We hear it all the time. At the grocery store, at family dinners, in the comments section. What’s the point? Nothing ever changes. They don’t care what we think.
It’s an understandable feeling. When the people in power seem determined to ignore the law, the courts, and common decency, standing in the sun with a sign can feel like shouting into the void.
But here’s what the last fourteen months have actually looked like when millions of Americans showed up massively, peacefully, and persistently. Including right here in the northwest valley.
1. Elon Musk Was Driven Out of DOGE
In early 2025, Elon Musk was effectively co-president — slashing federal agencies, firing workers, and doing it all without a single vote being cast for him. The Tesla Takedown movement responded by turning his showrooms into protest sites, urging divestment, and making Tesla ownership culturally toxic for the progressive consumers who had been his core buyers. Here in the northwest valley, hundreds showed up to protest Musk at Tesla in north Phoenix — part of a nationwide wave that made the economic and reputational cost of his behavior impossible to ignore. The result? European Tesla sales dropped nearly 40% in a year. US sales fell 19%. Tesla’s stock lost over 30% of its value in a single quarter, and profits collapsed 71%. By April 2025, Musk was stepping back from DOGE. A grassroots campaign with no central leadership, no budget, and no elected officials calling the shots put a dent in the most powerful unelected man in Washington.
2. Harvard Found Its Spine
When the Trump administration came after universities, most of corporate and institutional America bent the knee. Harvard didn’t — but it didn’t find that courage in a vacuum. The Hands Off rallies of April 5, 2025 put more than a million people in the streets across all 50 states. In Surprise, 2,500 of us showed up — neighbors, first-time activists, longtime organizers — all sending the same message. Reporting afterward confirmed that university administrators stiffened after seeing those numbers nationally. Alumni organized, faculty organized, students organized — and the rallies gave all of them permission to hold the line. Harvard sued the administration. The lesson: institutions don’t get brave on their own. We have to make it possible for them to be brave. The 2,500 people who stood in Surprise that April were part of making that possible.
3. Three Corporations Reversed Course Under Boycott Pressure
When Disney suspended Jimmy Kimmel, the backlash was swift and organized. When Spotify and Avelo Airlines were exposed for cooperating with ICE, boycott campaigns launched immediately. All three companies reversed their positions. No legislation. No court order. Just organized consumers making it financially and reputationally untenable to keep doing business with cruelty. The market listens to pressure when pressure is applied consistently and loudly enough.
4. Democrats Swept the 2025 Elections
In November 2025, Democrats won the governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey, the New York City mayoral race, and California’s Proposition 50 redistricting measure. Abigail Spanberger won Virginia by 15 points. Democrats flipped 21% of all GOP-held state legislative seats up for election that year. Analysts called it a wave comparable to 2017 — which foreshadowed 2018’s blue wave midterms. Exit polling made the driver clear: voters were angry about Trump, motivated by the resistance, and showing up. That energy didn’t materialize out of thin air. It was built in the streets — including ours. The nearly 6,000 people who turned out across CD-8 for No Kings 1 in June 2025 were part of building that momentum. The energy that filled the streets translated directly into ballots five months later.
5. The Epstein Files Were Released (sort of)
For years, transparency advocates couldn’t get the Epstein files unsealed. Then seven million Americans showed up for No Kings 2 on October 18, 2025. In CD-8 alone, 8,400 people turned out — one of the strongest per-capita showings in the state. Within weeks, Congress voted near-unanimously to force the release of the files. Senators who had quietly blocked transparency for years suddenly found that bipartisanship was easy, once the public made inaction politically uncomfortable. Even our own Rep. Abe Hamadeh — who has spent his entire tenure cheerleading for this administration — voted for it. That’s what sustained pressure looks like when it reaches critical mass. The files didn’t get released because the right people finally cared. They got released because we made it impossible not to care. Those 8,400 people in CD-8 were part of that pressure.
6. Kristi Noem Was Fired
Kristi Noem spent her tenure as DHS Secretary overseeing aggressive immigration sweeps, cheerleading the deployment of masked federal agents into American cities, and labeling civilians killed by her own agents “domestic terrorists.” She looked untouchable — until she wasn’t. When ICE agents killed Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, more than 1,000 people gathered in Surprise to say: not in our name. That grief and outrage was echoed in cities across the country, applying pressure that made Noem’s position untenable. Two days of brutal Senate hearings — made possible by a public that wouldn’t let the story die — ended her tenure. On March 5, 2026, Trump fired her. ICE Barbie is gone. That matters.
7. Greg Bovino Is Gone Too
Bovino was the operational face of the administration’s most aggressive immigration crackdowns — the man who deployed agents in masks and military-style uniforms into Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and Chicago, and who instructed his officers to “go hard” against protesters. After the 1,000-person vigil and protest in Surprise — and thousands more like it across the country — Bovino was pulled from Minnesota, stripped of his government social media access, and shipped back to California. He has since announced he is retiring from the Border Patrol entirely at the end of this month. The administration has also formally abandoned its broad city-wide immigration sweeps in favor of a more targeted approach. Persistent public pressure didn’t just remove one person. It changed the policy.
What All of This Has in Common
Not one of these wins came from a single speech, a clever tweet, or a strongly worded letter. Every single one was preceded by massive, sustained, peaceful public action. In each case, the people in power were not persuaded — they were pressured. They didn’t choose to do the right thing. We made the wrong thing too costly.
We’ve said it often here at NWVI: Few politicians come with a spine. For the rest of them, we are their spine.
That’s not cynicism. That’s actually how democracy is supposed to work. Power responds to power. Our power is with each other.
And here in CD-8, we have shown up: 2,500 for Hands Off. Nearly 6,000 for No Kings 1. 1,000 in Surprise when our neighbors were being killed in the streets of Minneapolis. 8,400 for No Kings 2. Hundreds protesting Musk at Tesla in north Phoenix. We have also driven dozens of media stories over the past year — on television, radio, and online — putting the overreach of this administration in front of audiences who might not otherwise have seen it. Every rally, every press conference, every act of organized resistance has been part of the same effort: making it impossible for the people in power to pretend none of this is happening.
Every single time, we were part of something larger than ourselves. And every single time, it mattered.
March 28. Be There.
No Kings 3 is already tracking as the largest single-day protest in U.S. history — with over 3,000 local events confirmed across the country and projections reaching 9 million participants.
In CD-8, we are part of that. Multiple sites across the northwest valley, right in our own backyard. And who knows — if we show up big enough on March 28, we might even stop the ICE detention warehouse they’re trying to build in Surprise.
If you’ve been watching from the sidelines wondering whether any of this matters — now you know. It does. The receipts are right here.
Find your nearest event and sign up at www.nokings.org.
Don’t just watch history. Make it.