No Kings Thread
When I told my taxi driver I was in Dublin to go to a No Kings rally at the American Embassy, we had quite the chat. He came from a big Republican family, he explained, before he went on to catalogue how many of his relatives had been shot during the Easter Rising in 1916 and at which of the locations we were driving by.
No Kings rings a bit different here in Dublin.
According to the organizer, we had about 400 people — 100 more than they had in the summer — representing almost every state. Some of us live here, some just showed up to protest in the middle of vacations of varying lengths.
We were right on a main road, with lots of people honking in solidarity.
We had maybe 6 frogs, one dancing dinosaur, and one chicken over the course of the protest, including a frog from Portland.
There were Epstein signs and LGBTQ flags and one Good Trouble sign and some fancy artwork.
The signs that really got me were held by kids, like these siblings who scolded, “Masked warrantless ICE agents are not American” and demanded, “stop holding back my future.”
Another sign read, in Irish, “Freedom for Palestine, Freedom for America.”
I’m used to seeing the Gaelige used to support Palestine. I had not seen the US lumped in alongside before.
I posted a few more pictures in this thread.
Over a century after Ireland itself declared No Kings once and for all, this was safe and easy. May your No Kings rally today be as safe!
Tell us about it in the thread.
breaking out my arts & crafts supplies to make small signs for my stuffed dino. weather is not cooperating – 100% rain, so signs will likely be short-lived…
great reporting from Dublin, marcy!
It threatened to seriously rain but we only ever got a few drips.
The Dublin event got a mention in a WaPo story on the protests, with a link to a Facebook page.
We have an embarrassment of riches in terms of protest sites in the Seattle area, so I’m going to one in my neighborhood instead of the giant one st Seattle Center. My sign is tentatively “This land is our land/No kings”, but I have only mocked it up so far. Afterwards, we’ll go press some apple cider with friends.
Weather is supposed to be relatively dry until about 2, then the buckets start.
My sign is passive-aggressive.
PRESIDENT,
NOT KING!
Side 2
GET OFF
YOUR KNEES!
My sign says “I Could Shit A Better President”
😄
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In a similar vein, mine said “Time for a Royal Flush” and featured hairdo, forehead, and eyebrows visible over a toilet bowl, red tie dangling over the seat.
#tn
I saw that one yesterday!
Held by a lady in an inflatable costume that made her look like she was riding a cow.
I love that greater Seattle had events other than the big downtown one. IMO, it’s much harder to handwave away a movement when people are showing up in their neighborhoods/communities/suburbs, when it’s not “just city folk”.
Here in Bremerton, my wife is attending a demo on the Manette bridge and I, still recovering from seizures, will track it all on the ‘puter. Goddess bless them all!
Hello! East Bremerton here. Lion’s Park.
My sister in Seattle came up with a poster with a picture of Trump from behind having just taken a swing on a fairway — caption is “Does this ass make my country look smaller?” I had to convince her that she could print “ass” and not have to worry about offending anyone.
Belfast ME had about 2k protesters at Steamboat Landing Park. Best speaker was ME AG Aaron Frey. Really nailed it. Report from Rockland was 1.75 k showed up.
Chip Curry was on fire, I thought.
Three times the size of the last one here? Maybe. At least 2X.
Yup, he was also great. Made me wish our Senator in Knox Co could fire up a crowd like that.
I wasn’t at the last one in Belfast, went to Rockland that time. Sounded like they were also busting at the seams.
For some perspective: we went to Belfast ME in April where we were among between 800-850; similarly there were about 300? in Rockland that day. Today in Southwest Harbor there were 775 with a resident population of 1700 or so – many of those came from neighboring town but it gives you an idea of what maybe afoot. These are small towns in Maine: Portland Maine our largest city has 65K, although the surrounding area swell that to 3X.
Presque Isle pulled 400! Dancing frogs, dinosaurs, and other assorted creatures running around. Fantastic energy.
After action report. I went with “This land is our land” on side 1 and continued the Woody Guthrie theme with “All you fascists are bound to lose” on the other.
There were about 1000 people at the neighborhood protest. A friend saw about the same number at another neighborhood protest across town. I don’t think there are numbers in from the big one at Seattle Center.
Drivers were almost universally positive. There were a few carefully averted gazes and one guy revving the engine on his Camaro, but he might have been a supporter too.
Seattle Times this morning is reporting 70k for the “downtown” march, which went from Seattle Center to Downtown, +/- 1.25 miles. It probably took over an hour for a protester’s passage, given the slow rate of that kind of thing.
From one of the article’s photos I noted a sign: “When you elect a rapist, expect to get fucked.” (The last word was partially obscured by a fellow marcher, allowing the shot to be published. )
The Melbourne/Palm Bay FL #NoKings demo was fun and successful. We filled all four corners of a major intersection. The police were acting as crossing guards for those wanting to change corners. There were quite a few blowup animal costumes. Everyone carried a different sign, none bought by Soros. But the horn support was enormous, compared to protesting Bush 20 years ago. It was a blast, my knees and lumbar notwithstanding.
Made my sign: No Kings (We fought a Revolution over this). Heading out soon to my neighborhood protest!. Will report back later
I went to protest at Montgomery County PA courthouse. A few hundred there, about same as June. Didn’t see ICE or National Guard, just local cops and sheriff.
Stephen Miller, if you want to arrest me my sign said:
Epstein’s Best Friend Is America’s Worst Enemy
Good one!
My sign says :
“ ONCE A KING – ALWAYS A KING.
