We Are the Blue American Nation

 

We Are the Blue American Nation!

Speech delivered at No Kings Rally, Bellingham Washington, October 18, 2025

Vernon Damani Johnson

l. We believe in Democracy! In fact, we believe in Multiracial Democracy!

a.Trump’s nation, the Red Nation, has abandoned democracy.  It’s architects, the authors of Project 2025, have espoused belief in “the constitutional republic.” This is basically two things: First, that the authority to rule should not be hereditary. That authority should emanate from the people, not family lineage. Secondly, though authority to rule comes from the people, it need not necessarily be democratic. That is to say that a constitutional republic does not need to be based on the will of the majority.

b. The founding fathers were not democrats. They were indeed constitutional republicans. We can’t forget that none of the original 13 states allowed all adults over the age of 18 to vote ... We can’t forget that the Electoral College was created as a check on majority rule.

ll. The founders were afraid of you, the demos. They feared democracy. But once the genie of government by the people, and for the people was let out of the bottle, the trajectory of American history took on a life of its own.

a.The Red Nation wants to destroy the democracy that popular movements fought so hard to build across the 20^th century.

lll.

a. The Red Nation opposes reproductive freedom for women and women’s equality in general.

b. The Red Nation Objects to LGBTQI rights and gender affirming care for trans and queer people.

c. The Red Nation is against the right of workers to unionize and bargain with the bosses over the conditions of work.

d. They deny climate change. Trump has already gutted the staffing of the Enviro-metal Protection Agency. He has halted the disbursement of funds allocated to implement the Inflation Reduction Act, which has significant monies in it to move us toward a Green economy ...

e. His policies have the potential to do great harm to the impact of Washington’s Climate Commitment Act; the most comprehensive state level environmental legislation in the country.

lV. In essence, the Red Nation represents most of the values our Blue Nation opposes ... But its bedrock, the principle that excites its base the most and leaves them salivating, is white nationalism ... White supremacy!

a. This Red nationalism, the traditional American nation, is built upon the dispossession of the indigenous people and Black slavery.

b. The largest percentage of the Latino population are of Mexican descent. They are mestizo, part European, but the other part is indigenous. They also were dispossessed in the Mexican War (1846-48).

c. When Trump rode down the escalator in 2016, he led with “build the border wall” and stricter immigration policies. His crackdown in major cities as I speak today, and in the places where Latino immigrants work shows his continuing focus on curtailing the browning of America.

d. Trump has tapped into a deep vein in the White American psyche ... the concern by many White people that a country founded by them and only for them will be irretrievable if something drastic doesn’t happen.

e. Christian nationalist, anti-gun control fanatics, libertarians, and avowed racists have forged a coalition intent on terminating the conversation about what it means to be American.

f. They know they are a minority of the population. That’s why they are so excited by Trump. He is blatantly subverting longstanding democratic processes.  His disciples in Congress and on the Supreme Court remain silent ignoring the checks on executive power at the core of the Constitution.

g. So as much as they talk about returning to the traditions of the founding era, it is they, of the Red American nation who hate the seminal principle underlying the American idea --- government authority emanates from the people, and that therefore, there can be no one-person rule! There can be no dictator! There must be No Kings! (Chant! NO KINGS! NO KINGS! NO KINGS!)

h. We are believers in the grand American traditions of democratic conversation and checks on personalistic forms of rule.

V. We must not just talk about defending the values of our Blue Nation, but we must stand up for those values in all the institutional spaces where we can still prevail ... This will not be easy, and many people will be hurt as a result (but folks being hurt already; so we might as well push back and go down swinging!)

a. But I’m not talking about us going down and out! I’m talking about push back from our institutional spaces.

Heroes for the Day

-         All of the universities thus far have refused to sign Trump’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education. Google it. It would end academic freedom and free speech on university campuses (signees supposedly would receive preferential funding from federal government.

-         Governor Gavin Newsome of California, who recently said that any public universities in California who signed the compact, lose their state funding.

