June 1, 2025
Indivisibles!
It’s less than 2 weeks away: get ready for Indivisible’s No Kings Day in Helena!
While Trump throws himself a birthday party fit for a tin-pot dictator (appropriating the 250th anniversary of the founding of our nation’s armed forces to fight the Revolutionary War, and costing us taxpayers tens of millions of dollars), over 1,500 communities in every congressional district across the country will join together to declare No Kings!
Flag Day 2025 will be like no other.
No Kings! in Helena
“America was founded by rejecting kings and monarchies,” says Indivisible Helena member Tony Jewett. “We’ll protest in a peaceful way and show Helenans and Montanans how they can stand up and protect their democracy and constitutional rights and reject corrupt leadership that rewards billionaires and cuts essential services to our state and people. Simply put, we support democracy to elect presidents, not kings.”
Who: You! And your family, neighbors, and friends
What: No Kings Day Rally–pro-democracy rally hosted by Indivisible Helena
When: Saturday, June 14, Noon to 1:30 p.m.
Where: State Capitol Flag Plaza, 1301 East Sixth Avenue, Helena, MT
Why: Protect Democracy, Reject Autocracy and Corrupt Politics
Speakers at the No Kings rally in Helena will include:
- Pat Cotter, retired 2-term Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, speaking on threats to the rule of law under the current administration;
- Charlie Snellman, 2025 graduate of Capital High School, sharing his generation’s fears about the direction of our nation, the undermining of academic freedom, and the attacks on education, universities and free speech;
- Marc Racicot, former 2-term Montana Governor, speaking about the undermining of our constitutional rights by Washington, DC, politicians
- Rachel Carroll Rivas, Interim Director of Intelligence Project for the Southern Poverty Law Center, talking about the assault on the basic American freedoms of speech, expression, and voting rights; and
- Anne Hedges, Executive Director of the Montana Environmental Information Center, addressing the broad societal and international impacts of the Big Bad Bill/Reconciliation Act rapidly moving through Congress.
The rally will be emceed by Nancy Keenan, teacher and former 2-term Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction, former Montana State Legislator from Anaconda, and previous Executive Director of the National Abortion Rights Action League.
Make your plans now to attend the rally will all of your friends and neighbors. No Kings!
Membership Meeting Report
This past Wednesday evening, Indivisible Helena held our first “all-member” meeting. A great crowd of 50 Indivisible Helena members came to listen to the progress the organization has made in building our group over the past two months, to offer their thoughts and suggestions about next steps moving forward, and to volunteer for the upcoming June 14th Rally. Topics covered included the status of preparations for the rally and volunteer opportunities for folks to help out with logistics, as well as a discussion on the draft goals, functions, and proposed actions for Indivisible Helena as we all work ahead. It was a terrific turnout with lots of energy and expressed commitments to fight for the democracy and freedom we love.
Action Items for This Week
While we will have more opportunities for members to help with staging the rally on the 14th in next week’s newsletter, here’s what we need this week:
1. Paint and Place Yard Signs
Indivisible Helena was given 200+ campaign yard signs (including the wire holders) to use as we wanted. A No Kings advertising bonanza! So now we need a small army—more like a small platoon—to paint over the signs and then paint on the No Kings logo on one side.
Come be a part of this guerrilla marketing-for-a-cause, and when you see these signs around town (and we’re keeping them up until the Trump administration is gone), you can say “I did that!”
Here’s the plan:
- No Kings yard sign painting will start Monday (tomorrow) evening, and we’ll be painting there every evening from 7:00 to 8:30 pm all week. Stay as long as you like.
- We will paint in the basement of the Livestock Building—the building with the Women’s Mural, across Broadway from the Basecamp, 2 N Last Chance Gulch. Enter through front door which faces north, opposite the Double Tree hotel, go downstairs, and turn right.
- No need to bring anything or RSVP: just wear paint clothes and bring a friend! We’ll be set up and ready to roll the paint.
Let’s roll!
2. Produce and Wave Burma Shave-style Signs
The Sewing Circle in Helena is creating Burma Shave-style signs about the No Kings Rally that they will hold up along several busy thoroughfares in town over the next two weeks. If you’d like to help out (remember how funny and entertaining those signs along the highway used to be!), meet at Mt. Ascension Brewery, 3rd floor, at noon on Wednesday, June 4. All materials are provided. Just bring your good ideas and enthusiasm!
3. You can (and should!) always give our congressional delegation a piece of your mind about the MAGA Murder Budget Bill. Like them, they think we don’t care about billionaires stealing our earned benefits and government services. But they’re wrong!
Save the Dates (details coming next week)!
- Indivisible Helena will provide training for several rally roles on June 12 at 6 pm at the Capitol’s Flag Plaza.
- Waking Giant is hosting a No Kings sign-making party starting at 6 pm on June 13 at Brother’s Tapworks.
- We’ll have more volunteer opportunities for the No Kings rally in next week’s news.
This Week’s Good Read
Since authoritarians have always used their power to accumulate private wealth, often corruptly, working people have often been among the first to resist the autocrats, aka the boss. After all, “All that harms labor is treason to America.” (Abraham Lincoln).
While it may not appear so now, the labor movement—as an institution organizing workers—is definitely a target of Trump, not unlike universities, courts, the press, etc, as it has been for every fascist regime in history. Trump likes to play the populist card to attract votes from workers, but he never actually does anything material for them. He just picks our pockets. Workers’ rights of free speech, association, etc. have never been protected appropriately by our government since the New Deal (hence the current low union density rates), and it’s one reason that principled resistance is harder to form here among workers than in advanced economies. Solidarity is a word that the labor movement makes real in communities where has organized and is organizing.
This week’s must-read article encourages organized labor to get in the game (much as the Montana Federation of Public Employees has for Helena’s No Kings Rally):
“Here is what is happening: First they are coming for the federal unions—the lowest hanging fruit, the most bureaucratic unions, the ones barred from striking. Then they will proceed to come for all public sector unions. Then they will come for private sector unions…” —Hamilton Nolan
…and then they will come for the worker organizing other workers to form or join a union… We’ve seen this pattern before, and together we must shut down this power play.
Read They Are Going to Take Everything If We Don’t Stop Them by Hamilton Nolan.
Spread the Good News
Indivisible Helena now has 1,000 members, and our social media accounts are rapidly growing (up 10% each week in May on Bluesky!). But we can’t rely solely on social media to get our word out. That’s why we need you.
Below you will find the flyer we are distributing for the No Kings rally. It’s easy to print (and looks good when laser printed) so that you can distribute them to your friends and neighbors. And it’s a good opportunity to talk to them about why we a mobilizing: to save our democracy from the despots in DC!
Note that there is a QR code included that you can point your smartphone camera to RSVP for the rally. Or forward this email to anyone so that they can RSVP at https://www.mobilize.us/nokings/event/784934/.
We encourage everyone to RSVP so that we can send last-minute updates. And an added bonus: they’ll be on the list to receive future issues of this newsletter!
Until next week, Solidarity 🌹
Indivisible Helena