BUT ONCE A KNIGHTS ENOUGH “
Mr Pitcher was in Portland all week for work. Never saw a sign of anything, and the locals all said everything is in one two block area by the water. He did have a pink dinosaur on his flight home Thursday night. It received cheers !
I have made us crowns with large red international symbols, the circle with the angled slash across it, and we have yellow shirts. Headed for the Palo Alto protest, then on to the Redwood City one. It’s a beautiful day to take back our country.
If you know downtown Portland OR, then the ICE facility on Macadam/Bancroft is about 2 miles south in the South Waterfront (aka So Wat), which is home to condos/apartments/OHSU medical offices and a Blue Star donut/coffee place (far superior to VooDoo Donuts IMHO). There was a crowd of 40K in downtown Portland, plus about 50 or so rallies statewide. We stayed in our Portland suburb about 10 miles south of downtown–twice as many people as in June, per eyeball, and 1000% more inflatable characters. It was a great day, and hi to the Bay Area (my home from 1978-2006).
The Portland waterfront demo was huge and there were dozens of others scattered around the rest of Portland and into smaller outlying towns like Oregon City and Hillsboro. I went to one in SE Portland that had hundreds of folks lined for blocks and blocks making joyous noise for hours on Saturday morning. Fave signs : “Trump Eats Farts” and “Spider-Man, not Trump”. There we’re LOTS of kiddos!
The big Kansas City No Kings rally is happening alongside the route of the long-planned Kansas City marathon, so I don’t know what their turnout will look like. On the other hand, there are a bunch of rallies in suburbs and small town around KC, and I chose not to fight the traffic and road closures to go to one closer to home.
In a word, amazing.
This wasn’t the kind of rally with a bunch of speakers talking to the crowd. Instead, this was neighbors speaking with their signs to their neighbors driving by, and the neighbors in the cars blasting their horns to reply with support. It was fun seeing parents driving by with their kids in the back seat, and everyone waving back at the crowd. There was also one truck that went by, with Dad wearing his MAGA hat and clearly taken aback by home many folks had turned out. I died laughing, though, when his little boy in back (maybe 6 years old?) smiled and waved back at those of us with signs and flags.
I was standing next to some teachers/retired teachers, and it was funny to watch person and person come up and say “You had my kid in class X years ago” and “it’s good to see teachers here!” Lots and lots of self-identified first time protesters.
I was not the only pastor in a clerical collar there — always good to see! — but even more impressive were the folks whose signs indicated that they were unwilling to cede the religious voices to the MAGA people. They carried signs like “The only king for me is Jesus.” My favorite, though, was a big image of a Renaissance painting of Jesus casting the moneychangers out of the temple, with Trump being photoshopped in over the lead money changer. The whole thing had a caption that said something like “Trump worships money, not God”.
Other fun signs – sorry, no pictures, but you can imagine the artwork pretty easily:
“The only good king is a Drag King” carried by a very butch lesbian
“The Only Orange Monarch I Want” above a big monarch butterfly
“I trust Trump as president less than . . . Bill Cosby handing me a drink . . . Jeffrey Epstein employing my daughter . . .” etc.
“I have more anger than cardboard”
“I’m not a paid protestor – You can have my anger for free”
“I’d like a TACO to go”
One sign was made to look like “Wheel of Fortune” with the letters “F _ C K T R _ M P” on the board. Beneath this was the caption “I’d like to buy a vowel.”
But what really got me happy was seeing the folks working the crowd. Two Democratic state representatives were there chatting folks up and having a great time. The Jackson County Democratic party folks had a table and signup sheets for folks wanting to volunteer in the upcoming elections, and there was a table where you could register to vote.
A couple of weeks ago, Missouri’s GOP pushed through a bizarrely gerrymandered map that splits KC into three different congressional districts, and one of the big dividing lines is Troost Avenue — the street that for decades was the line between Black KC on the east side and White KC to the west. Gotta love the way the GOP is leaning into their racist history! The goal is to split Emanuel Cleaver II’s district into parts, swamping him with rural GOP voters so that he can’t win reelection. There is big pushback to all of this, and the MO constitution contains a provision that if the voters get enough signatures on petitions, the people of Missouri can vote to overturn the map.
I got to the protest site at what I thought would be early, but there were already hundreds of people there and more kept coming. There was a young African-American signature gatherer walking along the sidewalk, soliciting signatures to put the gerrymandered map on the ballot, and was very appreciative of all the protesters for turning out. At one point, though, I had to laugh, as he answered a call from his boss on his cell phone. “Yeah, boss, I’m doing fine — but we need more people with more clipboards.” He laughed at whatever the boss said, and replied “Seriously – we need more signature gatherers.” Another pause to listen to the boss, and then he replied “Fifteen minutes ago would have been fantastic, five minutes from now would be good, but the sooner you can get them here, the better.” He hung up, and went on getting signatures.
Fifteen minutes later, I noticed a bunch of new signature gatherers working the crowd. One was talking to the person in front of me, and said “You folks are great. I’d been working in front of a grocery store, and few people wanted to even hear what I was gathering signatures for. Here, though, I can’t go five feet without someone saying ‘where do I sign?’ or ‘I already signed.’ Makes my job really nice with a crowd like this.”
Protests are nice, for a lot a reasons. Turning protest signs into political action and potential voters . . . more like this, please.
I attended the Kansas City No Kings protest on the Plaza. The turnout was huge. Great signs, lots of costumes, and crowd full of energy. More to do. Let’s go!
