Black is the Womb

No Kings and the messy gestation of a global revolt

No Kings 2025

Blackout is coming

From November 25th through Cyber Monday, there will be a mass blackout of shopping and working in the U.S.

The blackout exempts small, locally owned restaurants, grocers and shops.

A third No Kings protest is called for Black Friday, November 28.

The Blackout comes on the heels of two previous No Kings protests, the first attended by an estimated 5 million people. Seven million people in 2700 locations supported by more protests around the world took to the streets during the second No Kings—the largest mass protest in U.S. history.

Many people on the left (whatever that actually means in the U.S. context), or just more radical people, have roundly and soundly dismissed No Kings as a liberalgasmic street fair with no demands and an implied or explicit aim of returning to capitalist business as usual with a Democratic Party face.

A white woman at No Kings was photographed holding a sign that said, “If Kamala was president, we’d be @ brunch.” This photo became emblematic among some sectors of all that is wrong with No Kings. And I don’t disagree. But I’ve kept largely quiet because I feel there is much more happening here—something powerful and useful.

A counterpoint to those who just want to get back to brunch.

Too soon to tell

Here’s my list of somewhat hopeful thoughts about No Kings, the Blackout, and whatever happens after that.

• Donald Trump has proved to be susceptible to the spectacle of large protests in our streets and worldwide. As liberal-schmibral as some folks who turned up for No Kings may be, the sight of our streets filled with millions of protesters is working to destabilize the world’s most extreme and possibly dumbest narcissist and his regime.
  
  Trump has already reacted to the protests in ways that reveal his weakness to even his staunch supporters. His power is waning, albeit, too slowly. No Kings is playing a role in this.

• Trump told Netanyahu, “You can’t fight the whole world, Bibi.” This was a direct reference to pro-palestinian/anti-zionist protests. That spectacle pushed Trump to push Netanyahu to sign onto a ceasefire. We don’t yet know what effects the No Kings protests will have. It’s too soon to dismiss them, but they already are not nothing.

• Right now, the whole deal about hero-leaders might be up for kicking to the curb. I’ve been aware since the global pro-Palestinian protests started, that this uprising is different. Strong leaders are absent, and a strong, broader platform is in embryonic form. No Kings is even less defined with dozens and dozens of groups organizing from varying sectors of the political-cultural spectrum.
  
  I am curious to see how this pans out, although we might just return to a capitalist and Zionist oligarchy with a socialist patina. But I’m also not up for the rigidity and dogmatism of the traditional left. Is there an opening here for something more anarchic, mutual-aid centered, decentered, and playful?

• No Kings is building momentum. It’s emboldening people. It might be educating and even radicalizing a small percentage of people. The question of next steps is emerging from this momentum. A general strike is much more possible now. The energetics of No Kings might be more important and powerful than the marches themselves.

• The general peacefulness, mockery, and playfulness of No Kings and anti-ICE protests feels appropriate to the moment. The fascist 2025 agenda explicitly calls for inciting violence among the disaffected populace so that authoritarian rule can be more easily justified.
  
  Although the No Kings organizers and many of the participants take “peaceful” as an ultimate value and don’t recognize the racism and anti-legal nature of this stance, I still think no violence is the right strategy for now. Anti-ICE activists have a more nuanced and radical view in general, and they are also choosing non-violence for now. I think this is smart.

  Also, I’ve been waiting my entire life for a mass protest movement that employs mockery and theater as a main tactic. This is a powerful way that we can refuse to be ruled. Queer people have been doing this for generations. It works.

Anarchy in the U.S.A

Maybe my natural optimism is getting the better of me, but I do feel that leaderless and with messy zones of unity and zones of disunity, we are lurching toward greater freedom.

I attended a Marxist children’s camp and high school. I have participated in many social justice movements and worked full-time as a tenant organizer in my 20s. I have intermittently been around traditional leftists for more than 60 years.

My experience is that they do not like a mess. They do not tolerate well the unstructured, the inarticulate. They come into grassroots movements with strong agendas and a general disdain for folks who are less radicalized or just doing things differently.

But this is womb time. It is a time of gestation. Inside the womb, it is dark. This living darkness hosts the sticky and wet and unformed. The creative processes are so intense, the temperature of the mother rises. She is glowing and full of nectar.

Can we be mentors?

What I would like to see is that those with clearer perception and a more firmly anti-capitalist, new-order-not-just-reform orientation would take it upon themselves to do the work of mentoring rather than denigrating.

Well-deserved and decades-old critiques of liberalism are being newly sharpened. Yet we do have a unique window of opportunity to build on the anti-supremacist movements and cultural flows of the past decades to open hearts and radicalize some people.

I have been trying to do this since October 7th, 2023. I can tell you it’s hard, and sometimes sad, and sometimes the pushback is intense. But it’s really, really sweet when it works.

I have lost students and teachers and friends. But I’ve also gained some new and trustworthy companions on the path.

This is happening

I’d like to end with a few things that unfolded this week.

Buy Nothing, a nationwide, hyperlocal mutual aid network of neighbors supporting neighbors erupted with folks looking for “grocery buddies.” This is people offering to buddy up with neighbors who are losing their SNAP benefits and to shop for and deliver and pay for their groceries for the month of November.

A local cafe in a largely white, professional-class neighborhood in Portland, OR raised nearly 90k in one day to support free breakfasts for people experiencing food insecurity.

With the climate-change-driven hurricane of the century bearing down on Jamaica, the Israeli genocide intensifying in Gaza, and the mass killings in el-Fasher, I am seeing more people making connections between these events and their own lives in late-late capitalism.

Something is being birthed.

The barriers between the U.S. and the realities of our own lives and those of rest of the world are breaking down.

Let’s get in there and get messier and birth this thing to light.

with infinite love,

Shambhavi

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