I didn’t see any thread for this yet, so I figured I’d start one, and in P&E because I wanted to discuss a few of the issues, not just share the event and pics!
So just back from attending today’s protest, and was a bit saddened to see noticeably lower participation than recently, especially given the nearness of midterms. For whatever reason, this one seems under-advertised - I don’t know if it reflects an exhaustion with the administration, or instead a “wait-and-see” attitude about the midterms.
Ours was more focused on a number of politically sensitive ballot initiatives here in Colorado, probably because our statewide vote-by-mail ballots went out over a week ago now. Another local issue getting a lot of signatures (including yours truly) was a petition for a ballot initiative on a 48 month moratorium on Data Centers, given local issues with our city council pushing through a data center despite a massive lack of transparency, accountability and sustainability questions as well as majority voter disapproval.
Still was good to see people, showing a wide selection of veterans, young and old voters, POC, etc. And it was good to be reminded that despite a lack of nationwide-news worthy ICE issues, that there was a lot of speeches about how ICE was showing up in town at elementary schools and that we must not ignore the issue even if it’s not showing up in the news!
A couple of pics that tickled me, then anyone else who wants to can share.
I missed mine. Every other No Kings event has been held at 12 or 1 p.m. Today’s was held at 9 a.m. I didn’t check until this morning. Oops. Too late. I’ll check the day before in future.
Yours looks great – I love the Robbing Hoodlums sign!
I think the reason No Kings turnout was lower this time was because people, unfortunately, just see no connection between protesting and the Trump administration being meaningfully stopped in any way. We’ve had multiple No Kings by now and it hasn’t made Democratic leadership grow any more of a spine nor has it deterred Trump-Vance from doing any of their bad things.
It might be more effective if No Kings were more explicitly branded as a de facto Democratic rally to pump up enthusiasm for the upcoming midterm. But then that might risk losing some centrist or conservative Trump opponents.
Actually, the reason turnout was lower than at previous No Kings events was that the No Kings coalition, including 50501, ACLU, Indivisible, and others, made the strategic decision to focus on getting people to register and vote early. Today’s events were not designed as massive anti-Trump protests, like the last three. All were smaller, local Get Out the Vote, and Vote Early events, and people were specifically advised to make them non-partisan, i.e., not endorsing any specific candidates. That didn’t stop people from making pro-democracy, anti-fascism signs, like the ones we brought to our rally.
Although many people wanted to have another nationwide protest, the leadership decided that the best way to prevent the elections being stolen or tampered with was to get as many people as possible to register and vote early. The rationale is that if there is massive early turnout, it will be harder to interfere with the results than if more people vote on election day.
Thank you for the update. That would explain the lower key notifications. The get out the vote initiative is always welcome, but at our event it there was a lot of commentary about having already dropped off/mailed in our ballots.
Though cool anecdote, there as a 8-9 year old child at one of the local initiatives picking up stuff and asking intelligent questions of his mother, who said (paraphrase) “That’s a good question, your father and I already voted on this, but we can talk about it in detail later.”
This was the first one I missed and I am sad. Still, I did not even hear about it until yesterday and I have been watching out for a while. I am surprised how little it was promoted.
The little one in Navy-Town Bremerton WA was about two to three times larger than I’ve seen before. Maybe 150 protesters. Many with “vote” related signs, but a variety of anti-Trump as well. Mostly older. They seemed to be having a good time.
Was there a No Kings in Chicago? Today was Open House Chicago and loads of people were doing that (crazy long lines many places). I like doing No Kings but I didn’t see it where I live this time.
Ours in NW Chicagoland was smaller than last time, but still had a good turnout. It was as much a Get Out The Vote event as anything – local candidates, future candidate petitions, requests for GOTV volunteers, etc.
You’ve said this a couple of times and it is just plain wrong. The rallies aren’t trying to get Congress to suddenly do a 180°. They are about building a movement – encouraging the rest of the community to join in. Change takes time.
I carefully made a non-partisan sign; but much of my local small town rally either didn’t get that memo or chose to ignore it.
I think we had about the same number as last time; including a similar number of dogs. Cats appeared to be represented only by a human in a tiger costume.
I’m sorry to shit on all this, but these are the sort of protests that just make the people protesting feel better about themselves. I’m yet to see any evidence that ordinary US citizens have the stomach for the sort of protests that would actually put any meaningful pressure on the government. Remember the Arab Spring movement? That’s what it might take, because if you think the ballot box is going to put an end to this right wing takeover of the government then I have some magic beans to sell you. There were bigger protests in Paris this weekend and that was about the cost of living.
I didn’t go because I didn’t know about it. I saw it on the corner and I on the downside, I couldn’t tell the difference between it and the regular protests on that corner because it was so small. On the upside, there are regular protests on that corner and there weren’t many before the Iran War. Also this was in the late afternoon so a lot of people may have gone home already.
This is the exact same argument @Velocity made – that if it doesn’t start out big, then there’s no value.
The stated goals of the No Kings movement is to resist executive overreach, but as I said in my first post, the rallies serve much more. You can talk with local candidates, volunteer for GOTV, canvassing, postcard writing, support local, allied causes, etc. It’s as much about local elections – school boards, library districts, state reps – as it is about federal ones.
Earlier this year there was a large protest rally about an incident where the village police cooperated with ICE. It was successful in a large part because residents were already connected, organized, and engaged from the previous No Kings rally. The response was big enough to change the village policy.
Every other No Kings event has been held at 12 or 1 p.m. Today’s was held at 9 a.m. I didn’t check until this morning. Oops. Too late. I’ll check the day before in future.