-         Costco Corporation who basically told Trump they value diversity and an inclusive environment in the workplace, saying it was good for business.

-         Washington D.C. football team and Cleveland baseball team who were pressured by Trump to change their mascots back to the offensive Native ones ... Neither have budged! The Cleveland Guardians ... announced that they have engaged with their community and invested a lot of effort into the name change discussion, and they’re not going back!

-         To a regional school superintendent here in Washington who I heard say on a panel that “call it what you want! But I don’t know how an educator cannot recognize that a student body is diverse, that the school culture must therefore be inclusive, and giving each student a fair opportunity to learn requires equity ...

-         To all the federal judges below the Supreme Court level who have rendered rulings finding the administration’s action illegal, and even unconstitutional.

c. These are examples. But look around you! They are not as strong as they look. If all of us who oppose them push back in big ways in corporate and nonprofit settings, and in any number of small ways in our daily lives I believe that Trump 2.0 and Red Nationalism won’t hold up.

d. Since the soldiers in Blue marched to victory in the battle to end slavery, our Blue nation has invested over 150 years into making good on one other foundational American idea ... that all of us are equal before the law. And that in the end must include even those would be King!

(Chant!) NO KINGS! NO KINGS! NO KINGS!

Robert Sarazin Blake and Charlie Maliszewski ... Come on up!

Join in leading the singing of one of the great songs of the labor movement and the civil rights, “We Shall Not Be Moved!

We shall not, We shall not be moved! We shall not, We shall not be moved!

Just like a tree that’s planted in the water, We shall not be moved!

-         With voices raised together ... We shall not be moved! (3 times, repeat 3^rd)

-         We’re Standing up for Justice      “     “     “

-         Honor the Indigenous                    “      “    “

-         Standing with Farmworkers         “     “     “

-         We Honor the Constitution         “      “     “

-         We’re Fighting against Fascism   “     “     “

-         We’re Fighting for our Future     “     “     “

Thank you! Now check out the tabling organizations to see how you can get actively involved.

How Trumpian Fascism Looks from Europe

 

Back from my travels in Ireland and Scotland with some observations about the impact of Trumpism 2.0 on Europe. Landing in Dublin on August 27^th I was surprised (though I shouldn’t have been) on the ride from the airport to our hotel by how much the suburbs of the city with steel and glass office complexes resembled an American city. But when we arrived at our hotel in the “Temple Bar“ neighborhood of Dublin, we were in the old section of the city humming with tourists.

The Republic of Ireland offers a distinct reality from the rest of Western Europe. Born in the crucible of the struggle against British imperialism in the 1920s, it was an ally to the movements to end European colonialism in Africa and Asia after World War Two. As soon as we arrived, we saw graffiti saying “Free Palestine” and posters with the Irish and Palestinian flag side by side. Ireland is a White country that can empathize with the historic yearning for Palestinian self-determination.

Ireland had already recognized a Palestinian state in May and Great Britain and France joined 155 other UN member states in recognizing Palestinian statehood at the General Assembly meeting last month. The former Middle Eastern imperialists, Britain and France are late to the dance but add to the growing isolation of Israel and the US on this issue. Ireland and Spain are also, thus far, the only European states to go as far as declaring the Israeli military campaign in Gaza a genocide. Of course, none of that matters much if the US continues to supply Israel with weapons.

As a participant in the movement to end apartheid in South Africa I’ll remind you that the roots of that movement go back to 1958, when the All-African People’s Conference in Accra, Ghana called for a boycott of South African products. It was taken up by British anti-colonial activists the following year. That launched a campaign to “boycott, divest and sanction” South Africa that culminated in diplomatic isolation of the country and global economic sanctions against it in 1986.[1]

It is no accident that today’s global movement to similarly isolate Israel is called BDS: Boycott, Divest and Sanction! It is unfortunate that Trump is US president as genocide is unfolding in Gaza. There may be no human life left to extend self-determination to, before the Israelis have completed their mission there.

