03/29/2026
Want to continue demonstrating after the No Kings protests? Here’s what you can do next........................................................................
Millions of people marched on Saturday against Trump and his administration. While the single-day protest has ended, there are other ways, used in other movements throughout history, to keep the momentum going
Fabiola Cineas in Washington
Sun 29 Mar 2026 14.00 BST
Share
More than 8 million people showed up across 3,300 No Kings protests on Saturday, calling for an end to the war in Iran, immigration agents in their communities and what they see as Trump’s creeping authoritarianism. Organizers say it’s the greatest number of protests in a single day in US history.
But movement scholars say social change doesn’t begin and end with one protest. It takes activism at the local and national level, and in a variety of forms, to bring about change.
“No Kings was conceived to unite a cross-movement push against authoritarianism. And there is not one way to fight it,” said Leah Greenberg, a co-executive director of the Indivisible Project, which founded the No Kings movement. “We see No Kings as part of a tapestry of defiance that is going on.”
In the past year, Americans have demanded change through a variety of actions. When Donald Trump sent federal agents into Los Angeles and Chicago, people rallied in the streets and called for “ICE Out!” When consumers wanted to express disapproval of corporations’ ties to Trump, they initiated boycotts of Target, Tesla and Amazon. When students were upset at the presence of ICE agents in their schools and communities, they organized walkouts.
“Protests build power by garnering attention and pulling people off the sidelines into action,” said Hahrie Han, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University and the author of Prisms of the People: Power and Organizing in Twenty-First-Century America. “And if we look historically and across different movements, change is often a combination of people taking action through a variety of means and then leaders negotiating for power given the actions that people have taken.”
Han pointed to activists in Minnesota who were able to pass a raft of progressive and pro-labor laws in 2023 – paid family and medical leave and driver’s licenses for undocumented residents, among others – as an example of successful movement building by organizing with multiracial coalitions, strategizing with legislators and negotiating proposed legislation.
“It’s one of the most generous social safety nets in the country, and organizers were able to put grassroots energy together with institutional politics,” said Han.
No Kings’ success, organizers say, will be defined by whether attendees have signed up to organize in their communities and follow through on other actions, like know-your-rights trainings and mutual aid.
“What we think is actually important are the ways in which these large-scale gatherings fuel ongoing organizing that might look like economic non-cooperation, local mutual aid organizing or legislative advocacy at the state or local level,” said Greenberg. “It’s all connected if we do it right.”
Here’s a look at how these efforts have worked over time.
