In a disproportionate show of force, an authoritarian leader deployed troops to an American city in response to citizen protests. This leader could not tolerate resistance to his extreme policies—he wanted to project power precisely because he was losing control. The spectacle was designed to draw the people’s attention back to him. But it failed. Instead, the people learned that they could live without a king.
While this could be a description of this week’s events in Los Angeles, it’s also a fair report on the news from Boston in the summer of 1775. King George III had sent troops to suppress citizens who were protesting his abuses of power. Our country’s fight for equality and freedom, which has inspired democratic movements around the world, was born out of a city under occupation that refused to bow to a tyrant.
In cities and towns across America this Saturday, millions of Americans will rally to peacefully celebrate No Kings Day. The two of us will stand together at the rally in Philadelphia because, as troubling as Donald Trump‘s abuses of power are, we still believe the American tradition of liberty and justice is more powerful than fear. Indeed, it is essential that we celebrate this great democratic tradition by refusing to bow.
In the ancient book of the prophet Daniel, we find the story of another tyrant who stole from the poor, abused the people, and misused power to serve himself. In that story, three young men who understand the dynamics of authoritarianism refuse to bow to a golden statue of the king. Their moral resistance is not so much about who the king claims to be as it is about who they are. They refuse to become the kind of people who worship a man as a god. They refuse to surrender their agency, or their attention.
We must heed the wisdom of this ancient text. Donald Trump is not illegally deploying American troops on U.S. soil because he is strong. He is abusing his authority as commander in chief to try to pick a fight on the streets because his agenda is incredibly unpopular and his political position is weak.
When public support for Trump’s effort to illegally defund government agencies through DOGE fell underwater at the end of his first 100 days, the president tried to part ways with Elon Musk and pivot to his legislative agenda in Congress. But his attempt to sell the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich since chattel slavery was upended by Musk himself, who publicly attacked Trump’s embrace of exorbitant deficit spending. “KILL the BILL,” Musk tweeted. Meanwhile, millions started to learn that this big, ugly bill would kill Americans by stripping health insurance from 15 million people, slashing nutrition assistance programs, and cutting thousands of jobs supported by green energy credits. According to a report from public health scholars at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, the bill’s cuts to health care alone would kill 51,000 Americans next year. The more people learn about its details, the less popular Trump’s signature legislation becomes.
When an authoritarian is weak, he will do anything he can to get attention. That’s why troops are on the ground in L.A. It’s why there’s a military parade tearing up the streets of Washington, D.C., this weekend. But we do not have to give Trump what he wants. We do not have to bow by waving a flag at his parade, and we do not have to believe the lies his regime is trying to spread about the need for martial law. We can join with neighbors in our communities and peacefully assemble to celebrate a 250-year tradition of liberty and justice for all. We can confess that we’ve never yet been the America we aspire to be, but reaffirm our determination to pursue a more perfect union together.
We can gather to remember that no one can become our king if we refuse to bow.
In Daniel’s ancient story, the three young men are thrown into a fiery furnace for their refusal to bow. But they are not consumed by the flames. Instead, the people witness a fourth figure walking with them through the fire. Even as we celebrate the promise of democracy this weekend, we must be clear-eyed; we face some difficult days ahead. “A dying mule always kicks the hardest,” they often said in the final years of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa.
We must maintain discipline, refuse to meet violence with violence, and keep our focus on an agenda that lifts all of us to higher ground. If we do, the promise of the prophet is true for us as well: a force more powerful than any of our individual actions will come to stand with us in the fire. It is the force that propelled movements for abolition, women’s suffrage, labor rights, and civil rights throughout our history. It is the force of truth, love, and justice. And it is more powerful than any would-be king.
William J. Barber, II is President of Repairers of the Breach and Director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School. Leah Greenberg is co-director of Indivisible.
The views expressed in this article are the writers’ own.
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