By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor
October 17 saw a demonstration like no other in American history—but not so strange in the wider world—a pre-election mass mobilization of voters to defeat a would-be dictator. And as often happens with such mobilizations, it had to overcome its share of obstacles.
“No Kings: Vote Early overcame censorship from META, threats of election interference from the federal government, and the Los Angeles Police Department’s attempt to shut down the downtown Los Angeles No Kings rally before it started to become the largest single-day early voting activation in American history, with a reported millions of people attending over 3,000 events across the country,” said Hunter Dunn, spokesman for 50501, a founding partner in the No Kings coalition.
Trump’s threat to democracy may be unique in American history, but not on the world stage, where roughly 70% of such threats have been reversed, according to the tenth annual report of the V-Dem institute, which notes in its section on America that “Elections were often pivotal windows of opportunity, and the first electoral cycle was often decisive.” So it’s no wonder that this mass mobilization was seen as a threat to Trump’s survival.
Still, local activists reported no incidents of repression at their events.
“The action in Torrance was festive and defiant,” said Melanie Jones. “Indivisible San Pedro ran a voter information table, and we had a steady stream of customers, checking registration, asking about how to register a relative or looking for voting resources to help them make informed decisions.” And beyond that, “The interplay between participants and passing drivers was robust and supportive,” she said.
In Lakewood, “We had about 400 people join us in a rally where we also distributed and promoted information about registering to vote, where to vote, how to volunteer to monitor polls, and how to recognize election rights violations,” said Heather Rodriguez, with the Lakewood Indivisible Leadership Team. “Participants celebrated voting early and taking back their power from the corruption of the Trump administration. They also discussed next steps, how to get more involved, and holding our politicians accountable,” she explained. “It’s not enough to go back to where we were; we need to build a better society that protects our communities from the atrocities Trump and his allies continue to inflict, particularly with ICE assaults escalating.”
“Long Beach Indivisible’s No Kings – Vote Early was a great early voter activation and a fun day in the park!” said Kristi Fischer. “We registered people to vote, educated hundreds on nonpartisan voter resource guides, helped them make a plan to vote and where they could vote—including the ballot drop box in Bixby Park—and passed out free Vote Early buttons.”
The atmosphere was downright festive, she said. “We had folks joining together to sing Resistance songs, paint resistance rocks, paint a vote early banner to be used in overpass visibility actions and, of course, engage in the ever popular sign protesting along Ocean Blvd., getting lots of encouraging honks.”
While it had no visible effect in Long Beach, Fischer did call attention to “the shenanigans Meta pulled yesterday on the No Kings Instagram account.”
For four hours, during the height of the protests, the account was blocked from posting. Meta claimed it was a technical glitch, but Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin wasn’t at all convinced, as he explained on MSNow that night, citing a litany of similar “mistakes” in the past.
“Now keep in mind this is the same Meta that has Facebook that told Congress that Russian ads reached maybe 126 million Americans during the 2016 election. This is the same Meta-where Zuckerberg, the head of Meta, said that he had made a big mistake by not preventing Facebook from being used to cause harm and interfere with the elections,” Levin said. “This is the same Meta that says it didn’t do enough to prevent inciting violence in Myanmar. This is the same Meta that apologized for its role in anti-Muslim riots in Sri Lanka. This is the same Meta that just this week was taken to court in Brazil for favoring the authoritarians in that country and told to knock it off.”
Of course, Meta’s hardly the only such example, as tech billionaires and their platforms have swung hard to the right, and big tech itself is increasingly recognized as a threat to democracy.
This showed up again in fundraising data for the third quarter of this year. As CNBC put it in their headline, “Democrats have candidate cash. Republicans have Elon Musk.”
From Senate races with the highest profiles, in Texas, Georgia and Michigan, to those regarded as late surprises like Kansas and Nebraska, Democratic candidates consistently out-raised their GOP opponents by massive amounts. In Kansas and Georgia, their margins even topped 10-to-1. To offset that, Republicans had super PAC funds, including $276 million from Elon Musk—more than a quarter of a billion dollars. Of that total, $158 million was directed to Texas, to try to prevent James Talrico from defeating the scandal-plagued GOP candidate Greg Abbot.
Such is the money battle that No Kings was organized against.
“On October 17th, We the People showed that we have the power: that we, not the billionaire class or the politicians implicated in the Epstein files, will decide who our leaders are,” Dunn said. “However, No Kings: Vote Early was only the start. Now that we’ve cast our ballots and helped many more people across the country make a plan to cast theirs, the No Kings coalition is shifting into helping mobilize a network of everyday Americans eager to engage in election defense efforts to ensure that every single eligible vote is counted.”