NO KINGS. UNITE WITH INTENTION.
Against the backdrop of this country, I frame a hard truth: the people who first claimed these shores as their own — the white expatriots — did not arrive as saints. In my telling, they were buccaneers by trade: men who knew plunder, war, and taking. They murdered the first peoples of this land, drove the survivors into camps and reservations, and built their new “civilization” on the bones of those they displaced.
The pawns — the territories, the lands, the laborers, the enslaved — became the scaffolding of a nation that excused its own violence as destiny. That same blueprint carried forward into the trafficking of human bodies. Slavery became the great enterprise of manufactured superiority. From that labor and that cruelty, a White American legacy was born — one that later generations would polish, legislate, and defend as the backbone of their greatness.
As waves of Europeans came — Italians, Jews, Germans, Irish, Slovenians, Danes — the chessboard expanded. Each group learned quickly how to play: to coalesce, to legislate, to segregate, to disenfranchise. They built their castles and cathedrals while the pawns, mostly Black and Brown, were told to stand still, to be grateful, to protect the game they would never win.
I do not pretend that one essay can hold the whole truth — there are too many layers, too many wounds unhealed. But I say this plainly: the America we inhabit was shaped by conquest, codified by law, and baptized in contradiction. And when we now see a modern charlatan — this Trumptonian figure who holds a nation hostage, bleeds its economy, mocks its courts, and toys with truth — we are not witnessing something new. We are seeing the heir of the buccaneers, the inheritor of that old violence dressed in modern power.
Courts and constitutions have long built armor for the King. Legal briefs pile high, lawyers duel on air, and the country sinks into a swamp of confusion and fatigue — while the so-called King remains unscathed. The chessboard stays crowded, but the moves feel rigged.
Can the United States withstand four more years of that rot? Or must the pawns — the people, the workers, the dreamers, the mothers and sons who carry the weight of this country — rise as sovereign players and reclaim the board?
I speak from a place of anger and sorrow, but also from faith in what we still could be. I feel the outrage — at stolen histories, at the theater of elites, at laws used as armor for impunity. I feel the exhaustion — the long ache of conscience banging on deaf doors. Yet I also feel something stronger: a stubborn, deep-rooted hope. Because history has shown, again and again, that when people move together with conscience and courage, good does break through.
And now, here we stand again. What an extraordinary, almost combustible demonstration of solidarity we’ve seen — though, as always, it came after the fact. When the votes were counted in November 2024, many hesitated at the edge of change. Some were uneasy about discomfort, some unwilling to trust a face that didn’t fit the familiar color palette of America. And so we linger in uncertainty — still questioning whether every ballot was honored, still wondering if democracy itself can hold.
But this isn’t a manifesto of accusation. It’s a reckoning of observation. Facts will surface, systems will be tested, and the long road of correction will take its time. Yet the same old truth remains: when people act with conscience and unity, good eventually prevails.
We live now in a world trembling on its axis — billionaires hiding in the shadows, puppets performing on public stages, lawlessness grinning from behind the curtain. It’s a frightening sight, but also a summons.
We feel.
We speak.
We share.
To unite with intention means remembering that no crown is eternal, and no power is sacred once the governed wake to their own strength. The “how-tos” — how we organize, how we educate, how we vote, how we build and hold accountable — are not mysteries. They’re the daily moves of conscience that, square by square, change the board itself.
When the Chess Players Got It Right — the Good Trouble Results
When Harriet Tubman led bodies through the night, she flipped the board without a title. When freedom riders rolled through the South and John Lewis bled for the vote, the King trembled. When Rosa Parks sat, when Dr. King spoke, when Fannie Lou Hamer said I am sick and tired of being sick and tired — those were not pawns anymore; they were queens in motion.
More recently, when nurses, teachers, grocery clerks, and organizers kept speaking through crisis; when young voters stood for hours; when neighbors rebuilt after storms — that, too, was good trouble. Small, honest moves that change the board.
Good trouble isn’t chaos; it’s strategy born of love and moral will. It’s the people remembering they are the players — not the pieces.
This is not a politicized rant. It’s a meditation on agency and awareness — a reminder that the soul of democracy doesn’t belong to kings or courts, but to the collective courage of those who refuse to stay pawns.
If you want to keep moving — to see how we can shift the game together — I’ve gathered the next steps and resources here: Action to Take →. Follow the link when you’re ready. Add your move to the board.
NO KINGS. UNITE WITH INTENTION.
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