I didn’t go to the last NO KINGS rally but I sure as hell went to this one. In fact, I went to TWO: about 300 – 400 people gathered at the intersection of Monona Drive and Nichols Street in Monona, where we waved at passing motorists, most of whom were especially supportive, waving back at us or honking their horns. Two assholes flipped us off, but only two. Overwhelming support.

In downtown Madison, an impressively large crowd (at least 10,000) gathered at McPike Park and paraded down East Washington Avenue to capitol square, where we stood on the lawn to listen to rousing speeches.

I’ve long had my doubts that peaceful demonstrations like this are effective at weakening bad actors in the government, but this one made me feel good and that’s no small thing these days.

“In social movement studies, we talk about how marches and protests expand the threshold of acceptable risk so that people take more and bigger social risks IN PUBLIC, EN MASSE. This is extremely important for the bourgeois white folks holding signs and building social rapport.

“Fun and play are often a part of social movements as the people trust the larger group to hold their values as the conflict with the state expands. The anti-WTO protests in Seattle in 1999 were full of folks dressed like loggerhead turtles and dolphins and stuff dancing to RATM. Very fun + serious.

“When the conflict expands in scale & scope, the good feelings help propel people to do hard things. Shitting on the public rallies is fucking dumb. It’s also ahistorical and lacks any serious engagement with the history of social movement successes in the US. It’s just trashy demobilization.

“The frogs (and unicorns and dinosaurs) will be defining ideographs of this period of struggle.

“Rallies like this bring together multigenerational groups and the playfulness can help create enthusasim for big tent politics against the monoculture of fascism.

“In the literature, we call rallies like this “image events” because they help focus media attention on a major strain of ideological resistance that is big enough for lots of people to feel comfortable. They create IMAGES that FOCUS our ATTENTION and AFFECT to mobilize frequently.

“Notably: every single rally (including in the small towns) was bigger than the surrounding police force available. That kind of image event is VERY IMPORTANT if you’re, I dunno, demonstrating social coherence AGAINST a fascist government and it’s makeshift gestapo.

“And from image events, we get POLYSEMIC images that carry multiple forms of ideology into the present. Here, we have the convergence of Shepard Fairey’s iconic HOPE poster for the Obama campaign with the frog icon from #NoKings. The is how you visually dismantle fascist iconography.”

— Dr. Lisa Corrigan, Rhetoric prof and author of Prison Power (2016) and Black Feelings (2020); both from @UPMiss. Editor of #MeToo: A Rhetorical Zeitgeist (Routledge).

(frog poster by Gwen C. Katz @gwenckatz.bsky.social)