Okay, since you're here, You know that democracy is not something that anybody can do alone. Since you're here, you know that it's very important to be together. Since you're here, you know that the people who are against democracy try to make you feel alone. Try to make you feel there's nobody on your side.
Try to make you feel that there's no other choice than to accept what's going on. So I'm not so much going to speak to you, I'm going to speak with you, right? I'm going to speak with you. So this is going to be more of a call and response.
Now, since this is a democratic situation, if you don't want to respond, you don't have to. You can say yes when I want you to say no or no when I want you to say yes. You can do whatever you want. But I'm going to start by saying something that I think is fundamental.
When we say no kings, we're saying yes to freedom. So if I say no kings, can you say freedom? All right. That was good. It's what my dad would call B-minus. So we're gonna do it one more time. No kings? All right, all right, all right.
So when we say no kings, I think we... All right, that was the smart people. If you heard somebody do that, that was a smart person. It's good to know smart people. It's also good to know courageous people. And when you're an organizer, find somebody who's more courageous than you and do what they're doing, right?
There's somebody here who's more courageous than you. Do what they're doing, follow them, admire them. Okay. We mean something specific by that phrase, right? We mean some specific things. We mean that a king is somebody who wants personal rule, who wants his sons or his friends or his clan to be in power forever.
A king is somebody who wants tyranny and not democracy. That's number one. Number two, a king would mean somebody who wants oligarchy and not opportunity. A king is somebody who's going to gather all the wealth in the country to himself, to his family, to his clan, to a few companies,
and make sure that the rest of us and our kids and our grandkids don't have opportunities. yeah yeah boo boo that's a boo yeah like boo um a king in this country and we see this every day we see it sadly every day is somebody who's going to want violence
and not law is somebody who's going to try to rule by way of violence and fear rather than confidence and security and predictability and law And a king, the person who wants to be a king, the people around that person, they're going to try to rule by lies.
They're going to lie all the time about us, about everything, about the past, about the future. And those lies, stop progress. Those lies keep us set where we are. And finally, a king is somebody who's gonna want submission, submission from everybody, submission rather than dignity. And so these are reasons,
and you're gonna hear lots of other good ones, but these are reasons why we say no kings. Okay, everybody's smart now. No kings. So, do you want to bow down to the puffed up? Or do you think everyone in this country should be treated with dignity? Do you wanna hear lies about yourselves, lies about the past?
Do you wanna hear the silencing of the African Americans and the women and the unions and all the other groups? You brought us the democracy that we've got. or do you want to have the truth about our past the truth about science the truth
that allow us to open up the future and have a future a better future and do you want our armed forces and our police to be the personal servants of a tyrant but do you want to live in a country that's ruled gently, consistently, by law. Wow. Okay. And all your anarchists, you were excused from that one.
All right. That's fine. Like the man said, you don't have to agree with everything. That's important. All right. And do you want a few people to have all the wealth?
No.
Or do you want public schools, public education, healthcare, The things that give a chance for a future. Okay, all right. So do you want a tyrant? Do you want a democracy? Okay, because democracy doesn't come on its own. It doesn't come on its own. Nothing brings it on its own.
Not nature, not the constitution, not the economy, not the founders. Nothing brings democracy on its own. Democracy means the people rule. Do the people want to rule? okay if you want to rule you have to be the people and being the people means being together and being together means working in groups and working in groups means
meeting the groups who are here in cincinnati but it also means working together so i'm going to do something that they tell you never to do in public speaker school And I'm going to stop for 10 seconds because I want you to say hello to somebody you didn't come with and learn their name.
OK, I want you to do that right now. I'm going to be quiet while you do that right now. Oh, yeah. All right. You're gonna do what you're gonna do. We're going to come out. We can't go back to where we were. We can't go back to where we were.
When we get through this, things are going to get better. And they're going to get better on the model of how you behave and how you work together and how you think and how you imagine now. That is all we've got. That is all we've got, but it's a lot. Right?
That is all we've got, but it's a lot. One last time. No kings. Okay, I enjoyed that one more time. No kings.
Thanks to Karen Lawton for transcribing the talk so those of us who have trouble hearing can read it!!! Many thanks!!! I’m from Cincy and I know the area. The seat of change on the Mason-Dixon Line with Jim Crow LAws when i was growing up there. We broke them and this was before MLK. Thanks again!
Thank you Candace. All I do is copy and paste the transcript that appears with the videos. I still can't work out why I see a full transcript automatically as soon as I play the video, but obviously lots of people don't. But I'm very glad to have something useful to do in these horrible times.
