Randi Weingarten’s anti-Trump national uprising sounds ‘mostly peaceful’

“Authoritarianism can be stopped,” Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, was saying, even though Weingarten was a prime mover, if not the prime mover, behind years-long Covid-era school closures that crushed education opportunity for an entire generation. But we’ll stop this particular round of authoritarianism, she said, with our voices and our bodies: “We have to be on the streets in a very, very public way.”

This was on an AFT organizing call yesterday evening for No Kings, a massive nationwide protest taking place this coming Saturday, which had been scheduled long before last weekend’s Battle of Los Angeles. A sweeping round of anti-Trump marches and rallies will take place in nearly 2,000 municipalities around the United States, which you won’t be able to avoid unless, say, you have a standing commitment to attend a children’s birthday party at Dave and Buster’s.

The unfolding tragedy in LA loomed large over the call. “I want to send a lot of love to the people in LA,” Weingarten said. “Virtually everyone I know in LA is peace-loving, whether documented or undocumented.”

This did beg the question: who does Randi Weingarten know in LA who isn’t peace loving? But she moved on to say that the Founding Fathers didn’t want power “centered on one man,” and then she lost Internet connection, which she later told us was because her wife was teaching a Zoom class on Gandhi in another room.

This organizing Zoom featured a couple of guest stars. MSNBC host the Reverend Al Sharpton called in, literally, because we didn’t see his face. He sounded kind of bored, saying, “We can vote for different candidates and different propositions later,” that now is the time to be unified, and that what’s currently going on “goes back to the days of Roman chariots.” Maybe Sharpton lost reception going through a tunnel, because he was gone quickly.

Governor Andy Beshear, a Kentucky Democrat, made a more significant guest appearance, wearing a golf shirt, with a blurry portrait of Abraham Lincoln behind him. Beshear looked uncomfortable, like someone who showed up at the church potluck with the wrong dish, and seemed to be rehearsing some sort of liberal-centrist response to the State of the Union address.

It became quite clear that the AFT had pitched this call mild, on purpose. The people who have been on the ground in Los Angeles and in other US cities where protests against ICE are growing are mostly from the Hard Revolutionary division of the resistance, unafraid of a little smoke and light jail time. No Kings has broader ambitions, appealing to angry MSNBC grandpas and perpetually traumatized Facebook Jennifers who just want to Do Something while Making Good Trouble. They stand on the precipice of activating their blacked-out Instagram square moment of the anti-ICE movement. Randi Weingarten, who projects as a grandmotherly lesbian, is a good avatar for them.

Weingarten popped in and out of the call depending on whether she was winning the fight for internet access in her condo. The other significant voice on the call was Leah Greenberg, one of the founders of the progressive protest group Indivisible.org, who, compared with the other people on the Zoom, looked young and fresh and happy, as though she sleeps in a vegetable crisper until it’s time to activate. She said that President Trump is trying to “play the strong man on TV” and that he and Stephen Miller are trying to manufacture a crisis. By contrast, No Kings will be a day of “joyful, peaceful defiance.”

“This is a moment that it’s crucial for everyone to see that the opposition is big, it is bold, it is powerful, and it is everywhere,” Greenberg said.

But while the vast majority of No Kings events around the US will almost certainly be jolly, PG-rated People’s Uprisings, this summer is brewing a dark undertone. If my social media feed is a good indication, and it is, people are angry, are scared, and are openly calling for armed resistance, for “hiding people in our attics,” or both.

Saturday could fizzle, but it could also be a huge flashpoint in modern American history, with President Trump hosting a parade for the 250th anniversary of the Army on one hand, and millions of people marching or milling around every state in the union, chanting “no justice, no peace” on the other. It’s enough to make any true freedom-loving person want to hide away from these swirling, annoying tides of history.

“No Kings is not a call for violence,” Greenberg made sure to tell her audience of retired teachers Tuesday night. But an email blast that Indivisible sent out to its audience due to gather in downtown Chicago, always a protest hotspot, at noon on Saturday, sounded a much more urgent message:

“With the actions taken against protesters in Los Angeles this weekend, the Trump MAGA regime seeks to unleash the military within our borders to advance its agenda of abductions and intimidation, violating our freedoms and our right to equality under the law… NO SOLDIERS IN OUR STREETS! NO DISAPPEARING OUR NEIGHBORS! NO FASCIST DICTATORSHIP IN AMERICA! NO KINGS!”

Sounds “mostly peaceful,” whether you’re documented or undocumented. If you’re planning to turn out, you may want to find a sitter for the kids, unless you want to introduce them to the sound of flash grenades and the smell of tear gas.

You might even find yourself marching next to Randi Weingarten, because a teacher’s work is never done.