Speaking of teachers, I had a great conversation at the Belfast ME rally with a guy who was an anthro prof in a GA state college for 25 years. His sign read: “Trumpistan is a shithole country;” I’m guessing he was teaching cultural anthro when Trump made the “shithole countries” comments in his first term.
Our conversation ended when the organizers, before the speeches began, invited all the sign-carriers to assemble for photos and videos of their work – a great idea!
One of the best ones, imo, was:
Guardians
Of
Pedophiles
So many clever, intelligent, and funny signs! I love it.
Two things I haven’t seen at No Kings:
-Violence
-Spelling errors
Seen as we drove past one local rally:
TRUMP SANDWICH:
White Bread
Full of baloney
Russian dressing
Small pickle
Serve cold as ICE
I had signs to hold up out the window, as I’m walking with a cane currently:
“With RIBBETY and NO ICE for ALL”
“LIFE, RIBBETY, and the PURSUIT of HOPPYNESS”
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My favorite signs from a No Kings demonstration in Hingham, MA, a town of about 20,000:
Vaccines cause adults
Ikea has better cabinets
Eggs are so expensive because chickens are in congress.
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We had several to choose from in and around Chicago. I went to the downtown one. This time it was held in Grant Park- a bigger venue – and it was full. Lots of good speakers and good vibes- Pritzker was on fire!
Great signs but like jokes I always immediately forget them.
I heard a preliminary count of 75,000 downtown but I think that was conservative.
couldn’t ask for better weather upper 60’s. no rain.
My eyes make me a liability in case of trouble, so I stayed home on grandkid duty. We made a sign ans sat out for a bit with it on the Inner Drive. One passerby gave the kid a no-kings button for his shirt which made the standing around worth it.
My spouse was at the rally with her book club and others. There’s a plausible estimate of 200K. Pics from the SunTimes which has been excellent throughout the invasion: https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2025/10/18/no-kings-protests-trump-deportation-ice-border-patrol-grant-park
Yes now I am hearing in excess of 150,000. And I agree 200,000 seems more plausible. It was an amazing crowd.
When I heard the 75000 I asked my neighbor if that was from the tribune! Agreed that the sun times has been giving good coverage. the tribune – not so much!
Went to the lesser of the 2 South Bay (Los Angeles) NK protests in El Segundo (Torrance protest would be bigger). Good crowd – I would estimate 1200-1500 lined up along Imperial Highway and scads of honking cars and trucks driving by. Some people waved their own signs from passing cars.
My sign: TRUMP + FASCISM = TRASCISM (+ photo of Trump’s head popping out of an open trash bin)
Best sign I saw: Posterboard covered with glued-on ping-pong balls and saying “FREE BALLS. To give to your congresspeople who don’t have any!”
Might go to the Westchester NK protest along Sepulveda Blvd. later this afternoon if I decide to have 2-protest day…
I was at the El Segundo NK protest back in June…sounds like it was bigger than last time if you’re estimating 1200 – 1500 people. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get out for the protests today.
Hermosa Beach also had a NK protest on Hermosa Pier…though it doesn’t show on the NK website’s map, it was organized by people on Facebook. So there were other protests popping up in South Bay even if they weren’t shown on the official map.
Any chance you know of live web cams covering Hermosa Pier?
Unfortunately, I do not. Good Stuff (restaurant on the strand) has a live cam but it’s pointed towards the beach. The other live beach cams I found through a quick google search also mainly show the beach and not the actual pier – https://hdontap.com/stream/567567/hermosa-beach-pier-north-live-webcam/
Thanks, what a pity about the web cams.
Found a few live HB webcams, but nothing happening now (tho nice beach day, as usual). Here’s one of them (pier on the left):
https://hdbeachcams.com/beach-webcams/hermosa-beach-pier-live-cam/
Mea Culpa…I fell for a false astroturf by “Advocates for Hermosa Beach” which appears to be headed by a Republican activist/agitator. He posted a fake flyer and post on Facebook for the Hermosa Pier event (likely to draw attention away from the larger and official Torrance event a few miles away).
The protest on The Green in Taunton, Massachusetts had several hundred people (more than June), lots of enthusiastic honking, and my favorite sign by far is:
FUCK TRUMP
and if you like him
FUCK YOU
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My wife and I helped run the protests in a small Northern California town of around 10,000 someplace between San Francisco and Crescent City. We had 800 people show up but that included people who came in from other small towns. My guess would be that 4-5% of the population turned out!
Hiya, fellow FarNorCal-er! Estimates here in Eureka today were 2500-3500 (in a city of 25,000, so 10%+!!!). It was peaceful & fun, & there were enough costumes that I got delayed meeting friends bc I went to the wrong inflatable chicken :)
Final count from three different sources is 850+ in our little town.
Fantastic!
Great turnout in Venice, CA. All homemade signs. All ages crowd. Only saw two LAPD patrol cars parked a few blocks from protest. No counter protestors. Cars driving by honking.
My wife and I went to a No Kings rally in Anoka, Minnesota. We went there because Rep. Tom Emmer is from there and we wanted to shout at him. He called us terrorists and neither my wife and I have had so much as a parking ticket since high school. Of course, Emmer was nowhere to be seen. Huge turnout in county that went for Trump by four percentage points in 2024! Lots of music, chanting, unicorns, a frog or two and a stubby Uncle Sam that was hilarious! People were fired up and having fun. My favorite signs were “So bad even the introverts are out” and “Autistic Taxpayer”, next to a picture of RFK Jr. Good times in a very dark era!