THIS WAS BRILLIANT! This talk by Timothy Snyder actually brings me to tears of relief. Wonderful message, clear, truthful, forceful. Delivery with a good pace that allowed the ideas to sink in. Repetitions, which help us listeners to internalize the ideas. Response, allowing us a voice. And that lovely idea of meeting the person next to you and exchanging names and a handshake (we Quakers do that after every Meeting). I am so cheered by the knowledge Timothy Snyder is speaking out, going strong. Please keep up this good work. It is hugely needed right now. -- Kate Delano-Condax Decker
Timothy Snyder is in my view one of the most clear and truthful voices this country has. What he has to say is so very important at this moment. I get a stronger and stronger feeling we do not have a lot of time to get our country back onto a good and reasonable track.
That Timothy Snyder is also a really good speaker is a great piece of luck. I hope he keeps speaking out.
If anyone has any spare cash, why don't we shoot some of it his way to fund appearances like this one? Does anyone who is good at organizing things on the computer know how to set up a fund for this, if you agree it is worth doing? If we each contribute even a little bit, it will add up pretty quickly I think.
Can we get this to work as a small fund raising effort, do you think? It costs a lot for a University Professor to leave his home (currently Canada, where he is teaching at the top Canadian University, University of Toronto) and travel to a destination in the US to speak out for us all. Does anyone know how to set this up?
I can't afford more than a dollar, but if a lot of us all kick in a dollar, it will really work well. Timothy Snyder's is a voice that needs to be heard. We are in very dangerous times in this country. An actual COUP is a very real possibility, according to some of the key observers. If we are going to stand up, it better be now, in my view.
We know that we are having an effect because Trump and his allies are actively engaged in denial. Their central premise is that the electorate is stupid and uninformed. We counter that by getting out, raising our voices and spreading the word.
When I was promoted to Management in the US Bureau of Reclamation our agency required a financial background check. So why doesn’t the Constitution require a financial background check when someone is running for President. It’s a double standard for the rich versus the much lower paid federal employees. Therefore it should be requiredbof anyone running for the highest office in the land. In essence a financial felon like Trump would never have been allowed to to run for President in the first place. Now he handles Federal tax dollars and cuts critical infrastructure spending and agencies etc on and on destroying everything that had protected and provided for the taxpayers!!!!!
We required tax returns from Donald Trump. He said the IRS had them and as soon as they were done, he would hand them over. That happened....never. He just kept the lie going during his first "presidency".
Of course he didn’t hand over his tax returns this or in his last term. He can’t be allowed to circumvent Congress. He’s a financial felon. Call your Senators
Most excellent Q, Sharon. Why the double standard?
Timothy gets it correct here when, near the end, he asks for a ten-second pause in his own talking, time for everyone to greet a neighbor in the crowd, and ask their name.
Simple dynamic. Why don't our schools do this -- not only by exchange of names (which all students in any single class know anyway), but exchange of more on each other in an essay writing program that probes more humanly, more personally, more sympathetically with "others"?
Donald and his fellow rich never learned any dynamics posited on "others" being human, others having some obligations of human courtesy and decency. And skills. Doesn't it also take some literacy skills to communicate humanly, personally, which our schools could prioritize?
He couldn't manage to half- fill the bleachers for his Big military parade...
(The numbers don't lie--he does.) Smart people do not want what he's peddling, and the six time bankrupt may be beginning to sadly realize that he's losing, yet again.
It was great to join thousands of my fellow Americans for the No Kings event in Bend Oregon last Sunday I’m looking forward to seeing Dr Snyder in person next week in Portland when he speaks at the Schnitzer Theatre.
All the undesirable characteristics of monarchs (you forgot queens) that you mentioned leads me to wonder, what about constitutional monarchies such as Great Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Japan, etc.? I seriously wonder whether an American constitutional monarchy like Great Britain's might not have prevented a loutish, self-serving, wrecking ball Prime Minister Trump, if not from rising to power, then at least from disregarding its bounds.
Nobody has ever gone from a constitutional democracy to a constitutional monarchy for the simple reason that the monarch contributes essentially nothing to the democratic process, save possibly being a voice for reason and solidarity. That depends on the personality of the monarch.
A better solution is a parliamentary government with a non-partisan president who can be replaced. Like Frank Walter Steinmeier of Germany for instance.
The countries you mentioned became constitutional monarchies by the process of dismantling inherited dictatorships, aka monarchies.
Transcript :
Okay, since you're here, You know that democracy is not something that anybody can do alone. Since you're here, you know that it's very important to be together. Since you're here, you know that the people who are against democracy try to make you feel alone. Try to make you feel there's nobody on your side.
Try to make you feel that there's no other choice than to accept what's going on. So I'm not so much going to speak to you, I'm going to speak with you, right? I'm going to speak with you. So this is going to be more of a call and response.
Now, since this is a democratic situation, if you don't want to respond, you don't have to. You can say yes when I want you to say no or no when I want you to say yes. You can do whatever you want. But I'm going to start by saying something that I think is fundamental.
