Maybe it was the kites.

The No Kings Day in Washington, DC, saw a splendid turnout of thousands upon thousands of people, many walking across Memorial Bridge at the foot of Arlington National Cemetery, over the Potomac River to the Lincoln Memorial, and on to the National Mall. It was a brisk day of brilliant sunshine and a stiff wind that made crossing that bridge a bit frigid. But everyone seemed to take the buffeting in good cheer.

When the marchers arrived at the Washington Monument, they blended into the other great event of the day in DC: the annual Blossom Kite Festival. What a sight it was. The air was webbed with strings, taut in the big wind, then going slack in the pauses, or getting tangled when a kiter (my new favorite word: one who kites) would lose control. Walking around was to share the space with the magic those kiters and the wind made; you’d get tangled a bit, maybe have to duck as a kite came down fast, laugh at the silliness and dazzle of it all. No one complained. Kites are excellent things. Like soap bubbles, which were also blowing around—they can change the day.

The third No Kings protests across the country seem to me to be accomplishing something similar. What began last June as an eruption of defiance and rage at the Trump assault on our democratic institutions, laws, practices, and values has grown into something more settled and more affirmative. It’s become joyful, a celebration of strength and solidarity and maybe—hope.

I met Monte Achenbach near a drum circle that had set up just beyond the reach of the kites. He carried a small, homemade sign (every sign I saw was homemade). It said: “HEIL NO! No wars! No ICE! No Kings!” Big smile.

“This isn’t a partisan thing,” Monte told me. “I think it’s for us to say that we believe in and we love our democracy and we want to keep it.”

Love. It turns out that’s an essential word in American politics.

We lived through an era of technocratic, professional, data-driven governance. Aside from a few national holidays and the last paragraphs of political speeches, much of the language of our democracy flattened into policy agendas and displays of expertise. “Getting it right” was everything.

Now don’t get me wrong. When I look at the Kash Patels and MAHA gnostics and sophomoric White House meme-makers in this administration—the virtues of expertise, of getting it right, of just knowing a damn thing look really good. And obviously, as Trump is currently demonstrating in the Middle East, getting it right is a lot better than getting it wrong.

But Monte Achenbach—and so many millions of other liberals, progressives, socialists, centrists, libertarians, true conservatives and others who came out on the streets across our country this weekend—are drawn there by something deeper and more fundamental. They are right to sense that before policy must come love. The love of this country, our country—all our country.

For a long time, it seemed to me that many on the left were reluctant to claim this love as an essential source of a truly liberal and progressive politics. That’s changed, it feels like. No Kings is forging a new American liberal movement, grounded in the hope of a people who have not stopped believing in the thing they built together, however imperfectly, however long ago.

Predictably, the critiques of the movement are already coming in. No clear agenda or “specific demand.” No organization. No leader.

Isn’t it wonderful?

We are witnessing another re-birth of American freedom. And it fills me with hope.

And so to our poem today. The most politically alive lines about hope I know.

—Terry

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedHuman beings suffer,They torture one another.They get hurt and get hard,Can fully right a wrongInflicted and endured.

History says, Don’t hopeOn this side of the grave,But then, once in a lifetimeThe longed-for tidal waveOf justice can rise upAnd hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-changeOn the far side of revenge.Believe that the farther shoreIs reachable from here.Believe in miraclesAnd cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing,The utter self-revealingDouble-take of feeling.If there’s fire on the mountainAnd lightning and stormAnd a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearingThe outcry and birth-cryOr new life at its term.It means once in a lifetimeThat justice can rise upAnd hope and history rhyme.