This Saturday, October 18, is the next No Kings protest in the United States and around the world. Millions of people are going to show up for it. You should be one of them. I say this as someone who is not a natural protester. I’m a writer and my default mode of political activism is sitting in a coffeeshop writing words on my laptop, figuring out precisely what I want to say, and putting it out in a magazine or blog to reach whomever wants to read it. (Which is what I’m doing right now actually, greetings from The Madison Place in Cincinnati.) Protesting is messier. You’re in a big group, your message is limited to what you can fit on a sign or t-shirt, and other people around you might be conveying other messages that you don’t agree with at all. That’s OK, you should go anyway.

Right now there is value in simply showing up. The first message is simply numbers, a demonstration that Trump’s anti-constitutional power grabs, corruption, and cruelty are deeply unpopular. The more millions, the clearer the message. Your individual contribution to this is quite small, but if you care about the future of this country, it’s worth going.

The second message of the protests is that the Trump regime is not normal. For Americans who either don’t follow news closely or ensconce themselves in news silos that only reinforce their own views, it may not be obvious that Trump presents a decisive break with normal politics and a genuine threat to Constitutional government and our democracy. One goal of the protest is to raise the alarm and shake such people out of their complacency. This is where you may be positioned to play a more valuable role. The less of a natural protester you are, the louder the signal you send by you taking time out of your Saturday to march and wave a sign.

I live in Portland, Oregon, where protesting is a municipal pastime. Still, some people are more likely to protest than others. We expect to see the young and nonconformist at a protest; we expect to see the friend who never shuts up about politics in his Facebook posts. It’s great that they’re there, but it’s not surprising. You showing up to a protest might be. Are you not particularly vocal about politics? Do you have a comfortable job or home life that’s not directly threatened by Trump in any obvious way? Do you have lots of other things you could be doing instead? Great! That makes you the perfect kind of person to send a message by joining a protest.

The social media era has been terrible for political discourse in many ways, but one good thing to come out of it is that you can instantly broadcast your presence at a protest to a wider audience. Awareness of your attendance isn’t limited to the people who happen to see you, who likely agree with you anyway. With a quick post on social media, you can show your entire online social network that you’re there. And I mean you, specifically. Whoever you are, you presumably have people in that network who respect and admire you. Maybe they’re childhood friends, people from church, people from work, other parents from your kid’s soccer team. By showing up and posting, you send them the message that Trump’s anti-constitutional takeover of the government is genuinely alarming and encourage the norm that they should take part in opposing it too. (Again, all the more the so the less likely they are to perceive you as a natural protester.)

You might even get lucky and amplify your message even more widely. I happened to be traveling in Denver during the big protest in April, but I took a little time out of my day to show up at the local protest and post a photo to Facebook. That led to questions from a reporter and getting quoted in coverage from CBS News. It was a lucky break, and it’s certainly not the kind of thing you can count on, but it definitely would not have happened if I’d gone to brunch instead.

Also, going to a protest can be fun. It’s an opportunity to meet up with friends and walk around your city. The photo at the top of this post was from the first No Kings protest in June, when we happened to be in Prague. (Why am I always traveling on the protest days?) I got to meet a longtime internet friend and then explore the city and attend a Czech beer festival. You can do the same kind of thing wherever you are. If showing up alone seems daunting, make a plan to go with friends. (That said, showing up alone is fine! You’ll likely find plenty of people willing to welcome you in and possibly some signs to carry.)

Republican leaders are absurdly trying to portray these protests as “Hate America” rallies run by the “terrorist wing” of the Democratic party. It’s a ridiculous smear. The big protests are fun and positive, attended by all sorts of people genuinely committed to preserving constitutional government from Trump’s dictatorial aspirations. The scenes are people dancing in frog costumes and ukulele bands playing Woodie Guthrie. The atmosphere is often fun and festival-like, and you can contribute to making it even more so.

If you’re reading this, you presumably know how bad things are. You also know that all is not yet lost. Whatever your differences with other protesters, those can be worked out in the course of normal politics, when and if we finally return to that. Now is a time for joining. If you want to look back at this era and know that you took some part in opposing the encroaching evil, the least you can do is show up to a protest near you this Saturday. You might even discover that you’re having fun.