The Demand Was Missing. We Name It Now
Series Page · USA Protect Your Vote Inspired by: — Raw Story Author: Greg Palast “The Failure of No Kings Day. Frederick Douglass Shakes His Head.” October 24, 2025Artist acknowledgment
This Civic Page acknowledges the reporting of Greg Palast at [Publication or Platform]. His article, “The Failure of No Kings Day,” documents how a mass rally without a singular demand dissolved into diffusion, exposing how scattered urgency entrenched systemic failure.“Without a clear demand, the energy scattered — urgency was lost, and the system thrived.” — Greg PalastBy crediting Greg Palast, we honor the civic courage and clarity of his work. His words anchor this page’s motifs in lived reality, ensuring that survivors’ voices are not drowned out by fractured demands and lost unity.
- Greg Palast speaks at No Kings Day, with Patricia Gallagher holding the flag from Gladys Palast’s military funeral. Image: Martin Eder 2025 for Palast Investigative Fund and KNSJ Radio. Re‑prints authorized. Published alongside Palast’s Raw Story article.
- Cartoon of Trump dressed as Caesar (infamous red tie included). Political cartoon, widely circulated; archived as motif cue.
- Crowd of 100,000 people at the San Diego No Kings March. No explicit credit provided; archived as motif cue.
- Civil Rights Leader and Reformer Frederick Douglass, c. 1879. Public domain image, widely used in civic publications.
- MLK’s Demand section image. Image: californiabucketlisters (Instagram handle @__anby, account private; original link broken).
Source summary paragraph
This Civic Page draws from reporting by Greg Palast at Raw Story (October 24, 2025). Read the original article here: The Failure of No Kings Day – Greg Palast His article, “The Failure of No Kings Day. Frederick Douglass Shakes His Head,” describes how the No Kings Day events became a huge party and what he called a national bitch fest. The enthusiasm and participation were exhilarating — a sign that Americans are waking up to what is being taken from them. Yet Palast underscores that without a singular demand, the energy was scattered and the impact was lost. This reporting reminds us that joy and turnout are vital, but clarity of purpose is what transforms rallies into victories for the American people.Source attribution standard
Names are published as they appear in the original title or byline. Inconsistent usage (e.g., middle initials) is noted in the archive but not replicated unless formally presented. Platform: Raw Story Author: Greg Palast Article: “The Failure of No Kings Day. Frederick Douglass Shakes His Head.” Date: October 24, 2025
Show Full Transcript
The Failure of No Kings Day
Frederick Douglass shakes his head
by Greg Palast for Raw Story October 24, 2025 I’m sure my mom was proud to see me as the closing speaker at the No Kings Day rally in San Diego. While she couldn’t be there physically, she joined me in a symbolic manner: I brought with me the American flag that draped her coffin. I received the flag at her funeral, held with full military honors, recognizing her service as the first woman ever to join the US Coast Guard. No Kings in San Diego was a helluva party, 50,000 celebrating — while at the same time fearing for — that delicate thing called democracy. A thousand American flags fluttered. America at its best. Hell, it could turn you into a patriot. I’m sure mom, a union organizer, schoolteacher, rights activist, and anti-fascist super-patriot, would have loved it. Frederick Douglass would not have. I could see his ghost, with that astonishing mane of hair, shaking his head. Douglass, once enslaved, but by 1848 an international bestselling author, was one of the few men to sign the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments, the foundational document of the movement for women’s rights. But Douglass famously warned the women warriors:“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”A single demand. The Seneca Falls Declaration was a long list of 16 enumerated grievances, from the right to become church deacons, the right to property after a divorce, to a constitutional amendment to ban alcohol. Douglass implored them to settle on ONE demand, the mother of all demands: suffrage, the right to vote. With the singular focus on suffrage, the Suffragettes, after some decades, attained all their other goals (including Prohibition). So, what was our demand? What did we want to get from the march of seven million? What would we recognize as a victory? What was our cause? Stop ICE raids? Free Gaza? Transgender rights? The crowd seemed to coalesce around one mushy theme: “TRUMP’S A JERK! TRUMP’S A CREEP! A NO-GOOD-NIK!” From there, it broke down. Everyone had a pet cause, all worthy, a mélange of rightness, a soup of issues, all urgent, all mixing together into a glob of complaints, all injustices demanding our attention. I can hear the admonishing ghost of Frederick Douglass, When you demand everything, you get nothing. Greg Palast speaks at No Kings Day. The flag that draped Gladys Palast’s coffin from her military funeral is held by Palast Investigation’s Associate Producer Patricia Gallagher. Image: Martin Eder 2025 for PIF and KNSJ Radio. Re-prints authorized.