In another sign of growing US isolation European NATO defense ministers met in Brussels in late August to declare efforts to buttress their collective support for Ukraine. Stocks in European defense industries are trending upward in anticipation of increased production in those sectors.[2] 

Topping off this specter of US global isolation was the Shanghai Cooperation summit of ten Eurasian countries that took place August 31-September 1. The organization was formed around Russia and China in 2001 to oppose Western global hegemony and now includes Iran, India and Pakistan.[3]

The outcomes of talks were not publicized. But in his speech Chinese president Xi Jinping observed that “a new phase of turbulence” in global affairs existed and called upon member states to collaborate to erect a “more just and balanced international governance framework.” The proceedings portended “a closer relationship among its members at a time when the world has been roiled by U.S. trade policies and tariffs.”[4] A few weeks later Trump addressed the UN General Assembly in a rambling speech littered with false claims and insults to the international community.[5]

In July I wrote that the US is exhausted by the challenges of global leadership as norms demanding a wide range of human rights have broadened. It is abdicating that leadership at a time when China is stepping up its campaign to mobilize support for its illiberal path to economic and social development.

Who will defend “liberal democracy” and the idea of relatively open societies? The US may be distancing itself from the entire world in many ways, but it shares one glaring problem with Europe. They all support stricter immigration policies in order to keep their countries White! Great Britain, France and Germany, the other great powers of the White world, are presently governed by centrist parties or coalitions, which endorsed the neoliberal decline of their working classes over the last generation and opening their borders to accommodate refugees from the Middle East and Africa.

The particulars of anti-immigrant politics differ in each country (perhaps a topic for another post). Where I traveled in Great Britain there was the “Unite the Kingdom” rally on September 13^th. It drew over 100,000 people to central London. Leader Tommy Robinson declared that the march was for “free speech, British heritage and culture” claiming that asylum seekers and other immigrants had more rights than the “British public, the people that built this nation.”[6]

Robinson’s movement is farther to the right than Nigel Farage’s Reform Party. It was Reform that fueled the vote for Britian to leave the European Union that was successful in 2016. Opposition to White immigration from low-income countries in the EU was central to that campaign. Britain has not fared so well economically since BREXIT. But after some time in the wilderness, Reform is back. It currently leads Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party in national polling. And though Britain doesn’t have to have elections until 2029, Starmer’s lack of “vision” and recent cabinet shakeups have left his government weakened.

Farage has pledged to deport hundreds of thousands of “irregular migrants” and not comply with the European Convention on Human Rights for a trial period of five years. If Farage is skillful, Reform will capture the Unite the Kingdom vote whenever Britain next holds elections.

Elon Musk was among speakers from far right parties from France and Germany at the Unite the Kingdom rally. Trump can thus, be seen as the leader of the neo-fascist movement across the Western democratic world and even in places like Brazil and Argentina. Against that back drop I ask again “who will defend democracy?”

---

[1] Johnson and Dickinson, “International Norms and the End of Apartheid in South Africa,”  Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2015.1054224

[2] “European defense pledge pressure to end the war after Russian strike on Kyiv,” AP World News. https://apnews.com/article/europe-ukraine-defense-ca215008a9b7120399dffb1cfc48bd08; European defense stocks rise, Grieg Cameron and David Leask, “Battle Stations,” Sunday Times. September 7, 2025, p. 17.

[3] It also includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belarus.

[4] Anniek Bao, SCO summit 2025: Key takeaways from Beijing’s push to reshape global order, CNBC. September 2, 2025. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/02/sco-summit-2025-key-takeaways.html

 

[5]“7 key moments from Trump’s U.N. speech,” PBS News. September 23, 2025. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/7-key-moments-from-trumps-u-n-speech

[6] Clashes in London as 110,000 join far-right rally against immigration, ALJAZEERA, September 13, 2025.

  https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/13/over-100000-attend-london-rally-led-by-far-right-activist-tommy-robinson