At Anoka too. One sign, about the enabler, “Dump Tom Emmer.” At a traffic light intersection, “HONK if you’re not in the Epstein Files.” There is a major school board election coming with a current 3-3 split, Nazis and sane. My brother in law had the, “I am a school board voter” sign and got much boosting commentary. I did a quick cardboard NO KINGS sign, but next time, one I saw online:
NO
fuKING
way
– and on the other side, ” Hegseth drags his knuckles when he walks”
Lots of traffic, plenty honking in solidarity. And that will not be the last rally!
Went to the one in downtown Chicago. I could tell just from looking that thousands of people were there. A number I heard later from a participant studying his smart phone was that a reported estimate was 100,000. The queue marching past the Trump tower seemed like it would never stop.
No violence, not even a threat of it, but plenty of suggestions given about what Donald John Trump and his gang, and the elephant they rode in on, could do with themselves.
I was also in Chicago. From one vantage point standing on one of the large planters lining upper Wacker Driver above the River Walk, I could see people marching up Michigan Avenue, then turning west on Wacker all the way to Clark, then south on Clark. Over the course of at least an hour, there was no let up in the crowd. The entire expanse of Wacker was filled with people, and the vibes were amazing. There were people playing live music, a mom and young kids with a bubble machine, lots of chants, songs, and whistles. I was very proud to be out there with my fellow Chicagoans sending the message that we will not be intimidated by this lawless administration.
I got some choice videos uploaded this morning to my Substack. Links below.
No Kings, Chicago, October 18, 2025
https :// tetmancallis.substack. com/p/no-kings
https :// tetmancallis.substack. com/p/no-kings-video-2
https :// tetmancallis.substack. com/p/no-kings-video-3
https :// tetmancallis.substack. com/p/no-kings-video-4
https :// tetmancallis.substack. com/p/no-kings-video-5
I really dislike traffic from this site supporting fascist platforms.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/08/04/the-growth-of-the-nazi-bar-lndustry/
AP has coverage, with lots of photos:
https://apnews.com/photo-gallery/photos-no-kings-marches-trump-protests-76f379bc4e7e2a921a15a8ad6d9d5f66
https://apnews.com/article/no-kings-rallies-demonstrations-trump-4baa5de2fab057a0e6ab726f5d7747fd
In looking through the pics, I recognized some cities (Lisbon, NYC Times Square, Chicago) and confirmed in the credit below the pic. There was one night pic of police on horseback dispersing the crowd. I wonder why the police were dispersing the crowd.
In the second link, there was a “Make America Good Again” sign. What if we had our own MAGA (Make America Good Again) caps in blue?
That wouldn’t work. MAGAts would simply claim they’d won over blue voters, and then some right-wing jackasses would try to co-opt the grift by selling MAGA hats to liberals.
MAGMA? Make America Great Again My Ass.
lol. a huge thank you to everyone who protested!! I had surgery on my face last week and felt too vulnerable and paranoid of accidental touching/bumping to be in a crowd. I’m brought to tears by everyone’s reports and signs.
I planned to go to a protest in Palo Alto this afternoon, but had a tire disaster and had to limp into the tire store to get it fixed and get up and running again. But while I was waiting, the No Kings protests came together along El Camino Real by the tire store.
I guess a 2nd protest was set to line El Camino from Tesla Palo Alto to Tesla Sunnyvale.
Lots of people showed up, including an inflatable unicorn and a Pokemon.
I even got a free flag and a cowbell to make celebratory noises.
LOTS of people honking as they drove by in support.
So I got to do my part after all!
Great story! Thanks for sharing.
after action report: Bellingham, WA: Great turnout, was in a larger space this time. Hard to estimate, but over 5k I’d say. Great vibes. Crowd gave a huge shoutout to Portland, OR. Didn’t see one uniform cop, so law enforcement was more under the covers. Lots of supportive honks. Cute dogs that loved my stuffed Dinosaur “he thinks it’s a chew toy”. Also great to see the throngs head to cafes/restaurants/bars after to help fill the coffers of the local business people. Heavily gray haired older folk, with younger folk hanging in the back along the edges.
Speakers asked us to make pledges to spend at least one hour a week on saving democracy. Vote in the upcoming local elections. Donate $$$ if we can to our fav organizations. Connect with each other in person.
One sad line of about 4 Trump supporters walked through at one point, man in front yelling loudly. Everyone ignored them. They came back through about 1/2 hour later, this time guy in front didn’t yell but gave mean looks at the crowd, who again simply ignored him. It was glorious.
Favorite sign spotted on IG, “Proud Boyfriend of an Ice Agent’s Wife”
2nd NK protest of the day: I went to the Westchester NK protest, and this anecdote says it all:
Last protest, I had plenty of parking space at a parking lot in front of a closed-down Kohl’s. Today: none. Had hunt for a parking spot further away. And while walking to Sepulveda, a very angry truck driver hunting for parking spot yelling out the window to apparently 2 people (me and another lady walking to the protest): “F**king protesters took up all the parking spots”. He was steamed…poor baby. Good crowd here too, estimate 800-900. Several LAPD vehicles parked on La Tijera, but they had nothing to do.
spent the last hour going through pics & videos on Bluesky from all the amazing protests – small to large – throughout the U.S. Two key takeaways:
Chicago: ho-ly fuck
Seattle: if you’re on Bluesky, look up “Jack Cousteau” and his vid titled “Seattle No Kings From the Monorail” – absolutely mesmerizing vantage from the front of the monorail passing over block after block after block of marchers.
