Weekly Member Update - March 23, 2026
We’ve often been asked whether what we all do really matters. What’s really the point of having a random group of folks holding banners for passing cars on the Route 85 overpass? What does it matter if a crowd of 8 people stands vigil with signs at some busy intersection somewhere? Isn’t this just all “performative?” Why aren’t we doing more? Why aren’t we tearing it all down? What does it matter if I come out to protest and yet tomorrow our dystopian and tyrannical hellscape remains unchanged? What if Situation Normal really is All Fucked Up? How is marching in the street with a bunch of fellow travelers going to change that?
Well, if you bore witness to what occurred before the Troy City Council last Thursday — whether in person or via YouTube (skip to the 1:57:00 mark for where the fun begins) — you probably have an answer to these questions; you know why the simple act of just showing up for your community, just being physically present in solidarity, just saying what you believe beside another human being who, like you, is flat-out unafraid, you understand why all of it matters. On March 5, a lonely group of a half dozen or so had showed up before the Troy City Council to complain about those accursed Flock cameras inside the Collar City. Some of those folks had attended one of Indivisible Albany’s public forums on the Flock menace, and almost instantaneously a whirlwind of old connections begat new partnerships. As a fledgling community of activists, artists, politicos and techies got to work setting flint to the kindling, Troy Mayor Carmela Mantello and her administration quickly poured gasoline on the fire in a series of nonsensical and unserious Facebook posts. By the time the City’s Finance Committee convened last Thursday, the anti-Flock movement in Troy had become a full-on conflagration. In the largest public turnout at a Troy City Council meeting in anyone’s memory, at least 150 people were in attendance, packing the Council chambers, an overflow room and the hallways in between. Nearly a third of those attendees waited their turn as Thursday night approached Friday morning in order to personally exercise their 1st Amendment right to air their grievances. All of them were unanimous in their opposition to Flock. And it wasn’t just the citizens of Troy that spoke out, as each member of the Troy Council came loaded for bear, undoubtedly primed by the raging fire of opposition coming from their constituents. For more than an hour, Mantello, Police Chief Dan DeWolf and other administration officials withered under pointed questioning by the well-informed and prepared Council, quickly revealing that Mayor’s administration had no working familiarity with the technology that has been surveilling Trojans for the past five years and making clear that they didn’t even understand the mechanics of the contract between Troy and Flock Safety, Inc., or even how that contract had come into existence in the first place. To make it worse, the administration trotted out a PR hack from Flock Safety, Inc. who couldn’t answer any questions about the technology or the contract, but who definitely had whole bunch of “safety” talking points from corporate. In the end, early Friday morning, the Troy City Council did the only responsible thing — other than terminating the contract, of course — and tabled the matter for further consideration, thereby giving Flock’s opponents even more time to build momentum against the surveillance state in the Collar City. What had previously been a pro forma procurement decision by Troy government officials utterly transformed into a grassroots movement with the Mayor on her heels and our side with the decided upper hand in the span of 14 days. People power indeed.
YouTube screen capture; Troy City Council Subcommittee Meetings and Finance Meeting 03/19/2026
The de-Flock movement in Troy is just the latest example of what can happen when people come together in solidarity to demand change from the government elected to represent them. But just as the work of our Trojan friends will need to continue until Flock cameras are in no more in that fair City, all successful movements inherently understand that the work must be continuous and ongoing in order to achieve its goals. And, the larger the goal, the harder the work is and the more indefatigable the movement must be.
Which brings us to No Kings. At its core, the No Kings movement seeks to defeat a vast totalitarian project, an effort by the Trump Regime, its Republican co-conspirators in Congress and the States, and the corrupt oligarchs and corporate interests that fund them all to create a new anti-democratic vision of America with Donald Fucking Trump as its monarch/dictator. They want to rule us forever and to rob the Country of its wealth and its people of their power. And they are using the very instrumentalies of our government to try and do it.
