Who Is 50501?
Published at 14:43 on 25 October 2025
This is an important question to ask because it has real bearing for the continued existence of political freedom in the USA. (50501 is the organization behind the two waves of “No Kings” protests in the USA.)
As I have written previously, the answer as to whether or not te USA remains a relatively free country depends largely on whether or not a “none of the above” mass opposition movement, not explicitly linked with either the Democratic Party establishment or the radical Left subculture, emerges. So: does 50501 appear to be such a movement?
The answer: apparently yes. I have not found much at all credibly linking 50501’s top leadership (such as it is, the group seems to be quite informal) to the Democratic Party establishment.
Yes, I am sure one can find examples of Democratic politicians endorsing or appearing at No Kings rallies. So what. That is irrelevant to my claim, which is, to reiterate, about that group’s top leadership, such as it is, who are not Democratic Party bigwigs.
The biggest link seems to be between 50501 and the Bernie Sanders campaigns. Kay Evert from the Atlanta area seems prominent.
Bernie Sanders is not a career Democrat (he is an independent who caucuses with the Democrats), and when he was a member of a political party, it was with first a small socialist party and then another small, generically progressive party, both unique to Vermont.
In fact Democratic Party establishment generally does not like Bernie Sanders very much. It’s why they put their finger on the scale in favour of Hillary Clinton in 2016, and a big part of why career Democratic Party candidates united against Sanders in 2020.
Even the right-wing Influence Watch organization, who I am sure would love to deligitamize 50501 as much as they can, just does not have much on establishment Democrat links to 50501 as of this time.
Perhaps a greater worry is how timid the 50501 actions have been, given what is happening. A healthy democracy would have grassroots movements basically shutting down business as usual in response to something like a Trump regime. Business as usual has been shut down in several European democracies in recent years over scandals far less serious. It is not hard, in fact, to find anarchists griping about this very thing.
50501 would counter that anything more aggressive would probably alienate many Americans. And they are probably correct about this. But this ends up damning the American public for its generally low morals and standards, since, to reiterate, a healthy democracy would have a much stronger political immune response happening.
What it all boils down to, I think, is reason for a little — but only a little — optimism. It is a positive sign that a “none of the above” movement might actually be emerging, but we need a lot more than what we have seen so far, and we need it stat.