And both during the peaceful protests and elsewhere over the weekend, demonstrations took place against a backdrop of intimidation, political violence and a sense of escalating war: a political assassination in Minnesota, a fatal shooting in Utah, a man driving an SUV through a crowd of protesters in Virginia, far-right Proud Boys showing up to a demonstration in Georgia, squeaky 60-ton tanks grinding down the avenues of the nation’s capital, and Israel launching airstrikes on Iran while starving and killing people in Gaza, threatening to set off an out-of-control regional conflagration. Beating back those attacks will require “making the political cost too high to do certain things like the budget cuts pushed by Congress, and continually making it almost impossible for the president to keep the facade that he’s a competent ruler and that he could actually make the country better,” says Danny, an American Federation of Government Employees member at the New York City march who asked not to use his last name for fear of retaliation. Carl Rosen, president of United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, says a new formation called Labor for Democracy brought together 15 national unions and hundreds of locals and regions to back the No Kings Day protests, recognizing “that the labor movement has a special role to play in defending democracy in our country.”
Author: Luis Feliz Leon
Published at: 2025-06-16 22:30:00
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