When we say no kings, we're saying yes to freedom. So if I say no kings, can you say freedom? All right. That was good. It's what my dad would call B-minus. So we're gonna do it one more time. No kings? All right, all right, all right.
So when we say no kings, I think we... All right, that was the smart people. If you heard somebody do that, that was a smart person. It's good to know smart people. It's also good to know courageous people. And when you're an organizer, find somebody who's more courageous than you and do what they're doing, right?
There's somebody here who's more courageous than you. Do what they're doing, follow them, admire them. Okay. We mean something specific by that phrase, right? We mean some specific things. We mean that a king is somebody who wants personal rule, who wants his sons or his friends or his clan to be in power forever.
A king is somebody who wants tyranny and not democracy. That's number one. Number two, a king would mean somebody who wants oligarchy and not opportunity. A king is somebody who's going to gather all the wealth in the country to himself, to his family, to his clan, to a few companies,
and make sure that the rest of us and our kids and our grandkids don't have opportunities. yeah yeah boo boo that's a boo yeah like boo um a king in this country and we see this every day we see it sadly every day is somebody who's going to want violence
and not law is somebody who's going to try to rule by way of violence and fear rather than confidence and security and predictability and law And a king, the person who wants to be a king, the people around that person, they're going to try to rule by lies.
They're going to lie all the time about us, about everything, about the past, about the future. And those lies, stop progress. Those lies keep us set where we are. And finally, a king is somebody who's gonna want submission, submission from everybody, submission rather than dignity. And so these are reasons,
and you're gonna hear lots of other good ones, but these are reasons why we say no kings. Okay, everybody's smart now. No kings. So, do you want to bow down to the puffed up? Or do you think everyone in this country should be treated with dignity? Do you wanna hear lies about yourselves, lies about the past?
Do you wanna hear the silencing of the African Americans and the women and the unions and all the other groups? You brought us the democracy that we've got. or do you want to have the truth about our past the truth about science the truth
that allow us to open up the future and have a future a better future and do you want our armed forces and our police to be the personal servants of a tyrant but do you want to live in a country that's ruled gently, consistently, by law. Wow. Okay. And all your anarchists, you were excused from that one.
All right. That's fine. Like the man said, you don't have to agree with everything. That's important. All right. And do you want a few people to have all the wealth?
No.
Or do you want public schools, public education, healthcare, The things that give a chance for a future. Okay, all right. So do you want a tyrant? Do you want a democracy? Okay, because democracy doesn't come on its own. It doesn't come on its own. Nothing brings it on its own.
Not nature, not the constitution, not the economy, not the founders. Nothing brings democracy on its own. Democracy means the people rule. Do the people want to rule? okay if you want to rule you have to be the people and being the people means being together and being together means working in groups and working in groups means
meeting the groups who are here in cincinnati but it also means working together so i'm going to do something that they tell you never to do in public speaker school And I'm going to stop for 10 seconds because I want you to say hello to somebody you didn't come with and learn their name.
OK, I want you to do that right now. I'm going to be quiet while you do that right now. Oh, yeah. All right. You're gonna do what you're gonna do. We're going to come out. We can't go back to where we were. We can't go back to where we were.
When we get through this, things are going to get better. And they're going to get better on the model of how you behave and how you work together and how you think and how you imagine now. That is all we've got. That is all we've got, but it's a lot. Right?
That is all we've got, but it's a lot. One last time. No kings. Okay, I enjoyed that one more time. No kings.
Thanks to Karen Lawton for transcribing the talk so those of us who have trouble hearing can read it!!! Many thanks!!! I’m from Cincy and I know the area. The seat of change on the Mason-Dixon Line with Jim Crow LAws when i was growing up there. We broke them and this was before MLK. Thanks again!
Great history from Cincinnati Emmy, thanks!
The video has some wonderful visual moments too, especially when Prof Snyder stops speaking for 10 seconds!!
I can't take credit for transcribing - the transcripts are generated automatically by Substack and appear on my ipad, so I copy and paste.
Thanks for providing this.
Thank YOU, Penelope in Australia, for explaining how to get the transcript into full-page format so I could copy it!
May I call you Penny Lane? (English boomer Beatles fan)
Thank you for transcribing.
Thank you Candace. All I do is copy and paste the transcript that appears with the videos. I still can't work out why I see a full transcript automatically as soon as I play the video, but obviously lots of people don't. But I'm very glad to have something useful to do in these horrible times.
People together peacefully demonstrating their love of freedom. Tyrants beware!
