Audio Player
A dreary spring day, cold and wet, is what I remember. And standing, nervous, at the edge of a scraggly “crowd” of about twelve people. We were in Saint Louis U.’s quad, and this was my first (and almost last) protest. Something about hostages in Iraq? God help me, I cannot remember. All I remember is how lame it all felt.
I came of age in a time of business majors and Eurostyle; acquisition was an anxious hunger, and politics was passive. The sixties looked goofy to my classmates, a waste of productive time. I romanticized them—but I was too shy to slide over to the narrow radical margin. By the time I reached grad school, friends were putting their tax payments in escrow, refusing to fund the U.S. government, and I was secretly mailing mine in, scared to break the law. Protests were pointless, I decided, just a feel-good exercise for extroverts….
Black Lives Matter won me back, but kneeling in the grassy town square of an all-White small town with some well-intentioned young people did not feel significant. Neither did standing in another cold spring rain last week in front of St. Louis’s City Hall. No elected officials showed up, no media showed up. Nothing changed.
Except—everything changed. My mood shifted from sick frustration to determined energy. Telling people about the protest and making a RESIST sign for my car window and reading the next day’s news all felt different. And if a feel-good exercise for extroverts can do that, I am all for it.
There is a sweetness in solidarity. I spend my days alone, writing grumbly pieces about screens making us passive, worrying that the next generation has no social skills and will give up on relationships. But the young couple with their arms wrapped around each other and their spare arms waving big placards—they were doing just fine. So was the young man, clad only in a T-shirt in the freezing rain because he had been so eager to get here, yelling, “Are we fuckin’ angry?” to get us loud and chanting. A stranger rushed up to give him a jacket.
Another stranger handed us sunflowers—she had bought dozens, in support of Ukraine. We conspired: better on this corner or the other? Spread out for reach or clump together to suggest a crowd? Hey, was that a police car honking in support? Mmm. Probably not. Probably the car behind the police car. Same with the fire truck we were so happy to wave at.
Funny how disappointed I was, how eager for public servants to join us. Was I still in good-girl mode? No, I just wanted to trust them. And blind support of what is happening in this country is hard for me to trust.
The truck with the RESIST sign in the window was definitely honking for us, though, and hey, so was the school bus. Several drivers yelled out their car windows, “Thank you for protesting!”
The response lifted our spirits every time, binding us together in the sort of community I usually write that we have lost. “Here we are in the rain and the wind, a cross-section of age groups, and everybody on the same page,” a woman marveled. Someone approached a protester who was juggling a big sign in heavy wind and bent down: “This your umbrella? If your arms get tired, I can hold it.”
“I’m turning my flag upside down for distress,” a man explained to an elderly protestor, who nodded and replied, “That’s where we’re at.”
The signs were pure self-expression, scrawled on cardboard or painted and wrapped in Saran Wrap against the rain. Nothing canned about them. “Left or right, we all know wrong!” “Is THIS what we voted for?” “Is this their idea of great?” “It’s a big beautiful Constitution, Trump, bigger than you!” “Ignited We Stand.” “This is what democracy looks like.” “No Kings, No Putin, No Musk.” Again and again, “No Kings!”
For my sign, my husband had suggested, “John Adams was right. Beware oligarchy.” I told him it was too cerebral. Nobody would get it.
That night, at the State of the Union variety show, President Trump made his usual sweeping claims. He had brought back free speech. He had renamed the country’s tallest mountain and an international body of water. He had put tariffs in place that were already making America rich again and making America great again. He praised Elon Musk, the unelected immigrant who is gutting the country’s nature, culture, defense, and safety net with methods few people approve and no one voted for.
Afterward, Maurizio Valsania, professor of American history at the Università di Torino, wrote a piece headlined “Trump is the kinglike president many feared when arguing over the US Constitution in 1789 – and his address to Congress showed it.” Valsania wanted to remind us that when the Constitution was drafted, John Adams feared it would make possible “a monarchical Republick, or if you will a limited Monarchy.” Just using the word “president” instead of “king” would not change the “Regal Authorities and Powers” we were building into the office, Adams said. (Trump prefers “king” anyway, with its suggestion of lifelong rule, immunity, and unlimited power.)
Adams was not the only critic. Others worried about giving the president control of the military (maybe even the ability to fire unsympathetic generals?). They pointed out that if a president decided to impose martial law, free citizens would instantly become “the subjects of a military king.” They worried about a president abusing the power to “grant pardons to individuals guilty of treason”—and grant their own wrongdoings immunity.
In the end, what consoled the critics was their confidence in the American people to elect those of high moral character. “Will a virtuous and sensible people chuse villains or fools for their officers?” asked one delegate rhetorically. As though the possibility were unthinkable.
Sighing, I thought back to the protest, and how at one point, a banana jogged up. Well, a woman in a banana headdress. I am not sure whether this was political symbolism or just the headdress at hand, but she got our attention and started a chant: “NO KINGS.” Another followed: “No oligarchs, no KKK, no Fascist USA!”
Then came the traditional “Hey ho, hey ho, Elon Musk [alternating with Donald Trump] has got to go!”—and I thought of all the protests since this nation began, and how similar the issues have been. Only the nouns change. Again and again, violence, greed, and abuse of power have provoked protest. The body politic does not stay healthy on its own. Resistance is its immune system, and protesters are little boils that erupt at the surface when infection grows dangerous.
Inflammation reddens; it looks angry and rough, swollen, unseemly. But it draws attention to the underlying problem and rallies the rest of the body to defend against it.
John Adams was the proper sort; he might have been self-conscious holding a posterboard, too, or worried that it was crude and silly. But he lodged his own style of protest, warning us precisely what could go wrong.
And then we forgot what he said.
Read more by Jeannette Cooperman here.
