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The third No Kings protests are expected to draw millions. Do they need clearer goals?
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2026
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No billionaires or AIPAC is better
Go to the protests: you'll see them all.
There's room for everyone.
That's a problem, no? OWS failed because it had no clear goal and was just a catch-all for general dissatisfaction. And OWS was a sustained protest, not a four-hour long jaunt before everyone goes home.
No. It is a deliberate choice; the article itself is about why. The sub-headline of the above article, emphasis mine:
What you are looking at is the dead center of propagandist's difficulty to categorize and discredit/smear/twist a tightly defined goal, while issuing a broad enough invitation to all: No Kings.
That's specific enough for me, and it was specific enough for millions more the last time, and I expect it to be specific enough for even millions more than that tomorrow. Personally, I think it's genius and I would not have it any other way.
But if the anti-authoritarian thought "No Kings" is not enough for you in itself, or you believe that is somehow non-specific in the face of encroaching authoritarianism and a rapidly coalescing fascist government, maybe you should rethink your own strategy.
And Occupy Wall Street did not fail, seeing as how we're still talking about Occupy fifteen years later not in terms of failure, but of its current relevance. Maybe you didn't want people to realize you were talking about Occupy?
I think NK is definitely valuable as a way to inspire people who otherwise wouldn't even know where to begin with protesting, and I think it's a great way to organize people or at least build awareness of local activist/mutual aid groups. Outside of that I would argue that a protest planned for a specific time on a specific date with a specific end point is little more than cathartic. There's personal value in catharsis but not societal value; it feels good but doesn't create change.
And no, assuming that the goal of OWS was to create actual change, it definitely and unfortunately failed. It's relevant to the extent that it shows people what doesn't work.
But it does avoid all manner of exclusionary purity tests by making them almost impossible -- something that is usually fatal for the left -- while robbing the opposition of an easily attackable goal. Imagine if No Kings were riven with all the infighting and clashing of sub-goals other protests have been. That's why I think it's genius: it's an unashamedly large tent, so much so that no one group or ideology retains a right to define, and therefore enforce, any given direction.
But that's just me, and I think we look at this differently, but I appreciate you taking the time to explain what you meant. I will think about what you said, because you're coming with nuance I had not considered and it's a complex issue. Thank you for the reasoned response.