No Kings, No Tyrants
October 18, 2025, was a very important day for the people of the United States and the World. An estimated seven million people in over 2600 U.S. cities, towns and villages, in all 50 states (and some other countries) demonstrated against the Trump administration’s assault on democracy and human rights. This was an historic action—perhaps the very largest in U.S. history.
But it wasn’t only a demonstration against all the reactionary actions of the administration, although it was that. No, it was a profound demonstration FOR democracy, for the U.S. Constitutional Amendments’ guarantees of free speech, free assembly, freedom of the press/media, separation of church and state, birthright citizenship, and for support and welcome for immigrants from all over the world and for diversity, equality and inclusion.
Cities that have faced or are facing threats of military intervention of national guard and other military troops to aid in the ICE and Homeland Security assaults on immigrants (with and without papers) had huge mobilizations in the hundreds-of-thousands—Chicago, L.A., New York City, Boston, Portland, San Francisco, Washington, DC. But every large city in the country had at least tens-of-thousands participants; smaller cities and towns had hundreds and thousands. And every state had multiple demonstrations—not only in their capital cities.
The spokesmen of the administration tried to red-bait the actions before they took place, but that obviously had no effect on the turnout. In fact, many of the participants satirized the administration in their signs and humorous costumes of chickens, frogs, unicorns and many more large, inflatable costumes.
Some of the demonstrations had large numbers of protestors against the U.S/Israeli genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank.
Some of the demonstrations were very diverse—reflecting the populations of those cities—Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, Albuquerque. Washington, D.C. and Baltimore had huge numbers of federal workers protesting the layoffs, furloughs, and firings.
October 18th was the third national demonstration focused locally in all states since the Trump Administration came into power. The first of these, last April 2025, had three million participants; the second in June had five million, and the third had seven million, showing a movement in opposition to the administration is growing massively. This is a trajectory that bodes well for real changes in the U.S.
Perhaps the most important proposal to emerge from the No Kings action of October 18th was the impassioned call by Mayor Johnson of Chicago for a General Strike against the attack by the Trump Administration on the U.S. working class. His speech got an enormous response from the crowd of Chicago demonstrators. If this proposal is taken up seriously and acted on by labor unions, and workers in all sectors of the U.S. economy, supported by working class allies in social justice movements, this could be the beginning of a serious challenge to the tiny minority who control the economy, the government, and both the Democratic and Republican Parties.
A real danger to this perspective is the attempt by the Democratic Party to co-opt this movement into electoral action to elect Democrats to Congress in 2026. We socialists must project an independent course for this movement and work to keep it from being subsumed and controlled by both political parties who represent the ruling class of the U.S. and not the working people.
Elsewhere in this issue on page 4, Socialist Viewpoint Co-Editor, Bonnie Weinstein, writes about the organizational steps that are needed to advance the struggle of the working class to take control of society out of the hands of the elite ruling class.
We applaud the No Kings action in providing a big step forward as an integral part of the program—defense of democracy—to advance the needs of the working class.