“It Is Up to Us to Be the Leaders We Need to Save Our Country”
Veteran activist Cleve Jones on the importance of immediately and effectively carrying forward the promise of No Kings rallies and marches.
Cleve Jones speaking at a rally in 2022.
(Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
The most important speeches that were delivered on October 18’s No Kings Day of Action—to more than 7 million Americans in thousands of communities across the country—were those that looked forward to the activism that will be needed to push back against Donald Trump’s authoritarianism. Of particular note was an address to the massive crowd that filled the streets of San Francisco—a city to which Trump on Sunday announced that he planned to dispatch federal troops. Cleve Jones, a veteran organizer who for decades has been a leading voice on LGBTQ+ rights, AIDS, labor, and politics, spoke about next steps for activists. Here is what Jones, long one of America’s most thoughtful and energetic campaigners for justice and democracy, had to say about carrying the movement forward. — The Editors.
Hello and thank you all for being here.
The pronouns I use the most are the ones probably understood the least by those in the White House today. They are WE, US and OURS.
We are in this together.
And it is up to us to be the leaders we need to save our country and our democracy.
We come to this place this afternoon from many separate journeys. Our ancestors travelled different paths. But all our parents and grandparents and great grandparents and those before them – set their feet upon long and often difficult roads that converge here today, at this critical moment in the history of our nation and humankind.
Among us today are descendants of the original peoples of this land and all those who came here, not to conquer or colonize, but simply to live. Refugees and asylum seekers. Ordinary people who fled war and famine and poverty and repression. People who have always asked for nothing more than the right to live and work and love and care for their families in freedom, with justice. They came to America in search of a dream that has always fallen short, always been flawed, remains incomplete and yet still inspires hope across the world.
We know the history of this land and its peoples. Those forced to walk the trails of tears. Those brought here in chains against their will and those who gladly gave all they possessed to get here. Those who arrived in overloaded ships to live in tenements and slums. Those who walked across the southern deserts. Those who endured Jim Crow and the nights of terror. All those who suffered and dreamed and sacrificed—not to some dreadful god of greed and retribution but for their children and their children’s children. For our future. For us.
That dream—of what a nation by and for the people could be—is now threatened more deeply than any time since war tore our nation apart in the Spring of 1861, claimed the lives of almost a million Americans, and opened wounds that fester to this day.
A fascist regime has taken power. Their billionaire cronies are further enriched. Working people are denied health care. Protections of our land and water and air are abandoned, as are freedom of speech and due process. Grift and cruelty and racism are celebrated. Women are denigrated and denied control of their bodies. Sexual and gender minorities are demonized. The military is deployed in American cities to combat fictional foes. Masked and unidentified thugs terrorize and abduct immigrants and native-born alike. They threaten sovereign nations from Denmark to Venezuela to Canada with war and invasion. They control much of the media, the voting systems of 27 states, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court and the White House but blame Democrats for the shutdown of our government while they continue to build prisons and detention camps across the land.
They did not come to govern; they came to destroy. And they claim we are the ones who hate America.
Almost all of us use devices every day that link us to platforms that have become our primary means of communication—where we learn the news, connect with each other and plan every aspect of our personal, professional and political lives. And every one of those devices and platforms are owned and operated by men who dined at the White House just six weeks ago and lavished the President with praise.
My friends, the peril before us is grave and the danger to our lives and liberty is very real.
The beast is at the door. The hinges are strained. The locks are sprung. The frame is splintered and creaking.
And yet.
And yet.
And yet we rise.
We do not despair. We will not surrender, and we will not comply. This is our country.
Every one of us here, and all those marching in our millions across the land today, all of us have a role to play as we meet the awful challenge of this crisis. What is the special skill you will bring to this struggle? How will you build the offline networks necessary to organize and build this movement beyond today? Which are the communities and neighborhoods you can organize and defend? What will you do to strengthen labor unions, academia, the courts and other institutions of a free and democratic society?
What will you do to imagine and launch and sustain the massive campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience and non-cooperation that history informs us is now required?
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“swipe left below to view more authors”Swipe →Look to your hearts and find the abiding strength that dwells there. Look to the sky and all the magnificent beauty that surrounds us still. Look to those who stand proudly at your shoulders. Look to your ancestors and claim your future.
We are the people.
Now is the time.
This is the moment.
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