No Kings On Our Public Lands

A Rallying Cry for the Common Ground

We were promised no kings.
Not here. Not ever. Not on this soil and not on this land.

That was the wager of the republic.
No throne. No crown. No gilded chair at the edge of a canyon declaring, this view is mine. No velvet ropes around a mountain trail. No gatekeeper counting dollars before letting you pass under a cathedral of trees.

The land was the promise. Not as property, but as inheritance. Not as asset, but as birthright. A place where the child of a cobbler and the child of a senator could pitch the same tent under the same sky and hear the same wind rustle through the same pines.

And yet.

The Trump administration is gutting what remains.
They’ve declared a national “emergency” to fast-track drilling and mining.
They’ve invoked war powers to silence environmental review.
They are firing public servants, erasing rules, and handing land to extractive interests at historic speed.
The looters are inside the gates, not creeping, but sprinting.

Everywhere now we are told to pay.
Pay to camp. Pay to walk. Pay to look.
Pay a contractor to enter a forest. Pay a billionaire to sleep beneath the stars.
Pay a corporation to reserve your own freedom six months in advance.

The kings are back.
Only this time they wear Patagonia vests and charge “processing fees.”
They don’t arrive with horses and muskets. They arrive with apps, leases, lobbyists, and lawyers.
But their claim is the same.
This belongs to us now. You can visit. If you can afford it.

That is not a republic. That is a return.

This is our refusal.

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What Makes Public Land Sacred

A public land is not just a plot on a map.
It is a promise made visible.

It is the silence between trees that asks nothing of you but your presence.
It is the breath you take on a ridgeline, cleaner than any air bought or sold.
It is the trail that begins where pavement ends, where cell signal fades, where time rearranges itself around light and weather and instinct.

It is the idea that something so vast and wild could belong to everyone.
The single mother with two kids and a tank of gas.
The veteran who comes here to remember how to be still.
The fourth grader on her first field trip who looks out over a canyon and says nothing, just stares.

Public land is sacred not because we declared it so,
but because it already was.

Before surveyor. Before settler. Before ranger. Before road.

It holds memory in soil and story in stone.
It holds the bones of bison and the ashes of ceremony.
It holds waters that feed cities and forests that hold carbon and sanctuaries where the rarest of creatures still walk without fences.

Lose this, and we do not just lose land.
We lose a place that makes Americans equal.
We lose a place where wealth means nothing, and the only thing required is wonder.

We lose the quiet.
We lose the wild.
We lose the last proof that this country once believed in something bigger than profit.

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The Would Be King Returns in a Red Tie

He slashes protections with a pen.
He opens sacred ground to drilling from a stage.
He mocks conservationists as elitists, scientists as liars, tribes as obstacles.

He gutted Bears Ears and Grand Staircase not to serve the people, but to serve the companies lining up behind him.
He fast-tracked leases through ANWR.
He greenlit pipelines across tribal lands.
He treated the Department of the Interior like a pawnshop for oil men and real estate donors.

And now, freshly returned to office, he is doing it again – only faster.
Stripping away NEPA protections.
Firing career scientists.
Invoking “emergency” powers to sidestep public process and civil review.

This is not leadership.
This is monarchy.
A man who sees land not as legacy, but leverage.
Not as sacred, but salable.
Not as something held in trust for all people, but as something his administration can reshape, sell, and turn to profit.

There is no other word for this but rule.
And there is no room for a ruler here.

Not on land meant to belong to every American equally.
Not on land won through sweat, protest, and generations of care.
Not on land that whispers names older than this country and older than any man who thinks he can claim it.

We did not overthrow one king to kneel before another.
And we will not do it now.

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The Coronation of Private Power

They didn’t come with swords.
They came with contracts.

They came with keycards and spreadsheets and five-year concession plans.
They came in suits, not uniforms.
And where once there was a ranger, now there is a customer service desk.

This is how the crowning began.

They took our lodges and raised the rates.
They took our campgrounds and added fees.
They took our reservation system and handed it to a consulting firm that charges you just to try.

They call it modernization. They call it efficiency.
But let’s call it what it is.
A quiet coronation.
Private firms granted dominion over the people’s land.

Xanterra charges $766 a night to sleep in Glacier.
Booz Allen Hamilton takes your money when you reserve a campsite, then keeps it.
The companies get richer. The public gets poorer. The agencies get hollowed out.

We are told it’s still ours.
But try walking in without a permit, without a code, without a card.
Try sleeping under the stars without reserving the sky.

This is not stewardship. This is not conservation.
This is rule.
Rule by fee. Rule by algorithm. Rule by access codes and legalese.

It is not the land that changed. It is who stands at the gate.

And now the gate has a keypad.

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The Founding Rejected Kings. So Must We.

This nation began with a rejection.
No thrones. No crowns. No divine right to rule over land or over people.
We were not born subjects. We were born citizens.

That was the gamble.
That the land could be held in common. That power could be constrained.
That no man could stand above another just because he held the deed.