THIS WAS BRILLIANT! This talk by Timothy Snyder actually brings me to tears of relief. Wonderful message, clear, truthful, forceful. Delivery with a good pace that allowed the ideas to sink in. Repetitions, which help us listeners to internalize the ideas. Response, allowing us a voice. And that lovely idea of meeting the person next to you and exchanging names and a handshake (we Quakers do that after every Meeting). I am so cheered by the knowledge Timothy Snyder is speaking out, going strong. Please keep up this good work. It is hugely needed right now. -- Kate Delano-Condax Decker
This needs a thousand likes. 👏
Timothy Snyder is in my view one of the most clear and truthful voices this country has. What he has to say is so very important at this moment. I get a stronger and stronger feeling we do not have a lot of time to get our country back onto a good and reasonable track.
That Timothy Snyder is also a really good speaker is a great piece of luck. I hope he keeps speaking out.
If anyone has any spare cash, why don't we shoot some of it his way to fund appearances like this one? Does anyone who is good at organizing things on the computer know how to set up a fund for this, if you agree it is worth doing? If we each contribute even a little bit, it will add up pretty quickly I think.
Thanks for the Likes!
Can we get this to work as a small fund raising effort, do you think? It costs a lot for a University Professor to leave his home (currently Canada, where he is teaching at the top Canadian University, University of Toronto) and travel to a destination in the US to speak out for us all. Does anyone know how to set this up?
I can't afford more than a dollar, but if a lot of us all kick in a dollar, it will really work well. Timothy Snyder's is a voice that needs to be heard. We are in very dangerous times in this country. An actual COUP is a very real possibility, according to some of the key observers. If we are going to stand up, it better be now, in my view.
We know that we are having an effect because Trump and his allies are actively engaged in denial. Their central premise is that the electorate is stupid and uninformed. We counter that by getting out, raising our voices and spreading the word.
Remember, too, Stephen: Donald has a video out raining feces on gatherings like this.
Thank you for spelling this out so clearly.
When I was promoted to Management in the US Bureau of Reclamation our agency required a financial background check. So why doesn’t the Constitution require a financial background check when someone is running for President. It’s a double standard for the rich versus the much lower paid federal employees. Therefore it should be requiredbof anyone running for the highest office in the land. In essence a financial felon like Trump would never have been allowed to to run for President in the first place. Now he handles Federal tax dollars and cuts critical infrastructure spending and agencies etc on and on destroying everything that had protected and provided for the taxpayers!!!!!
We required tax returns from Donald Trump. He said the IRS had them and as soon as they were done, he would hand them over. That happened....never. He just kept the lie going during his first "presidency".
Of course he didn’t hand over his tax returns this or in his last term. He can’t be allowed to circumvent Congress. He’s a financial felon. Call your Senators
Most excellent Q, Sharon. Why the double standard?
Timothy gets it correct here when, near the end, he asks for a ten-second pause in his own talking, time for everyone to greet a neighbor in the crowd, and ask their name.
Simple dynamic. Why don't our schools do this -- not only by exchange of names (which all students in any single class know anyway), but exchange of more on each other in an essay writing program that probes more humanly, more personally, more sympathetically with "others"?
Donald and his fellow rich never learned any dynamics posited on "others" being human, others having some obligations of human courtesy and decency. And skills. Doesn't it also take some literacy skills to communicate humanly, personally, which our schools could prioritize?
Yes Timothy Snyder is always right on target!
Tears. Thank you.
Yes. Me too :-)
It's so great to hear you speak and it' even greater to see you laugh and smile. Thank you so much Prof TS
Powerful. We have today. Thank you.
NO KINGS - FREEDOM!!!!!! Tim Snyder is a national treasure. Let’s work together people - across divides!
7 million showed up. Spoke up.
He couldn't manage to half- fill the bleachers for his Big military parade...
(The numbers don't lie--he does.) Smart people do not want what he's peddling, and the six time bankrupt may be beginning to sadly realize that he's losing, yet again.
Tyranny hates embarrassment.
It was great to join thousands of my fellow Americans for the No Kings event in Bend Oregon last Sunday I’m looking forward to seeing Dr Snyder in person next week in Portland when he speaks at the Schnitzer Theatre.
Well done!
Thank you!
Thank you for all you are doing!
All the undesirable characteristics of monarchs (you forgot queens) that you mentioned leads me to wonder, what about constitutional monarchies such as Great Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Japan, etc.? I seriously wonder whether an American constitutional monarchy like Great Britain's might not have prevented a loutish, self-serving, wrecking ball Prime Minister Trump, if not from rising to power, then at least from disregarding its bounds.
Nobody has ever gone from a constitutional democracy to a constitutional monarchy for the simple reason that the monarch contributes essentially nothing to the democratic process, save possibly being a voice for reason and solidarity. That depends on the personality of the monarch.
A better solution is a parliamentary government with a non-partisan president who can be replaced. Like Frank Walter Steinmeier of Germany for instance.
The countries you mentioned became constitutional monarchies by the process of dismantling inherited dictatorships, aka monarchies.