A National Bitch-Fest?
My own talk, I’ll admit, yawed from Trump’s imperial sexism in the firing of the first female Commandant of the Coast Guard (that really upset Mom, I’m sure) to my screed against ICE for trying to deport my grandmother a week before her 100th birthday. [You can watch me and mom here.] My speech about my “illegal” immigrant family got a great response from the crowd. But even I wasn’t sure of what I was trying to accomplish. Trump said, “I’m not a King,” because he probably considers it a demotion. In his own mind, he’s the new Caesar. Sorry, Donald, you are as much a maniacal monarch as George III. Let me count the ways.- You took a bulldozer to the people’s house with an actual bulldozer.
- According to Reuters, the Emirati sheikhs who fund Hamas put $864 million, “actual income – cash flowing, free and clear, into Trump family coffers” via their purchase of your soon-to-be-worthless cyber-coin.
- You gave out pardons to cop-killing insurrectionists and other well-heeled friends of your regime.
- In Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago and who knows where next, you “kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures,” a charge our Declaration leveled against King George.
- You effectively ordered the indictment of the former head of our FBI despite your own chosen prosecutor finding no crime.
MLK’s Demand
I go back to the successful marches of my long-ago youth. Martin Luther King’s march from Selma to Montgomery had one single demand: LET MY PEOPLE VOTE. King placed the Voting Rights Act on President Johnson’s desk, demanding he propose it to Congress. LBJ feared signing it – it would end the Democratic Party’s rule of the South — but the march, and the fearless sacrifices of the marchers, forced his hand. For all the terrors faced by Black people, from lynchings to housing red-lining, they focused to that one single demand, the right to vote. The Moratorium marches of 1970 had a single demand: “US out of Vietnam! Hell no, we won’t go!” The single-demand march has been the people’s effective weapon. In 1932, starving veterans had a myriad of legitimate grievances, but the 32,000 Bonus Army marchers settled on one demand, “Pay our Service Certificates!” and won the veterans benefits Americans enjoy today. In the 1880s, as robber barons fattened off industrial servitude, workers marched on the first Monday of each September under banners with one demand: a 40-hour workweek. Ultimately, they won. Our Founding Fathers began their revolt with inchoate complaints. Few of these angry Englishmen were ready for independence until, prodded by Thomas Paine, they coalesced under one slogan: “No Kings.” That was no metaphor. Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration had a long, long list of grievances, but only one single demand: independence, “a new nation…dedicated to the cause that all men are created equal.” When we have no demand, or a hundred of them, it doesn’t end well. Remember the Women’s Marches? Sorry, but in another generation, NO ONE will remember them. The first one in 2016, days before Trump’s inauguration, was the biggest demonstration in US history until No Kings. Do you remember the marchers’ demand? Neither do I. And do you remember what those Women’s Marches accomplished? Neither do I. In fact, I suggest that incoherence of the Women’s Marches looked to Trump like weakness and laid the groundwork for overturning Roe v. Wade. Douglass would have shook his regal mane sadly at the mish-mash of unfocussed complaints at No Kings. Yes, it felt damn good to call Trump a tyrant, an imperious schmuck, a heartless, vindictive, power-abusing dickwad. Which, as far as I can tell, just puffed up his already bloated narcissism watching the eyes of millions turned to him.Don’t Duck the Question
So, Mr. Smarty-Pants Palast, what would YOU suggest as a demand? I won’t lie: I’m a bit stumped because EVERYTHING is just so effing awful. I mean, where do we begin? As my readers know, I am fixated on the issue of voting. If we had a fair and square system, without racist suppression trickery, 3.55 million voters purged or denied ballots would have sunk Trump in 2024. Voting is the queen of rights without which we have no others. But I would not expect to get seven million into the streets for voting rights, though it is my deepest concern. (I was truly gob-smacked, actually horrified, that I did not see a single voter registration table. People, we need to talk about this, but not right now.) I’m realistic: if we followed Fred Douglass’ rule and focused on a demand, the crowd would have thinned substantially. The ideological stew allowed everyone to have their own beef, their own peeve. Even the folks who didn’t vote and helped elect Trump because they didn’t like “Genocide Joe” or whatever their issue got to shout their slogans against the King of Orange. So, Palast, don’t duck the question: What should have been The Demand? If I may be so humble as to note that, while we marched, America’s government was shut down. Food stamps were running out. Food inspectors went unpaid. The shut-down, you’ll recall, was focused on ONE damn good cause, a line in the sand that I’ll bet every marcher would agree with: HANDS OFF OUR HEALTH INSURANCE. Yet, at our celebration, there was nary a word about the shutdown, nary a word about this one crucial demand — protect our healthcare — that needs our full attention, to which we must together dedicate our lives, our liberties and our fortunes. And so Trump won. A handful of feckless Democratic senators defected because they knew there was no public will to go into the streets for health insurance. Trump’s shut-down victory is his coronation, proof of his monarchic status, puffed up with the power of vanquishing the most vulnerable among us. Today, instead of, “Give me liberty or give me death,” it must be, “Give me health insurance or give me death,” because, as a practical matter, that’s what many Americans will face. I know it’s not exciting as other issues, and our “leader” is, Lord help us, Chuck Schumer, but right now, this is the battle line, the Rubicon which we cannot permit the New Caesar to cross. If we can’t do that one thing, if we can’t win that one demand, we are just marching in circles.