Public lands are that gamble made visible.
No king owns Yellowstone. No baron owns the Mojave.
The Grand Canyon does not belong to a shareholder.

And yet, here we are.
Watching the old order slip back through the side door.

They do not wear cloaks, but they carry the same hunger.
To take what is shared and make it theirs.
To extract. To tax. To fence. To sell.
And to call it improvement.

They sit in boardrooms and agency offices. They sign leases and file claims.
And when we push back, they call us naïve.
As if democracy has no place in the desert.
As if freedom stops at the trailhead.

But we know better.
Because this land, these parks, these forests were not just set aside. They were set apart.
As proof that the experiment could work.
As living testament that a government of the people could still act for the people.

We are not here to inherit feudalism with better branding.
We are here to say the revolution is not over.
And that no crown belongs in the high country.
No kings belong on public lands.

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The Reality They Hope You’ll Ignore

They hope you’re not paying attention.
They hope you see the sunrise and forget to ask who owns the road to get there.

But the facts don’t lie.

Our public lands agencies are deeply underfunded by design. It’s a coup. Given the bare minimum to operate.

These are not anomalies.
They are policy.
They are the product of a system designed to turn your public land into someone else’s passive income stream.

We are told it’s necessary.
That parks must “pay for themselves.” That fees are “modest.” That this is the cost of “visitor experience.”

But that’s the lie.
The experience is already ours.
We don’t owe a fee to see our own inheritance.
We don’t owe a corporation for the right to be free in a forest.

This is not access.
It is rent.
And we are being told to pay for what we already own.

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The Line in the Dirt

We have seen enough.
We have read the contracts.
We have counted the fees, traced the leases, followed the money.

And now we draw the line.

No more contractors collecting tolls at the trailhead.
No more private equity firms renting us back our own silence.
No more tech companies selling sunrise access like a concert ticket.

No more pretending this is normal.
No more pretending the land loves its landlords.

Because the land remembers.
It remembers the boots of the ranger, not the briefcase of the financier.
It remembers ceremony, not signatures.
It remembers when the only cost was the effort to reach it.

We say this plainly.
We will not bow to concessionaires.
We will not pledge fealty to booking apps.
We will not watch our parks become profit centers for the well-connected.

This is not nostalgia.
It is defense.
Of principle. Of place. Of the simple idea that some things belong to everyone.

We will not hand the keys to the kings.
Not now. Not quietly. Not ever.

Here is our line.
Carved into desert dust and forest floor.
Drawn not in ink, but in footsteps.

Cross it, and you will find resistance.

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What We Demand

We do not ask for favors.
We demand what was promised.

A land held in trust, not leased for profit.
A land open by right, not restricted by algorithm.
A land stewarded by people, not pillaged by corporations.

We demand the end of stealth privatization.
Bring back our reservation systems and first come first serve. Make it public, accountable, and transparent.
No more junk fees. No more middlemen.

We demand the removal of royalty from the parks.
Strip the concessionaire contracts that bleed the public dry.
If a lodge inside a national park charges luxury rates, it should not exist under the public banner.

We demand protection of what remains.
No new oil leases. No new logging deals disguised as “management.”
Old-growth stays standing. Sacred sites stay untouched.
Wilderness stays wild.

We demand access without barrier.
Not just for the wealthy. Not just for the tech-savvy.
The trail should not require a credit card. The canyon should not come with a surcharge.

We demand Indigenous co-stewardship.
Not as symbol, not as afterthought.
As equal authority. As rightful heirs. As protectors who never stopped protecting.

And we demand this not in the name of sentiment,
but in the name of democracy.
In the name of every American who has stood at a park gate and felt the land open to them like a birthright.

We are not here to negotiate the terms of our own dispossession.
We are here to stop it.

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The Invitation to Rise

Today we claim the ground.

No Kings Day is not a holiday. It is a reckoning.
It is a reminder that the land belongs to the people,
and the people are watching.

Go.
Step onto the soil that was never supposed to be bought.
Walk the trail. Sit by the river. Sleep under stars not yet sponsored.
Stand where the old promise still flickers beneath the noise.

Bring your camera. Bring your kids. Bring your grief.
Bring your anger at what’s been lost, and your love for what remains.
Share it. Name it. Call it what it is.
No Kings Day.

Tell the story of a place that shaped you.
Tell the story of a fee that turned you away.
Tell the story of a moment when you felt free.

And then do more.

Call your representatives and tell them the privatization stops here.
Tell them you will not support a single vote that sells your birthright.
Tell them no more backroom leases, no more corporate contracts, no more lies.

Share this with anyone who needs to hear it..
Because movements are built not in silence,
but in voices that rise together until they can’t be ignored.

Let them hear us.
From the gates of Yosemite to the edges of the Arctic Refuge.
From the redwoods to the Everglades.

Let them know the crown has no place here.
The land bows to no king.
And neither do we.

Until next time,
Will