Report from Doylestown, PA (Bucks County – a county that went for Trump in SE PA)
GREAT turnout! Heard from some demonstraters who were there June 14 and they all said that this was huge and 10x the people they had in June. I can’t do crowd estimates, but all the major downtown streets were lined. Blow up peacock costumes, cars driving through the town in front of the court house honking along a several lined streets. An almost party-like atmosphere.
I may have encountered the only MAGAT brave enough to come spew nonsense. And, so, yes, I violated the rule about not engaging. My sign read “Impeach and remove the would-be King!”. When he walked by, he shouted – “oh sure, criticize the guy who is working to reduce waste and fraud!” to which I replied “He IS the fraud!!!” He kept going, but came back shouting at our small group – “Obama is going to Gitmo!!” To which we all replied – “what the hell is he talking about??? Go find your own protest!” I guess he did because we never saw him again.
The right wing fish wrap, “the Sarasota Herald Tribune” says 3,000 folks which probably means there was double that.
Here’s a link the photos: I saw a hundred or more fantastic signs but didn’t have the time or energy to photograph them all because I was yelling and holding my sign over my head.
A good time was had by all. I found the best way to troll his supporters is to say “Donald Trump is a pedophile and everybody knows it. He was Jeffrey Epstein’s best friend, can you can you connect the dots Sherlock Holmes?”
https://www.heraldtribune.com/picture-gallery/news/local/2025/10/18/sarasota-no-kings-protest-trump-photos/86749046007/
7,000+ announced as the crowd in Montrose CO, population 22k. It was a beautiful and joyful rally and march!
My favorite sign had a picture of the protester’s father in uniform, saluting, and said ‘Proud Daughter of an Original Antifa — WWII Vet.’
NYT barely had space way below the fold for it on their home page….and added a pathetic esplainer about “why they don’t include counts but focus on content”
Bilionaire media aren’t giving this much coverage
I was in Belfast ME for a personal memorial event but spoke to a group decked out in signs walking to the meet to thank them and that I thought what they were doing was awesome. A small youngster piped up, that her sandwich board was so big that she couldn’t bend at all…. big smile… Very inspiring, wished I was in attendance.
The stories yesterday (Star Tribune and MPR) in Minneapolis were “Thousands Turn Out for No Kings Protest.” The crowd yesterday downtown for the event and march through the streets was estimated at 100-150K. I believe it – I was there and have also been in the same place after a crowd of 65K leaves the adjacent stadium – there were many more people yesterday. There were also very well-attended smaller events all across the Twin Cities and in other Minnesota cities.
So “thousands” seems like a deliberate attempt to minimize the scale of what was happening.
The event was peaceful and joyous, while making it very clear what we think of the would-be king and his courtiers. Senator Tina Smith and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison spoke to the crowd. The only counter-protesters I saw were a couple of losers on a 10th floor balcony of a building adjacent the plaza displaying a Trump flag. I thought “well, that makes two of you.”
quite a stark difference in coverage:
NYT: “How The Times Covers Crowds: Focusing on the Content, Not the Count”
The Guardian:https: no-kings-protests “Millions across all 50 US states march in No Kings protests against Trump”
My youngest, the wife, and I went to the Providence Statehouse today- they said from the steps that turnout was something like 30k. I saw someone else’s post that it was approaching 40k, but I don’t have a best estimate.
The most memorable sign I saw (avert your eyes, sensitive readers):
“I’d call Trump a c*unt but he lacks warmth and depth”
At least 1,000 this morning at a park in Gainesville, Florida (still a little too warm here for afternoon street events); the proverbial Good Time Had By All.
My favorite sign: “I didn’t say ‘with Liberty and Justice for All’ every fucking day to settle for anything less.” (My own sign: “Impeach Vance (& Johnson) First!”)
I must put in a plug for a showy Movement brass band in Portland OR:
https: //bsky.app/profile/timdickinson.bsky.social/post/3m3iuotb3n22y
[note URL break. Thx Tim Dickenson]
They’re currently estimating about 2,000 at the New Haven, CT protest. One of the speakers said that 40 cities and towns across the state were hosting rallies. There are 169 cities and towns in CT, so that’s almost 1 in 4.
Did my small part by simply attending + 1 the 2nd No Kings local demonstration. It was slightly bigger than the one in June. We enjoyed a pleasant breeze, lovely temps in the mid 70’s and lots of really good vibrations! (And lots of cars honking!) I did not prepare in advance, so my sign was a Peace Sign – two fingers waving vigorously in the bright fall sunshine.
The event ran from 2-5 at the Albany County Wyoming Courthouse. There were speakers, a band, sign-ups, signs and far more people than the previous No Kings event (est. 800-1000). There were people with signs on both sides of Grand Avenue more than 2 blocks long. The LPD had two patrol officers or more and made at least 12+ traffic stops due to speeding vehicles that were trying to intimidate or coal roll the crowd.
During the March up Grand and back there were some counter protesters in the form of young males in trucks, some with local plates and others out of state. Laramie has the University and Wyotech, at trade school, which attracts a largely young male population from all over the US. Words were exchanged but no violence, just vehemence about us flying US flags I guess….”my Uncle died in Viet Nam.” was ironically intoned by one of the boys supporting CINC Bonespurs. Todd Schmidt, the local young earth creationist, was holding his Jesus is King and Trump is President sign as the crowd passed him by, but I could not resist engaging with him, as we are somewhat polite when he is tabling his books at the UW Union. I like to discuss the Good Book or the Constitution, but he is pretty lame on either document. All things considered a great day even without the pay of which we were accused of receiving.
