So as you hold your signs and chant for “No Kings,” remember, you can’t dismantle monarchy while worshiping the myth of white male saviors. You can’t demand liberation while centering comfort. You can’t imagine a new world while refusing to confront the ways you benefit from the old one.

The real protest begins when you turn that same energy inward. When you divest from the systems, institutions, and policies that make “kings” possible in the first place.

About rejecting the isolating norms of whiteness that tell you to compete instead of connect, to hoard instead of share, to self-protect instead of co-create.

Imagine if your worth wasn’t measured by proximity to whiteness. Imagine if the weight of individualism was replaced with a living, breathing network of mutual care. Imagine the relief, the possibility, the liberation.