Organizers of Saturday’s “No Kings” rallies across the United States are predicting that the protests against the actions of U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration could add up to one of the largest demonstrations in U.S. history, with Minnesota taking centre stage.
Organizers say more than 3,100 events have been registered in all 50 states, with more than nine million people expected to participate.
In Washington, D.C., hundreds of marchers moved through the streets, past the Lincoln Memorial and into the National Mall, holding signs that read “Put Down the Crown, Clown” and “Regime Change Begins at Home.” Demonstrators rang bells, played drums and chanted “No Kings.”
The Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement actions, particularly in Minnesota, were just one item on a long list of protesters’ grievances that also included the war in Iran and the government’s rollback of transgender rights.
In New York City, Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, described Trump as the nation’s “Bully in Chief” and said Minneapolis residents “forced the wannabe king to withdraw his shock troops.”
“They want us all to be afraid to protest,” Lieberman said during a news conference.
“They want us to be afraid that there’s nothing we can do to stop them. But you know what? They are wrong — dead wrong.”
Republican derides ‘Hate America Rallies’
The White House dismissed the rallies. Spokesperson Abigail Jackson described the protests as the product of “leftist funding networks” with little real public support.
Jackson said in a statement that the “only people who care about these Trump Derangement Therapy Sessions are the reporters who are paid to cover them.”
The National Republican Congressional Committee was also sharply critical.
“These Hate America Rallies are where the far-left’s most violent, deranged fantasies get a microphone,” said Maureen O’Toole, spokesperson for the committee.
Flagship event at Minnesota Capitol
Organizers have designated the rally at the Minnesota Capitol in St. Paul as the national flagship event, in recognition of how the state where federal agents fatally shot two people who were monitoring Trump’s immigration crackdown became an epicentre of resistance.
Headlining that observance will be Bruce Springsteen, performing Streets of Minneapolis, which he wrote in response to the January shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents, and in tribute to the thousands of Minnesotans who took to the streets over the winter. Springsteen’s Land of Hope & Dreams American Tour, which has a “No Kings” theme, kicks off Tuesday in Minneapolis.
Minnesota organizers have told state officials they expect 100,000 people could converge on the Capitol grounds, where last June’s event drew an estimated 80,000 people.
The St. Paul rally will also feature singer Joan Baez, actor Jane Fonda, Sen. Bernie Sanders and a long list of other activists, labour leaders and elected officials.
Rallies also planned globally
Rallies are also planned in more than a dozen other countries, from Europe to Latin America to Australia, Ezra Levin, a co-executive director of Indivisible, a group spearheading the events, said in an interview. Countries with constitutional monarchies call the protests “No Tyrants,” he said.
For those unable to attend in person, another activist group, Stand Up For Science, is hosting a “virtual and accessible” event online.
On Saturday morning in Paris, several hundred people — mostly Americans living in France, along with French labour unions and human rights organizations — gathered at the Bastille, which was stormed by a crowd in 1789 during the French Revolution.
“I protest all of Trump’s illegal, immoral, reckless, and feckless, endless wars,” Ada Shen, the Paris “No Kings” organizer, said.
In Rome, thousands of people marched with defiant chants aimed at Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose right-wing government’s referendum for streamlining Italy’s judiciary badly failed earlier this week amid criticism that it was a threat to the courts’ independence. Protesters waved banners protesting the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran, calling for “A World Free From Wars.”
In London, people protesting the war in Iran held banners that said, “Stop the Far Right” and “Stand up to Racism.”
Could be largest ‘No Kings’ protest
U.S. organizers told reporters in an online news conference on Thursday that they expect Saturday’s protests to be larger than the first two rounds of “No Kings” rallies, which they estimate drew more than five million people last June and more than seven million in October.
Two-thirds of the RSVPs have come from outside of major urban centres, said Leah Greenberg, the other co-executive director of Indivisible. She listed registration surges in conservative-leaning states like Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, South Dakota and Louisiana, as well as in competitive suburban areas of Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona.
“This administration’s actions are angering not just Democratic voters or folks in big blue city centres,” she said. “They are crossing a line for people in red and rural areas, in the suburbs, all over the country.”
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