DOWNTOWN — With their city caught in the country’s largest immigration enforcement operation, as many as 250,000 Chicagoans flooded Downtown on Saturday to condemn Donald Trump’s administration as part of the second nationwide No Kings protest.
“We will never surrender!” Illinois governor JB Pritzker said. “Throughout history we have learned that tyranny doesn’t arrive with dramatic proclamations. We learned that it comes wrapped in ‘law and order’ … The reality here in Chicago is this: Black and Brown people are being targeted for the color of their skin. Children are being zip-tied and separated from their families … These people are not abstractions. They pay taxes on their businesses. They work hard — these people are the fabric of our society.”
“They want a rematch of the Civil War,” Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson said to the crowd. “But we are here to stand firm, to stand committed — that we will not bend. We will not cower. The attempt to divide and conquer this nation will not prevail, because when the people are united, justice always prevails.”
Johnson closed out his remarks by calling for a general strike.
You don’t have to have a revolution where some whole new government takes over from scratch–a new political party could be enough if enough support. I think most people want to keep the Constitution but with fixes to safeguard the freedoms it was supposed to guarantee, but turned out to be optional.
We can demand new elections and amendments to the constitution (probably via a Constitutional Convention), and until that can happen, legislation to prevent the executive branch from ever being able to take this much power again.
Reforms to demand would need to start with the most crucial, including things like those listed here. Especially stripping power from the oligarchs! by massively taxing them, overturning Citizens United, and allowing only publicly funded elections. Shoring up the checks and balances to fix the vulnerabilities we’ve learned the hard way. Expanding the Supreme Court to a fairly large number would also be important so our very rights don’t depend on something like one person not dying. Etc, etc. Ah well, I can dream, right?