That’s funny about the Kid With An Uncle Who Died in Vietnam. I attended the event yesterday in downtown Minneapolis in the company of three disabled Vietnam vets. They don’t have any use for President Bone Spurs or his minions, so I wonder what the uncle would have to say to him if he could speak.
I currently spend a great deal of time with a Vietnam vet as he cares for his declining SO and they are both staunch Democrats. His time in country was memorialized in the book about Firebase Ripcord during the summer of 1970. If chance ever brought the kid around me again, I may invite him to read the book or go meet Marcus in the hope that he might gain a perspective on that particular sacrifice of his Uncle’s. With that said, Chuck Norris, who lost a brother during the Ripcord operation, does not seem to be put off by Bonespurs actions, so some choices are more complicated than they seem.
We are getting the most constant rain tonight we’ve had here in Highland, Michigan in months. #NoKings
The weather worked out in favor of the rallies across the entire country — an amazing stroke of luck, really. It’s going to be wet across a big swath of the eastern Midwest and into the east coast on Sunday. Had this happened a day earlier, turnout would have been much lower.
ADDER: Whew, dodged this system.
In the Seattle metro area, it was overcast for the rally and began raining about 3:30 pm yesterday, with heavy rain in the 5:00 pm hour.
Thank you for posting this. The sign messages were funny. Congrats. to all the protestors, speakers, organizers for a great protest.
#te
Attended a small Virginia community rally with approximately 500 people. Gorgeous weather. People of all ages, lots of dogs. Fun, festive and unified. I enjoyed the children’s handmade posters plus the costumes. Very uplifting.
I read there was a kerfuffle at the ICE Detention Center in Portland, Oregon yesterday, but not at the No Kings rally in Portland. Initially, Fox News.com com commingled the two events, but later separated the two events out when decent commenters pointed out that Fox News.com was lying and commingling the two events.
Daily Kos writes that Trump Border Czar Tom Homan said that protesting ICE “could lead to bloodshed and people dying.”
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/10/19/2349311/-James-Madison-smiles-on-No-Kings-Day
Fox News.com and Fox News.com’s lowly Rwing commenters so wanted the reported 2,700+ separate No King events to go sideways and for law enforcement to knock some liberal heads around. But it didn’t happen. I’m so proud of my fellow lefties for calm protests.
I believe that Fox News.com commingled the two Portland events to disparage the protesters.
re: Tom Holman
Holman and the Trump admin (read: Stephen Miller) are trying to desensitize in advance that ICE can harm or kill protesters who exercise their constitutional right to peacefully protest government actions they don’t like. This is very sick and grotesque.
Fuck Fox News. The other day they posted video “TENSE STANDOFF: National Guard on alert amid ‘No Kings’ protests”. I watched and it just a Fox reporter talking with a peaceful crowd behind her.
Reporting in from Virginia Beach- crowd estimated at 3,000 (another 5,000 in Williamsburg). A fun party with a very passionate message! Lots of inflatables (my shark costume would not inflate right, I was so disappointed!). Sounds very similar to most other rallies!
Seven separate events in Monroe County (western NYS) alone, maybe a thousand attending at each, with many more at the two Rochester city center gatherings. Main organizers were local SEIU Healthworkers.
Good ones: Prevent Truth Decay!, Shame On You, John Roberts!, Red Hat = Hatred Transposed, and I Am Aunt Tifa.
Plenty of inflatables, one Bread&Puppet-sized Lady Liberty. But…Mr Potato Head?? Did I miss something?
We went to the one in Canandaigua, which (for readers other than you) is right at the purple interface between blue NY-25 and deep red NY-24.
It was a pretty impressive turnout for a town of 10,500 (but with many more living in the surrounding Ontario County). Several of us independently eyeballed the crowd size as 2,000. Peaceful, festive, lots of approving honks from drivers, only a few raised middle fingers from pickup trucks.
Canandaigua is in fact the hometown of Claudia Tenney, the MAGA who represents the 24th, making it even funnier that three of the people I talked with spontaneously said that it was impossible to communicate with her office and get a response. Whether she could seriously be challenged is another matter.
Into the weeds, but does her non-committal stance on the Seneca Meadows expansion figure at all in whether or not she is a viable candidate? Or is she down with the mountain of garbage ever increasing?
Excellent. The wooden roller coaster at Roseland Park on Canandaigua Lake is where we took my friends for several of my birthdays as a kid. Up from T-burg. Wearing clogs to be tall enough for the bumper cars.
Yes, I remember there were cretins actually burning crosses on people’s lawns in Cheektowaga in the early 80s, maybe late 70s?
10 registered NKD2 events in Michigan’s very red and rural Upper Peninsula. More than that no doubt took place. 4 to 6 thousand showed up in Marquette (pop. 21,000), lining the main highway for at least a mile.
The task ahead: convert & recruit the people who happily show up for a wonderful party and celebration such as we had on Saturday into participants in the less glamorous and exciting 24/7/365 job that building a strategic mass movement requires.
Woooow. 4 to 6 thousand in MQT?? That’s enormous! Do they even get that many people out for NMU’s homecoming games?
