It’s October 22nd 2025. The shine of the recent No Kings outpouring of resistance is still with us. And what a shine it is. To my welcoming, hopeful eyes, Anti-Trump, anti-Fascist, anti-war, anti-racist, anti-misogyny, anti-ecological collapse all together took center stage in the incredibly massive demonstrations. The day’s achievements have been widely noted by many. Numbers grew. Diversity grew. The repercussions resonate widely. But I nonetheless wonder, beyond our well deserved accolades, can we improve next time?

Well, what do these demonstrations, and others like them, try to achieve? How might we measure, or even think about measuring their success, or, for that matter, the success of any of our activist efforts?

I suggest that we should firstly have in mind our goal. Is our goal to raise sufficient social costs that elites decide they would rather give in than unleash still more opposition by continuing their March toward fascism? And is our goal to raise such costs in ways that don’t deposit us back at pre-Trump business as usual? And is our goal to stop Trump but then also continue on to win new positive gains and, eventually, new institutional arrangements?

If those are our goals—or perhaps I should say for those of us who have those goals—I think a few centrally important criteria stand out for measuring success for No Kings days…or for no dictators days, no Trump days, no fascists days, no Billionaires days, no wars days, or no exploitative, racist, sexist oppression days. Social change has countless large and small features but the character of successful social change doesn’t vary much. So here are five centrally important criteria we might use to assess No Kings prospects:

• To what extent have our words and actions caused participants in our campaigns to become ever more committed, able and eager to persist in our efforts? 

• To what extent have our words and actions positively informed and inspired those who are already sympathetic to our efforts? To what extent have our words and actions grown our numbers?

• To what extent have our words and actions helped to raise the critical awareness of those who are not yet sympathetic to or who are even still hostile to our aims? To what extent have our words and actions nudged them toward becoming sympathetic and even supportive?

• To what extent have our words and actions caused elites to become nervous that to further pursue their agenda will soon cost them more losses than they are willing to endure? To what extent have our words and actions weakened their commitment, divided their ranks, on the road to cause them to drop their allegiances to their prior plans?

• To what extent have our words and actions created new awareness and especially new organization and new connections able to persist after we remove Trump and his administration?

It follows that to suggest possible tasks for coming months, we should consider effects on participants’ views and organization. Effects on sympathizers’ views. Effects on opponents’ views. Effects on elites’ actions. And effects on our means to persist with positive program beyond stopping fascism. Of course the results of October 18th aren’t yet all visible but, nonetheless, here are a few suggestions bearing very specifically on these essential variables that might move No Kings steadily forward as conditions, means, and popular support permits.

First, perhaps instead of once every few months we might evidence growing commitment by enacting the next outpouring in December or better yet in November. How about over the Thanksgiving holiday from work and school? 

Second, attendance so far seems to be largely mobilization of motivated supporters. A time and place is announced and promoted and millions respond. Might it make sense to hold a few dozen “teach-ins” in the preceding days of the next National outpouring that not only briefly address the by now well known ills of The Trump Administration but that also extensively advance positive program to seek? Might it be helpful to offer teach-ins, calls, interviews, articles, and even feeder events aimed to uplift the awareness and commitment of those who are already relating, but that also try to reach new audiences as yet not so sympathetic or still even hostile to our efforts?

Third, might it also help if we diversify the attendees of our events? So far it has at least seemed that embattled Black and Latinx communities haven’t felt confident about participating, and that this perhaps holds as well, relative to what we might expect, for high school and college age constituencies. Is it time to expressly try to enlarge current support in general but also to very intentionally reach out to new participants in diverse constituencies and particularly in high schools and colleges all over the country?

Fourth, what most impacts elites, splitting their ranks, weakening their resolve, and heightening their fear is not each action itself, but the trajectory of our actions, where do they point, what do they portend. This has at least five dimensions. Numbers of participants. It is essential that size keeps climbing. Composition of participants. The more diverse and simultaneously united each new round of resistance is, the better. All for one and one for all. The character of the resistance, in particular for it to broaden from attention to Trump and Co. to attention to the institutions and ideologies that produced Trump and Co. the billionaires, the banks and corporations, the courts, the media. How about some boycotts? How about some demands upon media institutions? Multi-focus is more threatening than singular or atomized focus. And finally the visible, felt trajectory of the resistance matters. For its commitment and its militant persistence to grow with each new round is far more threatening than for its mood to be or even to just appear static and limited. The joy is infectious and desirable. It matters. But to now add the visible signs of, yes, anger as well as desire and passion as well as caring, will also matter.

Trump is honest on one score. To portray himself shitting on resistance indicates his true self image: warped, perverse, vile, and violent. For our resistance to smile at and support each other with joyous compassion is exactly right. But it is time for our resistance to also leave no doubt in his mind or in the minds of his sycophants or in the minds of the billionaires pulling the strings, that our passion toward them is growing steadily more militant.

For our trajectory to be that the same thing occurs over and over is one thing. For our trajectory to be that more people join the resistance each time, that more and more who watch the events smile on what they see each time, that our passionate, informed anger grows each time, that new constituencies participate in mutual aid and solidarity with one another each time, that along with our massive displays, disciplined and self conscious disobedience grows each time, and that new multi-tactics are carefully conceived and implemented without providing excuse for elite-desired repression and in tune with the understanding and inclinations of those involved each time is another thing. And that trajectory of growing resistance will say to Trump and Co.: Your days are numbered. Best for you to back off sooner than later. Because back off you will.

The bottom line is that something is happening here and what it is is becoming steadily more clear. Trump and Co. seek to entrench autocratic, authoritarian, and even one-thug rule. Fascism. Even what to do about their project is becoming steadily more clear. We must keep growing, diversifying, and empowering our resistance. The remaining question is, will we each and all do what’s needed? Will we resist with words, with actions, with everything we can muster that will advance and not impede our trajectory? And will we do it again? And then again? Will we organize and mobilize, organize and mobilize, until we get rid of Trump and Co.—and will we then go beyond that as well, so his like never returns, so the opposite of his like thrives?

We might today wonder, when we do persist, what will the end of Trump and Co. look like? How will he read the writing on the subway walls and in the tenement halls and surrender? Or, more likely, how will his Cabinet and Congressional sycophants hear the music of resistance and induce him to surrender? Or still more likely, how will a segment of billionaires who come to see the trajectory of resistance as a threat to their continued wealth and power command the sycophants and also Trump to all stand down, meaning to slink into abject irrelevancy?

And then how will we continue on not satisfied with reinstating the status quo ante but intent on constructing another world that is possible, viable, and supremely worthy?

Let’s find out.