6/12/25 Newsletter - We will not back down.
STRONGER TOGETHER
“The founding fathers did not live and die to see this moment. It’s time for all of us to stand up peacefully." - Governor Newsom
We should all be outraged.
To add to the horror of Dictator Trump's display of force in LA, today Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's security handcuffed and removed
CA Senator Alex Padilla from a press conference.
He was forced to the ground. Watch it here.
Republican politicians and conservative news
are already lying about the incident and creating a different narrative.
If Trump and Noem are willing to do this to a US Senator,
they will do it to anyone.
The authoritarian regime is ramping up significantly. And fast.
We should need no other reason (yet we know there are many) to bring our peaceful people power to the streets this Saturday for No Kings Day.
Sign up NOW!
No Kings Day of Defiance
Saturday, June 14
2 - 4pm, Brunswick & Sutton
Bring your signs, flags, and bright colors!
As always, we will remain peaceful.
Maybe you don't want to stand and hold a sign?
We ALSO need volunteers to help at the INC table
and to pass out information at No Kings, 1:30pm - 4pm.
Please sign up to volunteer HERE.
Are you already signed up for No Kings?
Join a mass national Zoom call today, Thursday, June 12 at 5pm
for timely updates, guidance on messaging and best practices
on how to prepare for Saturday.
Be Inspired by these words ...
From Zen priest and actor, Peter Coyote, on protest:
"I’m watching the Los Angeles reaction to ICE raids with trepidation and regret.
Three years ago I taught a class at Harvard on the “theater of protest”— designed to help people understand why so many protests turn out to be Republican campaign videos working directly against the interests
of the original protest.
A protest is an invitation to a better world.
It’s a ceremony.
No one accepts a ceremonial invitation when they’re being screamed at.
More important you have to know who the real audience of the protest is.
The audience is NEVER the police, the politicians,
the Board of supervisors, Congress,etc.
The audience is always the American people, who are trying to
decide who they can trust; who will not embarrass them.
If you win them, you win power at the box office
and power to make positive change.
Everything else is a waste.
There are a few ways to get there:
Let women organize the event. They’re more collaborative. They’re more inclusive, and they don’t generally bring the undertones of violence men do.
Appoint monitors, give them yellow, vests and whistles. At the first sign of violence, they blow the whistles and the real protester sit down.
Let the police take out their aggression on the anarchists and the provocateurs trying to discredit the movement.
Dress like you’re going to church. It’s hard to be painted as a hoodlum when you’re dressed in clean, presentable clothes.
They don’t have to be fancy they just signal the respect for the occasion that you want to transmit to the audience.
Make your protest silent. Demonstrate your discipline to the American people. Let signs do the talking.
Go home at night. In the dark, you can’t tell the cops from the killers. Come back at dawn fresh and rested.
I have great fear that Trump’s staging with the National Guard and maybe the Marines is designed to clash with anarchists who are playing into his hands and offering him the opportunity to declare an insurrection.
It’s such a waste and it’s only because we haven’t thought
things through strategically.
Nothing I thought of is particularly original.
It was all learned by watching the early civil rights protests in the 50s and 60s.
And it was the discipline and courage of African-Americans that drew such a clear line in the American sand that people were forced to take sides and that produced the civil rights act.
The American people are watching and once again if we behave in ways that can be misinterpreted, we’ll see this explained to the public in Republican campaign videos benefiting the very people who started this.
Wake up.
Vent at home.
In public practice discipline and self control.
It takes much more courage."
— Peter Coyote