Editorial: No Kings, No Silence: Can Modern Protests Save Democracy From Authoritarian Drift?

As democracy faces a new wave of authoritarianism, a generation fueled by civic identity, art, and activism is proving that protests are not chaos—they’re the heartbeat of freedom itself.

Natalie C. Frank, Ph.D October 11, 20l25

No Kings Protest in Minnesota; Myotus/Wikipedia [CC BY 4.0]

I remember standing in front of the Supreme Court in 2000, listening to my generation’s heartbeat in chants and signs, thousands refusing to stay silent over a Presidential election that took weeks to be decided. Our issue then was "Every vote must count," calling for the popular vote to decide who the president would be. I thought then maybe this is what it feels like to live in history instead of just reading about it. We believed protest still mattered. Decades later, as the rhetoric of monarchy and command creeps back into public life, that belief is being tested again.

Now, political power is flirting with its darker side: centralization, decrees, blind obedience. Talk of “strongmen” and “unbreakable leadership” slips into speeches, media, and campaign slogans. Every time someone claims, “I am the voice of the people, without question,” we move closer to a place where dissent is treated with suspicion. That’s why the idea of “No Kings” feels less like a slogan and more like a necessary creed.

The Image That Haunts: Crowds in the Street

Imagine a city square at dusk. Banners flutter, phones held high like torches, neon slogans glowing against dark facades. “No Kings,” “We Are Not Subjects,” “Power to the Many”—each phrase hangs in bold letters, a challenge to hidden hierarchies. Faces in the crowd are anxious, determined, defiant. Some kneel; some raise fists. Others hand out water or first aid kits. The police line across the street glints under streetlamps, shields aligned. Sirens wail faintly in the distance, a knot of tension in the air.

These are the images that go viral, shared from feed to feed, not just because they’re dramatic, but because they carry something deeper: the feeling that people are staking a claim. They are not just resisting, but remembering what democracy can be when it’s alive.

Why “No Kings” Matters Now

When institutions weaken, courts lose independence, legislative checks fail, and civil servants are smeared, power tends to centralize. It becomes easier to paint dissenters as disloyal, protesters as anarchists, and critics as enemies. For many, the real shock isn't when control tightens but when staying quiet starts to feel safer.

Accepting that silence hands the public square over to fear. We should protest not because every protest will win, but because power needs to feel pressure. We protest to keep the possibility of accountability alive. In that way, activism isn’t a fringe of democracy — it’s its backbone.

Generations that watched authoritarianism rise in other lands whisper warnings to ours. The flags waved in Hong Kong, the barricades in Belarus, the digital panopticons in other presidencies, all of them tell us that power must be pushed back, or it expands relentlessly. This is not alarmism. It is historical memory. We must treat it as prophecy unless we refuse to believe it.

Bridging Hope and Fear

The fear is real: a protest could bring repression, speech might be punished, and the state could respond with intimidation, surveillance, or worse. But fear doesn’t have to be the final answer. Hope carries weight.

Hope shows up in small acts: a protester linking arms with a stranger; a police officer lowering a baton; a journalist refusing to be silenced; a judge issuing an injunction to protect assembly. Hope holds the belief that even when power claims inevitability, it’s never untouched—power can be witnessed, challenged, and contested.

When movements turn into art, graffiti becoming manifesto, murals becoming monuments, songs turning into slogans, that’s protest at its strongest. It disrupts systems and reshapes imagination. It says: Not this. Not here. Not now. That refusal, that collective exhale, is how a people declares, “We still exist.”

A Call Beyond Left or Right

Too often, talk of protest is boxed into ideology: “left protesters,” “right provocateurs.” But if “No Kings” means anything, it means rejecting the impulse to be ruled, regardless of who wears the crown. It means building coalitions not around ideologies alone, but around civic identity. It means reminding ourselves that even when we disagree, we share an inheritance: a fragile pledge to self-governance, a duty to dissent.

When someone posts a video of a march, I don’t want them to see just disorder. I want them to see the weight of witness. I want them to see a generation refusing to let authoritarianism sneak in through fog and euphemism. I want them to feel discomfort—and then resolve.

Yes, this is a risky time. But the alternative is a slow surrender: power sliding into closed corridors, speech confined to echo chambers, accountability blunted. The people who claim there is no alternative to strong leadership are asking us to forget our responsibility. They are asking us to surrender our cities, our rights, our voice.

And we must refuse. Not because every protest succeeds, but because the act of protest protects possibility itself.

In the End: The Country Keeps Breathing

When the last chant fades and tear gas drifts across asphalt, what remains is not just a crowd, but a scar, a reminder that power was contested. And the country, though wounded, still breathes. A mural appears overnight on a wall: “No Kings.” Someone photographs a sidewalk crack where they knelt. A stray piece of tape with a protest slogan flutters in the wind. Those are the echoes that outlive the march.

Authoritarians may demand silence, but life is noisy. The hum of conversation, the footfalls of strangers, the laughter of children. Those are all protest too, so long as they refuse submission. We are the living resistance. We do not need crowns. We need voices.

Let the slogan “No Kings” be our threshold. Let protest continue in every street, every square, every tweet, every brushstroke. Let us demand not just the absence of tyrants, but the presence of a people fully awake.

Because democracy will never end with ballots. It only truly begins when it's taken to the streets.

What small acts of civic engagement matter most to you? Please share your opinions with us in the comments.