BY EMMA ABATA
Los Alamos

Why will you show up by the hundreds to protest one man, but not genocide?

I am not asking to shame you or make you defensive. I am asking because I used to be you. I voted blue no matter who. I loved Obama. I believed that if we could just get the right Democrats into office, we could protect abortion rights, defend trans lives, fight climate change, and stand for justice. I believed the story.

Then I watched a livestreamed genocide unfold on my phone, in real time, funded by my tax dollars, backed by the very Democrats I helped elect. I watched children carry their parents’ remains in plastic bags. I watched newborns left to die in bombed-out hospitals. I watched a whole population of innocent civilians be brutally starved while trapped in concentration camps in Gaza.

And I watched most of the people who call themselves progressive say nothing.

My mother and I started protesting every Saturday on October 21, 2023. We have not missed a single week. For over two years, we have stood in this community holding signs that read: We fund genocide, not healthcare. We fund genocide, not housing. We fund genocide, not schools. We fund genocide, not climate justice.

Those signs are not just about Palestine. They are about you. Your grocery bill. Your rent. Your gas prices. Your kid’s underfunded classroom. Your right to clean food, water, and air. The same imperial system that sends billions in bombs overseas is the one gutting everything you need to survive here. That system is not one president. It is empire, and both parties serve it.

Under Biden, the U.S. rushed weapons to Israel and increased police and ICE budgets while failing to protect abortion rights, trans rights, or working people. Under Trump, the cruelty is louder, but the machinery is literally the same. If your outrage only activates when the face of empire changes parties, then what you oppose is not oppression. It is the version of oppression you were told to notice.

That is what troubles me about No Kings. I deeply and personally understand the fear of authoritarianism. But rallying against one man without confronting the billionaire class, the war machine, and the colonial systems that built this country on stolen land and stolen lives, that is not resistance. That is political theater. And thinking it is resistance is dangerous because the real root cause of the violence is not addressed. It is propaganda that once trapped me into a fake Red vs. Blue game, when this is anything but a game.

Karankawa educator and Indigenous resistance artist Chiara Do’wal Sehi reminds us, “Resistance without escalation is pointless. Resistance should comfort the Indigenous person and disturb the colonizer.” She acknowledges that marching can be powerful, especially if you have never done it before. It is a place to learn, to find people to build with. But if it stops there, if it only serves the self and makes you feel like you have done something, it is not enough. Black and Indigenous resistance has always centered future generations rather than immediate gratification, which requires sacrifice, discomfort, and a timeline longer than any single election.

So I will ask again, from the heart, because I mean it: you showed up by the hundreds because a president might become a king. But will you show up consistently to resist the empire that’s committing genocides at home and abroad with our tax dollars instead of investing in our communities and future generations?

We have been in the streets organizing every Saturday for over two years because the system behind the president, behind every president, is already destroying lives. Bombing children. Gutting schools. Inflating prices. Caging families. Poisoning the food, water, and air. And stripping your rights to free speech and privacy. This is not about one man. It never was.

We will not free ourselves by replacing one ruler with another. We will only move toward freedom when we confront the whole system that made this violence possible, and choose to build something different together.

Every Saturday at 11 AM at Ashley Pond, we are still out there organizing against the system of empire regardless of which party is at the helm. Imagine what we can organize with even half the numbers the corporate rallies bring out. Come rise up, organize, and build with us.