May I just say that it was a day to remember?

May I just say that it was a day to remember?

In Washington DC, the President spent $40-$45 million throwing himself a birthday party to coincide with the 250th birthday of the US Army. I saw no party hats or birthday cakes. Just one expensive parade.

At the same time, parades of protest break out across America, all distinctly non-military in character. As The Huffington Post (June 14, 2025) reported, Trump’s parade was “dwarfed by the millions who showed up at roughly 2,000 anti-Trump ‘No Kings’ protests in cities and towns all over the country.”

Staging a military parade is, of course, a favorite tactic of dictators and despots. While North Koreans starve, their well-fed Chairman puts on a display of military hardware. Putin stages military parades as a regular feature of his “see how big I am” campaigns. Now comes Trump to show off weapons of war. According to Malcolm Ferguson in The New Republic (June 15, 2025), “Three dozen horses, 28 Abrams tanks, 6,700 soldiers, and millions of taxpayer dollars later, Donald Trump’s military birthday parade was still a flop at best,” a “pathetic event for a pathetic president.”

The biggest story from last Saturday – even if most major US media made Trump’s parade their lead story – was the irrepressible roar rising from some 4-5 million Americans marching in solidarity against Trump and his actions. Rallying under the banner “No Kings,” we marched to express our opposition to Trump and the damage he is doing to America and to the world – from decimating critical medical research to hunting down hardworking immigrants, from rolling back environmental protections to the deadly abandonment of people with HIV/AIDS.

The ”No Kings” protests warmed my heart and inspired me to feel, for the first time in recent memory, genuine hope. Trump’s parade isn’t what America is like: the people’s protests in cities large and small is the “real America.” Name a religion or color, ethnic tradition or preferred gender, and last Saturday it was on display from Boise, Idaho to New York City. Unrelated to the protests were tragic assassinations in Minnesota and the drums of war in Israel and Iran; I saw and heard those too. Even so, my enduring memory of that one remarkable day is that five million (or so) Americans stood up to a would-be king and said “No!”

Passing marchers were handed free water by merchants and neighbors. Speeches were brief. The crowds knew why they had assembled. “No Kings” meant just that: We’ve been guaranteed a president, not a tyrant. Millions of my fellow citizens demonstrated the courage to resist intimidation and invited me to join them. Together, we felt pride. We sang “God Bless America” as if we meant it.

Throughout my recently published book, Uneasy Silence, I urge each of us to stand up for the truth in whatever way suits us best. “I need to do what I can do,” I wrote, but “I’m not being asked to become a martyr.” Last Saturday, some 5 million Americans marched. They were people who teach, people who write, people who raise families, who grow crops, who produce art, who fight crime,  each demonstration “doing what I can do.”

I went to bed Saturday night remembering one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s last speeches before he was killed. In that unmistakable voice and cadence, he rehearsed the Constitution’s promises.

All we say to America is, ‘Be true to what you said on paper.’ If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions. Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn’t committed themselves to that over there.

But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly.

Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech.

Somewhere I read of the freedom of [the] press.

Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right.

Somewhere last week I saw the soul of America. It poured into the streets, cheerful, honest, resisting calls to meanness and madness. It was accompanied not by threats but by songs. It was what I needed and have gratefully accepted: a day to remember, and to savor, hope.