should bring with you to a protest is cheerfulness and hope. That may sound trite to some folks, and it may sound hopelessly out of tune with the moment to others. However, it really is what your persuadable fellow Americans are looking for. The only recent presidents who won two terms and left office with high approval ratings pretty much shared those two traits. Cheerfulness and hopefulness practically define Bill Clinton and Barack Obama (along with, I believe, competence). Not only are hope and cheer what people want, it feels good when you give it to them. Further, with my apologies to Walt Whitman, those two feelings resonate a lot deeper than the relative shallowness of carnivals or barbaric yawps.

4. Be safe. The unfortunate truth is that protests are not entirely safe spaces. Danger can come from authorities who crack down on protests too harshly. Danger can come from participants who use violence in an attempt to agitate the crowd into more radical action. Danger can come from counter-protesters who aim to either stop the rally entirely or at least bring out the worst in its participants. Also, unfortunately, at times danger can come from the leaders of the protest themselves if they do not really believe in democracy or nonviolent action (I see absolutely no indication that Saturday’s protest is anything like that, but I have encountered this in the past). So, make sure not to overburden yourself with signs or props, try to avoid getting stuck in the center of the crowd, do not engage agitators or counter-protesters in any way, wear clothes and footwear that allow you to leave quickly, and at all times keep your eyes open.

If you do attend, I sincerely hope that you have a positive experience, as protests can be quite wonderful—even exhilarating. Just be hopeful, be cheerful, and be safe.

Again, you can find a rally near you by clicking here.