News & Articles

A trombonist with a message plays during Duluth's No Kings day, June 14. Photos by Scott Hebert.

Are you proud of what you did on June 14, 2025?

I hope you had a good day today. I hope that if you were capable of moving, with or without assistance, and you could get to one, you participated in one of the estimated 2,000 demonstrations planned on the day of the Orange Infant’s birthday.

I hope you posted writings, video and photography all over your socials, and posted everybody else’s protest videos, too. I hope you felt at one with a crowd of like-minded people, perhaps less alienated than usual, perhaps less lonely and afraid.

I hope you are not afraid, but if you are, know that courage is action in the face of fear.

I hope you are able to be brave when the people who used to be your fellow citizens spout boldfaced lies, when they laugh at you, when they make you feel bad about who you are, when they and the party they support try to close your schools, cut off your medical care, pry into your sex life, fire you and take your neighbors and co-workers away in handcuffs.

I hope you can be brave even when they shoot at people.

But I also hope you do not go inside your home, if you have one, lock your doors and accept that this is “normal.” I hope you do not believe that Trump will remain in office for four years, and we just have to “ride it out.” This is what someone I know, a dedicated unionist who definitely didn’t vote for the monster, texted to me today.

Because if you think that, you are a Good German. Good Germans are not Nazis. They are not Trumpers. They are the people who think they can and should just go on with their normal lives.

I hope you don’t believe that what happened early this morning in Minnesota, the state I live in, means that we need to stay off the street.

Here in Minnesota, we were told those events mean we should not protest. But protest we did. Don’t believe any news report that says we stayed home. The June 14 crowd in Duluth was the largest demonstration I’ve personally seen in the 10 years that I have been here, and thousands marched in St. Paul. There were demonstrations in Rochester, St. Cloud and in Bemidji. 

I hope you don’t believe that the threat of martial law means we must go silent.

I know that you may have a job, a family, children who need you.

I know that you want things to be normal.

I know you may be quietly annoyed that your life, which had been rolling along pretty smoothly, is about to be massively disrupted.

I know that you may blame those who protest for heightening civil tensions.

None of us, as individuals opposed to Donald Trump are responsible for this mayhem.

But all good people, leftists, centrists, and true conservatives who treasure the Constitution, old and young, as a collective, a unit, must turn and face the forces of history, and be brave enough to live through times that have no historical precedent, no map, no guidelines, except the absolute necessity to do what is right, no matter how fearsome a choice that may be.

I hope you are proud of whatever you did or failed to do on June 14, 2025, and if you are not, you plan to change.

There is still time. Though perhaps not much.

Laura Marland is a writer and photographer living in Duluth.