The 'One Piece' Flag and the Kids Revolt Will Take Down Trump, and Authoritarianism
This column is co-published with Zócalo Public Square. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons, Sept. 21, 2025. CC BY-SA 4.0
Now, in late 2027, with the fall of the dictatorship and Trump’s flight into Arabian exile, it’s obvious that only a revolution led by youth could have pushed out the corrupt U.S. regime.
But two years ago, in autumn 2025, almost no one was talking about what the kids might do. The country suffered not merely from authoritarianism, but from a lack of imagination. There was no clear vision of how a tyrannical American government might be stopped.
American adults thought it was all about them. Some were collaborators (rooting for Trump’s cruelties as “what we voted for”), some were cowards (surrendering themselves and their institutions), and still others were carnival barkers (blasting Trump online while doing little to fight him in the real world).
Yes, there were lawsuits against the regime, and self-congratulation among adults who devoted a few hours of a Saturday to peaceful “No Kings” marches. But no grown-up dared try to tear down the regime, or force its immediate end.
One plurality of America’s adults had voted for Trump. Another plurality had voted to elect the Democratic politicians who enabled him. But children and teens hadn’t voted for anyone.
And it was clear that the regime, and the adult world that propped it up, was robbing kids of their future.
ProPublica called it a “war on children”—a cruel campaign that went beyond shutting down the U.S. Department of Education, or demanding billions in tribute from universities. Trump made sure kids could feel his war at school. Books, materials, and classroom conversations that flouted the regime’s racial and sexual prejudices were banned by executive order. Trump literally stole kids’ lunch money, cutting food stamps and reducing eligibility for school meals.
Schools were no longer sanctuaries; the Department of Homeland Security declared it could come on campus and grab students it suspected of being undocumented (though it later denied making this policy change). Citizenship was no protection: The president, through an executive order, sought to cancel the constitutional citizenship rights of U.S.-born kids. His goons routinely deported the U.S. citizen children of immigrants.
The regime didn’t care if children lived or died. It opposed gun control and did nothing to stem the endless school shootings. The president cut hundreds of billions in children’s health care, and dismantled programs to prevent childhood lead poisoning and research pediatric cancer. The U.S. health secretary sought to discourage vaccinations, risking a resurgence of deadly childhood disease. And, by cutting foreign aid, the regime seemed poised to allow millions of children around the world to die from starvation, malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS.
Even if kids survived these changes, the administration put their long-term future in doubt. Illegal and reckless tariffs were dismantling the global economic system that benefited previous generations of Americans. The government declared climate change a hoax, and ramped up burning fossil fuels.
With Democrats focused on their adult selves—helping to force a federal government shutdown to preserve health subsidies for the middle-aged—children came to realize they had to save themselves.
Their revolt began quietly in early 2025. Children in Defense Department schools around the world staged April walkouts to protest book bans and attacks on diversity programs. In cities from Fresno to Chicago, students walked out to protest cruelty to immigrants. In October 2025, nonprofits organized a youth school walkout to protest pollution.
None of this stopped Trump, who ramped up the cruelty. But as weeks and months of ICE raids and National Guard deployments pressed on cities and suburbs, isolated school walkouts evolved into a national mass movement—the largest yet to oppose the regime.
By 2026, tens of millions of American students, from kindergarten to college, routinely skipped school—or showed up in the morning and walked out—to demand that Trump resign. Some, noting Trump’s social media publication of a video of himself bombing protesters and cities with poop, dumped feces on federal government facilities.
“Stop Sh-tting on Our Future!” they cried.
Adults tried to stop them, declaring that kids should be in school. Some Democrats sought to ban youth from social media, and confiscate cell phones from anyone under 21. Trump and the MAGA movement responded even more harshly, arresting tens of thousands of young protestors on the phony grounds that they were antifa terrorists. Reports surfaced of federal authorities building temporary, child-only wings in immigrant detention facilities.
The protests escalated and made headlines around the world. America’s youth became part of a global revolution. Everywhere, Gen Z protesters were taking on authoritarian governments and winning. In 2025, youth protesters had overthrown the government of Nepal in just days, and ousted the president of Madagascar in weeks. Youth protesters also threatened the governments of the Philippines, Indonesia, Mongolia, Kenya, Paraguay, Peru, Serbia, and Morocco.
Young American protesters adopted the pirate flag of these global fights—a black-and-white smiling skull and crossbones wearing a straw hat, an image from the classic Japanese anime series “One Piece.” Kids hung the flags on government buildings, and on the fences surrounding the White House.
Youth protesters also started carrying mirrors to point at adults who confronted them on the streets. Childish? Look in the mirror to see who is acting like a child.
The Mirror Revolution had no leaders; it used online tools to reach consensus around non-partisan demands. Not only did the entire Trump regime have to go, immediately, but so did the Democratic politicians and federal judges who had allowed tyranny to take over. Then, with the rulers gone, young people would hold a constitutional convention, with delegates all under age 40 (as many Founders, including Hamilton and Madison, had been back in 1787).
Trump, finally and desperately, invoked the Insurrection Act and declared martial law. That move, at long last, brought adults into the streets. Troops defending the White House, the Capitol, and Mar-a-Lago were soon surrounded by millions.
At some point, the military was ordered to fire on the protesters. But they would not. The soldiers were young, too. They stood down and joined the uprising.
The White House and its allies escaped on a plane gifted by Qatar. Majorities of Congress and the federal judiciary resigned under pressure. Those who remained had to submit to a truth-and-reconciliation commission.
The revolution was a national trauma. But it was also a historic opportunity for renewal. The constitutional convention is meeting as I write. It is amazing how quickly one regime can fall, and a new republic can be born, when young people imagine a better future—and fight until we get it.
