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Listen

Ali Velshi, “How Small Acts of Courage…Become Unstoppable.”

The MSNBC host and Citizen board member draws on the history of South Africa's protests against apartheid to show how the courage of ordinary citizens defeats oppression

Listen

Ali Velshi, “How Small Acts of Courage…Become Unstoppable.”

The MSNBC host and Citizen board member draws on the history of South Africa's protests against apartheid to show how the courage of ordinary citizens defeats oppression

BY Ali Velshi

Oct. 20, 2025

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The peaceful civil disobedience practiced by oppressed Black South Africans in 1952 provide a valuable context for this past weekend’s historic No Kings protests across the country and the world. Ali Velshi, whose father participated in those protests against apartheid in South Africa, taps into that history to put the No Kings protest into perspective.

Thousands of South African civilians were willing to risk arrest to fight the government. “When they try to silence you with repression, reply with more people, louder voices, undeterred steps,” Velshi says. “This is how single, small acts of courage become many.”

Millions of Americans walked the streets of their towns and cities, lined roads, gathered in front of city halls and marched to landmarks in a mass demonstration against the Trump Administration’s constitutional violations this weekend. Meanwhile, his party attempted to derail the event by calling it hateful and predicting violence. Every individual who defied those threats and invoked their First Amendment right to protest walked in the footsteps of ordinary people throughout history who, through small acts of courage, became unstoppable.

LISTEN: VELSHI ON SMALL ACTS OF COURAGE

 

WATCH: THE NO KINGS PROTESTS’ HISTORICAL PRECEDENT

 

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