As with the event back in June, my wife and I attended the Montgomery, AL No Kings event. This time was a short march down Commerce Street from near the river to Court Square. The location of the rally was significant for two reasons. First, it was at that site that slave auctions were regularly conducted. Second, the square was the bus stop where Rosa Parks boarded the bus the day she refused to relinquish her seat.
The event was well attended. I would guess around 500 or so persons were present, which was larger than my guess from the June event. Like in June, the crowd skewed middle-aged to older and was majority White, but with a larger Black contingent this time.
The closest thing to a counter-protest was a middle-aged guy who yelled, several times, “Jesus is King” as he walked past. There was also a vlogger/”influencer” type who seemed to be trying to generate some agitation for TikTok or whatnot at the beginning, but she didn’t seem to hang around long.
What does an event like this accomplish? It is a legitimate question, as James Joyner noted this morning. Further, Quinta Jurecic isn’t wrong; there is a lot of cringe going on. I, for one, have never been a “protest guy,” save in the sense that I like events like this as an observer more than a participant. But this is now the fourth such event I have participated in over two Trump terms. I definitely find the chants and a lot of the rhetoric to be more than a bit cringe.
By the same token, given that I really do feel like democracy is under threat and that authoritarianism is looming, engaging in some public pushback is warranted. I do not expect this event to have any electoral impact locally. As James Joyner noted in his post, most of our elections are predestined. Our democracy was largely broken before Trump, and he is making it far worse. I think that we do need to send signals, even if cringey ones, that we aren’t going to just shrug our shoulders and accept what is happening.
I do think Jurecic is correct in his conclusion:
Organizers of today’s No Kings rally have emphasized that the gatherings are just one part of this broader movement, an opportunity to loudly and collectively voice the defiance already happening on the ground. The Trump administration appears to have noticed. Although June’s No Kings protests gained relatively little attention from Trump and congressional Republicans, the party has busied itself over the past week with attacking the upcoming demonstrations as a “Hate America Rally.” The mood this time is darker than in June: The government is shut down, more National Guard troops are deployed on the country’s streets, and the administration is intent on portraying its political opposition as un-American. But the protesters are coming with the Stars and Stripes in hand.
As a political scientist, I am aware of the marginal effect of something like these protests has on short-term power, but I also know that if they didn’t matter at all, people like Speaker Johnson wouldn’t feel compelled to call them “Hate America” rallies and Ted Cruz, and other administration aliies, would not feel the need to try and fearmonger about them.
At a bare minimum, a day like today helps remind people who are opposed to this administration’s authoritarian behaviors that they are not alone.
The last event generated an estimated 5 million participants. I am hopeful this one will generate more. Given that we are only 9 months into this administration, the longer term question is going to if these protests grow over the four years (as I cannot imagine this is the last such event).
Turnout in NYC looks impressive, along with other examples here via the NYT: Scenes From a Day of Mass Protests. We will await the final estimates.
At a minimum, it does create a counter-narrative to combat the notion that American streets are warzones or that, as White House Spokesperson Caroline Leavitt asserted, the Democratic Party’s base is Hamas and criminals.
I know that the gaslighting is for their base; the lies are pretty blatantly refuted by, you know, reality.
While there were no frogs, a la Portland, in Montgomery today, there were at least four T. rexes, a Snoopy, a Hippo, and a few other fancy friends.
Not exactly Hamas.
Here are some more shots.
