Many of us seeing the first No Kings protest in June might have been surprised at just how many people showed up. Organizers said the goal was simple, to get people into the streets and remind folks that dissent still exists. In an era of a wannabe king, raising our voices collectively is really the first step in opposition.
Now the movement has pivoted from a newsmaking spectacle to political strategy, connecting newcomers to mutual aid projects and building what one organizer calls “protest muscle” for the long haul.
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“We started out just putting signs on the sidewalks,” Hunter Dunn, the group’s press coordinator told The Advocate during a long discussion. “Now we’re going down to detention facilities and demanding that people be let go.”
Dunn described a movement shifting from one-day displays of large crowds to sustained, coordinated pressure on institutions it sees as pillars of an authoritarian administration.
Early gatherings, Dunn said, were valuable for visibility and solidarity. But organizers soon saw the limits of isolated demonstrations. The second wave of actions focused on concrete targets, detention centers, boycotts, and union drives to create leverage that outlasted a single day.
“The main difference is what happens the next week or the next month,” Dunn said. “It’s not what No Kings did that day but what the connections people made on that day go on to do.” The aim now is to turn large turnouts into long-term engagement, such as volunteers joining legal defense groups, community networks, and workers’ coalitions that maintain pressure between mediagenic moments.
Dunn describes No Kings’ long game as a relay race, akin to big demonstrations passing the baton to local groups that do the everyday organizing. “We’re not in a sprint,” he said. “It’s not even a marathon. It’s a relay race.”
Visible events bring people in, and smaller, steady efforts keep them involved. Over time, Dunn says, those efforts could create a durable infrastructure of resistance.
What’s been really impressive to Dunn is that No Kings draws participants of all ages and backgrounds. “You see grandmothers, pregnant women, kids, the whole range,” he said. “Younger activists often lead and coordinate, while older participants contribute numbers and institutional memory. That mix is one of the movement’s strengths.”
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A core tactic is encouraging defections from institutions that enforce controversial policies, Dunn said. “When public employees or security personnel refuse to comply, it raises the cost of enforcement and exposes cracks in the system,” he explained. “That’s why No Kings has focused on detention centers and built ties to legal defense networks, to constrain those institutions through scrutiny, legal challenges, and organized noncompliance.”
Some critics have dismissed the mass protests as performative, but Dunn disagrees. The real measure of success, he said, is not the march itself but the networks formed afterward, volunteers, donors, and organizers who stay engaged. “People miss that,” he said. “They focus on the signs, not the relationships that come after.”
Dunn hinted that larger mobilizations could return in the new year, but said the priority now is the steady work that includes recruiting, training, and connecting people to keep civic pressure alive. “The group’s success will be measured less by headlines and more by its ability to sustain the infrastructure of resistance,” he pointed out.
“We’re starting to build that protest muscle,” Dunn added. “To shatter a regime’s pillars, to make mass mobilizations mean something beyond the day they happen.”
Whether that endurance can translate into lasting change is the question No Kings is still trying to answer, and so are all of those who are participating in this growing movement.
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