No Kings! Rally on Lexington Green

Donald Trump does not want to make America great again. He wants to make America hate again. That is his idea of where our country should be going, but I believe that in every dark and chaotic hour of our nation’s life, it is the strength and the resilience of our people that have led the way. When those Minute Men and women decided to take on the most powerful army in the history of the world, right here in Lexington and Concord, were they knocked down? Yes! Were they knocked out? No! They got up. They fought and they won. When the abolitionists were knocked down, did they give up? No! They got up. They fought. They won. When the suffragettes were knocked down, did they give up? No! They got up. They fought. They won. When Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement got knocked down, did they give up? No! They got up. They fought. They won.

…What will they say? When they speak of our time, they will say this is when they set the world on the brink of burning. Let them say that we were the people of an infinite hope when it made no sense to hope at all. They will say that this was the time of God… As crosses turned into gun after gun, after gun, after gun behind pews of prayerful eyes, and both red and blue forgot that their God was colorblind, say that this was the hour of the food, shrunken belly, and of refugee and of those turned away in the time of their human need as the justly imprisoned enemies of the state, walked free through prison gates. But also let them say that this was a time we fought against a civic genocide, that something transcendently human in us stood up to resist the Orwellian jackboot that finally in the raspy baritone of Ray Charles, we heard what our country could be. That in the wise words of Walt Whitman, we rose to the challenge and the charge of true democracy.’ That in the aspic bite of Mark Twain’s wit, we finally get the punchline. Finally realized that manifest destiny would no longer patch the human-sized hole in our history. Let them say that this is when we said yes again and again and again, and again to the verses of Lazarus’s, new Colossus resounding with ‘Give me your Poor, your huddled masses’ there us here the truth, and that we own through and found others here.
With our own eyes. With our own hands reaching back.

On Women…
We have to fight. [We] must fight for the children here today for those who are not here at all. Yet, this eraser has led us to a country where women continue to earn less than men for equal work, where a president thinks it’s okay to harass, grab, insult, and degrade women. Comedian Rosie. O’Donnell left the country to escape his persecution. She’s not a wimpy woman, but she had had enough. His cronies are openly discussing taking away our right to vote. That’s why I felt angry today. Literally, they think it’s okay to talk about that out loud, like they’re in text groups talking about horrible racism and antisemitism out loud. They’re not ashamed of how they are behaving…the Supreme Court has denied our constitutional and human rights to bodily autonomy by saying that it’s okay for some states to deny US healthcare, including abortion. Now they want to take away contraception. Even as they are openly forcing women to have children to become mothers—a lifetime commitment. That is sexual slavery. While they are doing that, they are taking away every week another resource from our money that helps support children and the women who don’t have resources to take care of them. They’re taking away food subsidies, special education, public education, and healthcare. If you have a child and there’s nowhere for your child to be during the day, you can’t go to work…

I spent a lot of time on the Battlegreen over the years growing up. I studied for a few weeks at Cary Library and then passed the fairly difficult test to become a guide here on the Green. And so, for several years in high school in the summer, I would wear that Tricorn hat and tell the story of the people who gave their lives in what might well be called the first No Kings protest…We will continue to gather in the streets and on the town commons. We will do what we can to protect the right to vote, and we will exercise that franchise as long as it is granted us, and we will seize it back. If it is taken away, we’ll come to the aid of our great colleges and universities, some of them just at the far end of Mass. Ave. As long as they stand up to the regime, we’ll favor those companies and institutions that defy this new monarch, and we will boycott those who don’t. If our ancestors could do without tea, then we can do without a new Tesla we might even be able to do without Amazon Prime.
The British came this way on April 19th in 1775 to seize arms at Concord, but they wouldn’t have minded also capturing John Hancock and Sam Adams, who had been spending the night at the parsonage on the Green. And so perhaps we should let Sam Adams absolutely resolute, Patriot, have the final words.
“The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards. It is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men.”
So let us act with the courage of our forebears peacefully but resolutely. We did not ask for this moment to come upon us, but we must rise to the occasion, and this hallowed ground is as good a place as any to make that start.