No Kings 3 is the Beginning

Empathy is strength, and hope is a discipline.

After singing R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine),” Phil Nel speaks on what protests do (and don’t do), and how the discipline of hope will propel us forward.

Okay, I am not really fine. Things are not fine. But it is also … not the end of the world.

It feels like that sometimes. You feel overwhelmed. Anxious. Sad. What is happening in this country and in the world right now … is a lot. These are dangerous times.

But what you are feeling is an indication that your empathy is intact. And your empathy — painful though it may be — is actually a strength. It is why you are here today. It is why you are a good neighbor.

Protesters along Poyntz Ave., after the songs and speeches.

Because contrary to what the regime wishes us to believe,…

Empathy is not weakness.

Violence is not strength.

Cruelty is not virtue.

Empathy is strength.

Violence is a confession of cowardice.

Because cruelty is cruelty.

Evil is evil.

Being able to see what is right is strength.

Excerpt of some of the above portion of the speech.

The capacity to see ICE abducting or killing people, to see President Trump starting yet another war, or to see Trump’s video depicting President Obama as an ape, and to say “That’s wrong” is strength. Your morality allows you to see clearly, to act with conviction, to stand up for what is right — because you understand that an attack on the rights of one of us is an attack on the rights of all of us.

From the present, the results of past struggles look inevitable. But they were not inevitable. And did not look inevitable to the people in the fight at the time. It’s 10 years from the Montgomery Bus Boycott to the Voting Rights Act. And the activists fighting for LGBTQ rights, for women’s suffrage, for civil rights, for labor rights, or fighting to end chattel slavery could not know whether they would prevail.

Those activists understood that, as Mariame Kaba says, “Hope is not optimism. Hope is a discipline. And we have to practice it every day.”

That hope — hope as discipline — is what allowed the activists who came before us to keep showing up. That hope — hope as discipline — is why we are here today. We know that today’s protest will not topple the regime tomorrow. But the protest itself is not the point. The protest is part of a broader strategy. This is about building people power, fostering mass defiance everywhere, exposing the weakness of the regime.

Today’s protest is not an end in itself. Today’s protest is a beginning. Today’s protest is hope.

Phil, Rick (with drum), Jamie (leading the singing resistance).