Resisting and defeating this totalitarian project cannot be done overnight. Next week at this time, when No Kings 3 is in the rearview mirror and we’re posting photos of thousands of you on the streets where Central meets Colvin, Donald Trump will probably still be President of the United States; thereby proving that power of collective prayer apparently has its limits. But that does not mean that No Kings was unsuccessful. Instead, you are likely to see that No Kings 3 was the largest single-day protest in American history, eclipsing the seven million who took to the streets last October for No Kings 2. As the movement grows, the tyrants grow wary. Republicans will once again publicly (and ridiculously) dismiss us as “paid protestors,” but they are barely even convincing themselves of that anymore, and they know at their core that the people in the streets are electorally gone to them forever and that the power of their belligerent, anti-immigrant, anti-trans, trickle-down-bullshit rhetoric grows less persuasive with each passing day. The corporations and the 1% will be watching us too, for they know that their capitalist excesses have not historically ended well in the face of a popular uprising. They will wonder in their boardrooms whether it was wise to cast their lot with an incompetent and short-fingered authoritarian, and some will decide that supporting his narcissistic impulses is no longer in keeping with their precious bottom line. But it won’t just be our would-be oppressors who see us in the streets; elected officials of every stripe have eyes and ears, and they can all bear witness to our collective power. Some of those electeds — the fighters — will be on the streets beside us, and here’s hoping that some others — the calcified pearl-clutchers and centrist Dems still fighting the political battles of the 1990s and early aughts — will finally grow a spine — or get the f’ out of the way — at the sight of so many of us in the streets.
But there is one other reason why you need to be with us this coming Saturday afternoon on Central and Colvin. It’ll be good for your soul. If you haven’t done it yet before, if you haven’t rallied in a crowd full of friends you’ve never met all unified in purpose and objective, it’s hard to describe the feeling. It’s buoyant. It’s joyful even as we express our collective rage. It reminds you that you are not alone and that there are more of us than there are of the tyrants. If you have ever once felt despair or resigned defeat in the face of the avalanche of cruelty and hatred coming from the Orange King’s Regime, you need a No Kings event more than you even know. It’ll lift you up and give you hope. And, to top it off, the signage is goddamn hilarious. So come stand with us and find some new friends. Or decorate your car and grab your elders and let them join in the cacophony from the comfort of your passenger seats. Or, rally your friends and family and coworkers under a banner of your choosing and come march beside us. There is no wrong way to meaningfully participate in a No Kings event, just be there with your Capital Region comrades and neighbors and help us once again declare that America has No Kings, despite what Donald Trump and his lackeys have to say.
Odds & Ends:
In anticipation of No Kings 3 this Saturday, you can attend tonight’s online Know Your Rights: Protest Rights and Safety Practices training put together by the ACLU. This training has been specifically formulated for No Kings participants and, in any event, you can never have too much Know Your Rights training as far as we are concerned.
If you are interested in helping lobby members of the State Legislature to enact the New York Health Act — which would guarantee universal, comprehensive health care, including dental, mental healthcare, and long-term care, for all New Yorkers — you can join The Campaign for NY Health, who will be at Legislature every single week for the remainder of the legislative session.
Once upon a time, the Biden Administration had authorized the construction of a transformational wind farm off the coast of Long Island which, along with easing this state’s transition away from fossil fuel dependence, also had the potential to brings jobs and revenue to the local Ports of Albany and Coeymans. Because Donald Trump has personally hated windmills since they famously “ruined” the view at one of his Scottish golf courses, the Regime tried to shut the project down as soon as it came to power in 2025. Federal judges had blocked the efforts of Trump stoolie Lee Zeldin, however, so now the Regime has another brilliant plan; they are going to give $1 billion of our tax money to the developers of the wind project to make them go away. Yet another example of what happens when you have a King; his interests and preferences are all that matters, the public interest be damned, and our treasure is his to use to satisfy his personal whims and predilections.
Nothing is more monarchal, of course, than a war of the King’s choosing. As the Regime contemplates sending Marines to take Kharg Island, a rock 15 miles off the Iranian coast, bloodthirsty US Senator Lindsey Graham was on the TV musing that “We did Iowa Jima, we can do this.” “We” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that statement and, to be clear, it took nearly 7,000 dead and nearly 20,000 wounded to raise the flag on Mount Suribachi. But do go on Senator Graham. On the Iran War, we encourage you to read the Gold & Geopolitics Substack on the subject. Using just the chaotic and contradictory public statements of the Regime, the author demonstrates just what an absurdist tragi-comedy this mismanaged and bungled war has already become. Read it if you need a good laugh or good cry.