As I pedaled to the downtown square in Buffalo, I saw a burly bearded guy wearing all black (and in what looked like tights!) ambling in the same direction. But he looked uncomfortable and a little lost. (Agitator regretting his choices?)
The first cheer from the first speech was LOUD.
My favorite sign of the day was RESISTANCE IS FRUITFUL.
There were four NK events in my west-of-Portland-OR area of operations. Couldn’t do all four due to scheduling. I meant to attend three but instead stayed to help with teardown at the second. At the first, in Hillsboro, we easily exceeded the June count with people two deep and shoulder to shoulder on both sidewalks for six long blocks. We had the Mayor and a city councilman attending, and every kind of people from babies in strollers to 90-year-old vets pushing walkers. Also a bunch of inflatables and TACO costumes. No two signs were alike. Several signature gatherers. Lots of supportive honks and waves. There was nothing for the safety officers to do but hand out snacks and water and shoo a few folks out of driveways. There was nothing for the cops to do but stop and warn one hoodlum motorcyclist who went wide-open-throttle against his rev limiter. We cheered! The second, on an overpass near the small unincorporated town of Bethany, insanely exceeded expectations. Both sidewalks, end to end, shoulder to shoulder two deep with overflow down the ramp. Again babies to nonagenarians, dancing rainbow unicorns, deer, chicken, t-rex, triceratops, baby shark, TACOs… I took a casual count and estimated 450, where in the weeks before we’d net 100. We lined the fences with banners motorists on the highway beneath could see for a mile. It was nonstop cacophony of horns, people leaning out of car windows and sticking signs out their sunroofs. By evening I was out of dopamine; I hope you did us proud, Beaverton and Forest Grove!
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Posting photo d/n work – 11 year old boy holding handwritten sign: “Trump Hit on my Girlfriend” … clever and plausible.
St. Mary’s County, MD has grown increasingly red in the last decade. It went 34.5 K Trump to 23.5K Harris in 2024. From three to five wife and I joined around 700 gathered around major intersections on one of the main drags. Lots of supportive honking from traffic. Very festive.
I took a family heirloom, a 13-star flag that flew over the US Capital on July 4th, 1976, the American Bicentennial, to the rally in Wasilla, Alaska, home of Sarah Palin, and where Trump beat Harris 76-22. The most authoritative count – a direct headcount – came up around 800, with people arriving for other half hour or so. It helped that it was one of the most gloriously beautiful late October days I’ve seen here in half a century. There was a coterie of MAGA guys at one end of the rally. I knew a couple of them and we talked. Everyone was very friendly.
I went with my husband and sister to the NK in Charlottesville. People were lining both sides of 29 and news reports said the crowd was about 10,000, almost twice as big as in June. Everyone was happy and lots of singing and dancing, range in ages from 80+ to small children. Lots of supportive honking, I saw only one car that I assumed was not supportive, since it was flying a huge banner for Winsome Earle-Sears (Republican candidate for governor running against Abigail Spanberger). This was the true Charlottesville, a repudiation of the Unite the Right fascists of 2017.
Attended NK 2 Greenville SC, i was volunteer greeter/safety person. 3k to 4k present. Lots of food donations raised for Food not Bombs. City changed our event from Main St. to Falls Park Amphitheater 48 hrs before event due to crowd sign ups. During event police complained all attendees weren’t in the Amphitheater. Perfect weather. Lots of inflatable frogs and Unicorns. Excellent songs and call and response chanting.
No arrests or incidents. Signed up for planning NK3
It was a gorgeous day in Portland, Oregon for the largest protest at the waterfront this year. Maybe ever; news reports said we were about 40,000 strong. There were three rallies/meeting points. Each then converged on the waterfront, with two of the three crossing bridges to do so.
We live downtown and went directly to the waterfront. Once everyone converged there, we marched through downtown, right past the Justice Center – with no feds in sight – the place where sometimes violent Black Lives Matter protests took place. That’s where some of the old footage that Fox News used as recently as yesterday came from.
We went as far as the entrance to the Hawthorne Bridge. No one I knew had located a map of the actual route. I wasn’t sure how far I could go, so we hung out right at the start of the bridge, which gave us a fabulous view of marchers, their signs, and people we knew.
There were so many frogs I lost count. Tons of people – my husband thinks my estimate that 1/3 of the marchers were in inflatable costumes or otherwise dressed up – may be a little high, but I don’t. But everybody was in very high spirits.
My favorite costume was a woman dressed as a little old lady, in all yellow except for the blue wig and hot pink funny sunglasses. She carried a sign that said, “I am Aunt Tifa !
My fave sign, carried by a young 20something in a green “Immigrants Make America Great” hat, said:
“I didn’t recite LIBERTY & JUSTICE for ALL at 7am everyday just to be called RADICAL for wanting LIBERTY & JUSTICE for ALL“
My sign said: Make Orwell Fiction Again along with a multicolored fist above the word RESIST. Like my sign The Banality of Elon from an earlier protest, it was fun to see who got it and who didn’t. Neither was original but lots of people snapped photos, not having seen the slogan before. But we did spot a few of the same in the crowd.
The mood was the most joyful yet. There were dancers who’d obviously practiced their routines and chants; small bands of real musicians as well as friends banging on plastic tubs in unison; several big brigades of frogs including one wheeling a huge frog as if it was a float in Portland’s popular annual Rose Parade. The inflatable costumes were many more that I anticipated. I saw tons of frogs and dinosaurs as well as many other creatures, but only one inflatable eggplant and one Miss Piggie.