Pull Quote:
“When you demand everything, you get nothing.” — Frederick Douglass, invoked by Greg Palast – November 24, 2025
Image Grid:
ALT Text Descriptions:
HERO Image Frederick Douglass portrait overlay on textured blue background with bold white text: “POWER CONCEDES NOTHING WITHOUT A DEMAND.”
Opening Indictment Blue slate background with vertical red stripe; white text reads: “A MARCH WITHOUT A DEMAND CROWNS THE TYRANT.”
Grief Detail Textured blue background with horizontal red band; white text: “MOM’S FLAG FLEW, BUT THE PEOPLE’S HEALTH WAS LEFT.”
Systemic Failure Blue background with fractured motif; white text: “SEVEN MILLION VOICES SCATTERED IN A SOUP OF GRIEVANCES.”
Defiance Statement Blue background with red strike motif; white text: “GIVE ME HEALTH INSURANCE OR GIVE ME DEATH.”
Captions:
HERO Image Frederick Douglass reminds us: Power concedes nothing without a demand.
Opening Indictment Without a demand, marches crown the tyrant.
Grief Detail Patriotism flew, but healthcare was left unguarded.
Systemic Failure Seven million voices scattered, grievances diluted.
Defiance Statement The demand is clear: health insurance or death.
This Is the Ground We Defend
The No Kings Day march showed the power of turnout and joy, but also the danger of scattering energy without a demand. Frederick Douglass’s reminder — “Power concedes nothing without a demand” — echoes through the images: grief unguarded, voices diluted, defiance sharpened. The ground we defend is not just the right to gather, but the right to demand clarity, healthcare, and justice. The next No Kings March must not just scatter light. Joy is sunlight, turnout is energy — but only focus creates fire. A magnifying glass turns scattered rays into a single flame. That flame is the demand: Healthcare for All. This Civic Page is the prelude. The next article will show how focused attention can ignite the fire we need to win
Call to Action:
Joy without demand scatters. Grievances without clarity dissolve. The march was powerful, but the victory requires focus. The demand is clear: Healthcare for All. Name it. Share it. Stand on it. One demand. One fight. One victory. 
The Demand Was Missing. We Name It Now
ALT Text Descriptions
Top Left — Civic Identity Textured blue background with shield icon and white text: “The Demand Was Missing. We Name It Now.” Banner reads: “USA PROTECT YOUR” with green check mark. Adjacent text: “Making Waves. Naming Names. Defending Democracy.”
Top Right — Motif in Focus Textured blue background with white text: “Motif in Focus: Demand Named at Last.”
Bottom Left — Source Acknowledgment Textured blue background with white text: “‘When you demand everything, you get nothing.’ — Frederick Douglass, invoked by Greg Palast. Published, October 24, 2025.”
Bottom Right — Legacy Protocol Reminder Textured blue background with white text: “Legacy Protocol: This is a legacy record. We name the demand.” Red heart graphic above the text.
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Captions
Top Left — Civic Identity The shield affirms civic identity and survivor courage. The banner and tagline declare the page’s democratic stance.
Top Right — Motif in Focus The demand is no longer scattered — it’s named and centered: Healthcare for All.
Bottom Left — Source Acknowledgment Greg Palast’s reporting anchors the page’s historical and emotional clarity.
Bottom Right — Legacy Protocol Reminder This page is part of the permanent civic archive. The demand is named. The record is locked.
