NO KINGS!!!
Rallying Against Trump
Hundreds of people—young and old, in baby carriages and in wheelchairs—filled the sidewalks near my neighborhood yesterday with protest signs and American flags. We were greeted by passing motorists and bicyclists who honked their horns and raised their thumbs. After months of anger and frustration, it felt good to take the streets.
Nationwide, more than 2,000 No Kings protests drew an estimated 5 million people as Donald Trump celebrated himself with a vanity parade in Washington, D.C. No Kings was the biggest single-day anti-Trump protest during his second administration. The rallies were mostly peaceful but there were some incidents.
In Culpeper, Virginia, a 21-year-old man was arrested after driving his SUV into a crowd in a parking lot, striking at least one person. And in Salt Lake City, shots were fired during a No Kings march, critically injuring one person. In Minnesota, where a gunman shot and killed a state lawmaker and her husband and gravely injured a state senator and his wife on Saturday, demonstrators came out to protest despite the events being officially canceled.
“No Kings is really about standing up for democracy, standing up for people’s rights and liberties in this country and against the gross abuse of power that we’ve seen consistently from the Trump administration,” ACLU’s chief political and advocacy officer Deirdre Schifeling told the New York Times.
“The Trump administration’s goal was to scare people, to make them afraid to stand up for their rights and afraid to protest and stand up for their immigrant neighbors. And it’s backfired spectacularly,” Schifeling said.
“[Trump] violates the law at every turn, and is doing everything in his power to intimidate and crush — using the vast power of the presidency and also power that he doesn’t even have — to crush anybody that he perceives as disagreeing with him or as his enemies. Those are the actions of a king,” she said.
There will be more protests in the coming months. Come join us.