There was also a separate, unaffiliated demonstration at ICE. A friend who went there in the early evening said there were about 300 people then and it was peaceful.
That is many more than usually congregate there.
Turnout of about 70 people here in town of 250. High spirits. Looked to me like about 8 out of 10 people driving by had enthusiastic positive reactions. Even had some French and Scottish tourists join in.
The twin downtown marches in San Diego were a bit smaller than those in June, but substantially larger than the 25K the SD police and local paper claimed. The local paper originally had the June downtown No Kings at 30K, then revised to 60K after a few days when photo counts and counts per 10 minutes marching past a point estimates were published. Yesterday was the first time the police and paper estimated the June downtown protests at 80K, almost as if they were tying to further minimize the current turnout by increasing what they were comparing it to.
The good news is that the total San Diego County turnout was probably higher yesterday than in June, as there were at least a dozen surrounding cities with turnout in thousands, including 7-10K in relatively conservative (& upscale) Carlsbad. Then there were many community protests with hundreds of participants, and ad hoc post office or major intersection protests with dozens each.
As for the live fire demo at Camp Pendleton (to generate video for the White House to make into a prime time propaganda special in a few weeks), last minute changes in the firing led CHP to close I 5 for a couple of hours, which Vance & Trump denounced. No ship to shore bombardment, but the howitzer landed on the beach didn’t drive 500 yards inland to go past the interstate to fire, but shot from the beach immediately over I 5. Word today is that one HE shell exploded prematurely over I 5 and shrapnel hit a CHP vehicle and motorcycle. CHP called the Marines, who immediately cancelled the rest of the live fire. [The NY Times article uses a shot of a freeway sign on I 8 a couple of miles from I 5 and 30-40 miles south of where I 5 was actually shut down. LA Times has a better article: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-10-19/u-s-military-live-fire-demonstration-dropped-shrapnel-on-chp-vehicle ]
we were told a few days ago that they weren’t going to live-fire at Pendleton, at least not across I5 – which is, as you know, a very busy highway. So Couch Vance had to have bullied them into it. (I wish he’d been in one of the vehicles under that premature explosion. Not CHP’s, they shouldn’t have to clean up the mess he’d have made.)
“ south” ???
I wondered about that freeway sign as I make that trip annually. I ignored it and used the NYTIMES article to find the location where I think JD Vance got rained on… I followed Las Pulagas to I-5.
I5 is fairly easy to find between San Clemente and Oceanside. It’s roughly parallel to the coast and a few hundred yards inland. You can also see the railroad tracks, not far away and roughly parallel to I5. Also San Onofre power plant (currently not operating) and the two rest areas in the middle of that stretch. (I was at one, once, when a large bird flew straight toward me. I thought at the time it was an owl, but later decided it was a northern harrier.)
There were approximately 10,000 at the rally on the Lafitte Greenway in New Orleans. Alanah Odoms of the ACLU was the most energizing speaker. It rained for about five minutes at the beginning and then it was beautiful for the remainder of the rally. A really uplifting event. My favorite thing was when a Trump Baby balloon, about three feet tall, escaped from its owner and flew up and away very quickly. The crowd roared.
Despite the fact that it was literally thunderstorming the whole time, it looks like we had a pretty solid turnout throughout the St. Louis area. I can tell you firsthand our spirits remained high and our voices remained loud at the downtown march from beginning to end! Though my poor sign did break apart at the end; in my defense, I did literally spend only a few minutes on it scrawling down “I put more care, thought, and effort into this sign than Trump and his goons do into anything (except not releasing the Epstein files).”
In Fargo we had an estimated 5000 people. 55 degrees but sunny (with the occasional small cloud bringing a brief chill). A bit gusty and some of the people wearing inflatables had a bit of a time at the end when people were leaving. Someone mentioned they had gotten a text from a family member in a rural area saying a couple of Missouri Synod ladies planned to hit the protest in a town of about 14,000 people 50 miles from here. Another little crack in the wall. We have a nice big grassy area in between city hall, the public library, and an old convention center that is shaped like a large bowl, with the area in front of city hall providing a natural elevated stage.
Nationwide we’ve reached 2% coming out to protest. The trigger point (so the theory goes, for peaceful protest to lead to substantive change) is 3.1%.
G. Elliott Morris is crowdsourcing attendance numbers at NK2 rallies across the country – see https://www.gelliottmorris.com/p/second-no-kings-day-protests-likely for a link to the data-entry spreadsheet.
As of yesterday morning, he was estimating 5.2 to 8.2 million No Kings protesters nationwide. But those numbers include a lot of estimation as they are based on reported attendance for about 700 of the 2500+ NK2 rallies that took place nationwide.
Indivisible leadership had estimated a national attendance of 7 million, although they released that number to the press before the attendance data started coming in.
Local NK2 rally leaders were encouraged to submit crowd-count data to Crowd Counting Consortium, https://ash.harvard.edu/programs/crowd-counting-consortium/ . For No Kings 1, CCC was able to gather participation data for about 75% of the approximately 2300 planned rallies. For No Kings 2, national leaders put more emphasis on reporting to CCC, so perhaps there will be a more complete participation tally this time around? CCC will likely release its October data in early November.
The national day-of-protest attendance numbers express the broad-based opposition to the emerging authoritarian state. The huge participation in national days of protest is clearly getting under Trump’s skin, as indicated by his wild social media postings and the coordinated Republican talking points about NK2. Let us hope the protester numbers continue to grow.
Brooklyn’s event was great! Good family friendly turnout.