This Saturday, millions of people are expected to protest against Trump in what’s been dubbed ‘No Kings,’ coincidentally, the same day as the President is throwing himself a military parade for his birthday.
After Trump sent the National Guard and the US Marine Corps troops to L.A., against the wishes of the California governor and the Mayor, interest in the protests spiked.
“We’ve seen hundreds of new events on the No Kings Day map since the weekend,” said Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, one of the groups behind the “day of defiance”. “We’ve seen hundreds of thousands of people register for those events.”
A website for the protest cites Trump’s defying of the courts, mass deportations, attacks on civil rights and slashing of services as reasons for the protests, saying:
“The corruption has gone too far. No thrones. No crowns. No kings.” Actions are set for the country’s largest cities and small towns, dotting the map from coast to coast – part of a strategy to show that opposition to Trump exists in all corners of the US.
In Philadelphia, they have planned “DC Joy Day” in the district that will “celebrate DC’s people, culture, and our connections to one another”.
“We did not want to give him the excuse to crack down on counter-protesters in DC,” Levin said. “We didn’t want to give him the narrative device to say we’re protesting the military. Instead, we wanted to make him look as small and weak as he is, and protest everywhere else in the country.”
