‘No Kings’ Boomers Sing Patriotic Hymns — Then Close With John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’
Protesters at Saturday’s “No Kings” rally in Washington, D.C., sang an outdated playlist — “Grand Old Flag,” “This Land,” “This Little Light of Mine” — according to a song sheet distributed at the mall.
The organizers of the Virginia march — We of Action Virginia, an Indivisible group — asked participants to begin with “You’re a Grand Old Flag,” stop at the National Archives to sing “This Land Is Your Land,” then end with John Lennon’s “Imagine,” the newest song on the playlist. (RELATED: ‘No Kings’ Protester Wishes Trump ‘Absolutely’ Dead)
“We stop in front of the National Archives to take photos,” reads the printed document. “Please return all flags and banners…to someone wearing a WOFA yellow vest. »
Sheets of paper distributed with protest songs pic.twitter.com/YHKzI2HXxp
– Brecca Stoll (@StollBrecca) October 18, 2025
This is close to the rest of the set. The doc piles on patriotic and civic anthems – “You’re a Grand Old Flag,” “America the Beautiful,” “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee,” “God Bless America” and civil rights classics – then swerves toward Lennon’s utopia.
By contrast, “Imagine” asks listeners to imagine “no country,” “no religion,” and “no possessions,” a worldview miles away from the flag-waving cannon that the crowd chanted on the steps of the National Archives.
Lennon himself once described the song’s politics bluntly: “‘Imagine,’ which says, ‘Imagine there was no more religion, no more countries, no more politics,’ is practically ‘The Communist Manifesto,’ even though I’m not particularly communist and don’t belong to any movement,” according to the Library of Congress.
