Your Independent Journal from the Heartland
After the No Kings Day in October, I felt good about the local and national turnout but also had a vague concern I couldn’t quite identify until reading Greg Palast’s Substack posting on Nov. 20, “The Failure of No Kings Day.” Palast quotes the abolitionist Frederick Douglass: “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” Palast warns “when you demand everything, you get nothing.”
Palast notes a number of examples of protests with a single demand. Among them are the women’s movement which took until the early 20th century to finally focus on the single demand for voting rights which then brought victory; the marches from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, which also had the single demand for voting rights; and the 1970 Moratorium marches demanding that the U.S. get out of Vietnam.
What was the demand on No Kings Day? It may have achieved other objectives like developing solidarity and getting more people to demonstrate resistance, but seemed to have no central focus.
Then I found a fascinating Substack posting from Robert Reich on Nov. 24 called “How to Get Rid of ‘Citizens United.’” Many folks are aware that this 2010 Supreme Court decision has led to corrupting our politics by allowing a flood of money from the super-rich. About 75% of the public remains opposed to this decision.
Reich reports that instead of having to create a constitutional amendment or wait for the Supreme Court members to change in order to correct this gross injustice, there is another possibility. All corporations must be chartered in a state. Their state sets forth the form, limits and privileges of the corporation. States could decide to take away their chartered corporations’ power to spend money in politics. Further, they could also prevent any corporation chartered in another state from doing business in their state if they fund political activity. This approach is based on a thoroughly researched strategy called “Corporate Power Reset” developed by the Center for American Progress and described by Tom Moore in a September 2025 report. In Montana, organizers have already submitted a constitutional initiative for voters to consider next year to begin this change there.
If they haven’t already started, the leadership of the No Kings events needs to begin a search for a single demand that will focus our efforts. It should be one that deals with a central problem of our times and already has a good deal of public support. I hope that “Corporate Power
Reset” would be seriously considered for this demand. It not only directly attacks the central political issue of our times, the control of our government by the morbidly rich, but would also have strong public backing.
BOB RUNDLE, Oak Ridge, Tenn.
