Rebellion that fits neatly into a weekend schedule isn’t rebellion—it’s theater
It’s Columbus Day, and this Saturday, thousands of people will gather for the No Kings protest.
But I’m not going.
Not because I don’t care.
Not because I’ve given up.
Because I don’t believe in scheduled rebellion.
When Revolution Became Routine
Rebellion that can be penciled into a planner isn’t rebellion, it’s a rehearsal.
We keep mistaking visibility for power. But if the system lets you apply for a permit, assigns you a police escort, and resumes business as usual on Monday, then the system isn’t threatened. It’s entertained.
I read a post this morning that said:
“The ADA was only passed after wheelchair users physically blockaded the Capitol.
Women’s rights were only granted after feminists bombed powerful men.
The Civil Rights Act only went through after Black people shut down D.C.
Civility is bullshit, and history proves it.”
And that’s it, isn’t it?
None of those moments were scheduled. They erupted. They were inconvenient, terrifying, and real. They made people uncomfortable because they were supposed to!
We’ve forgotten that. We’ve turned protest into a product, branded, sanitized, and resold as activism you can participate in on your lunch break.
Columbus and the Colonization of Dissent
It’s almost poetic that this protest overlaps with Columbus Day, a holiday celebrating the man who colonized and renamed a world that wasn’t his.
It feels right, in the worst way, that our resistance has been colonized too.
Columbus turned invasion into “discovery.”
America turned protest into “programming.”
We have “event pages,” “march schedules,” and “official hashtags.”
We have photo ops and livestreams, but we’ve lost the danger.
We’ve traded power for participation.
Disruption for documentation.
Liberation for likes.
What It Means Not to Go
I’m not skipping this protest because I don’t support it. I’m skipping it because I no longer believe that one permitted march equals progress.
I don’t want to play rebellion.
I want to be rebellion.
And that means choosing my battles and my bandwidth wisely. Chronic illness limits what I can physically do, but not what I believe. Refusing to attend doesn’t mean I’ve gone quiet. It means I’m refusing to confuse movement with momentum.
To anyone else who’s sitting this one out:
You are not the problem. You are not complicit. You are allowed to choose how you resist.
Protest as a Daily Practice
If you can’t march, you can still matter.
If you can’t shout, you can still refuse.
If you can’t hold a sign, you can still hold a line.
Protest isn’t one day - it’s every day.
It’s refusing to play nice with systems that rely on your silence.
It’s feeding neighbors, organizing resources, building community, speaking truth, and refusing to let the fire die just because the weekend’s over.
History didn’t change because people were polite.
It changed because they were impossible to ignore.
So yes, march if you can and choose. Flood the streets. Be loud. Be visible.
But remember what scares power isn’t the protest they can predict.
It’s the revolution they can’t schedule.
No kings. No gods. No calendars.
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