When I attended my first No Kings Rally last year, I’m not gonna lie. I was nervous as I drove there. I knew the crowd would be huge, and therefore unpredictable. I didn’t want to get trampled or tear gassed.
I knew the rhetoric was absurd. There is no organized group of liberal domestic terrorists hellbent on the violent overthrow of this country. The things that we are protesting in No Kings Rallies are justifiable and non-violent. Illegal Wars. Suppression of evidence of pedophilia. Families being torn apart. The flagrant disregard of the constitution and of human rights. Americans being shot like dogs in the streets by federal agents, who are also abducting people without due process. A total lack of accountability.
But even though I knew these things, it’s hard to not let the constant drumbeat of negativity get to you on some level. The “what ifs” can be insidious. It’s those tiny kernels of doubt that prevent people from achieving greatness.
But as time goes on, I’m learning to trust people with direct experience much more than I do those with an agenda who are reporting from a distance. The best way to truly know what is going on is to see for yourself. If you’ve yet to attend one of these rallies, talk to people who have actually done so. Listen to what they have to say about their experiences. What they saw and felt will be much more helpful to you than the hysterical rants of people who want nothing more than for you to stay away and say afraid.
If, after talking to people, you want to go to the next rally, but you’re still nervous, perhaps go with a friend. If it makes you more at ease, attend a rally in a smaller town. Or, if you do go to one in a big city, stay to the edge of the crowd with an exit strategy in mind, until you feel more comfortable and willing to mingle.
I promise you that you have no more to fear at a No Kings Rally than you do in most other large crowds. Yes, there will always be some bad apples. But this time around, it is estimated that 8 million people took to the streets nationwide, and very little violence was reported.
At least 90,000 people attended the Seattle rally that I went to, and the police said there was no property damage or arrests made at all during the event. The police said the march was at least 1.5 miles long. We only saw two police officers the entire time we were there, and they seemed relaxed and were quite pleasant. (Dear Husband wished them a boring day, and they grinned and said thank you.)
New York City, Austin, Chicago, Washington DC and San Diego reported no arrests. Dallas saw a few clashes, because Enrique Tarrio, former leader of the Proud Boys, and one of the insurrectionists who invaded the capitol on January 6th, decided to stage a counter-protest with some of his goons and blocked the roadway. In Los Angeles, 2 people were arrested for assaulting federal law enforcement as the rest of the crowd peacefully protested around a federal building. Several more were arrested for “refusing to disperse” outside a federal prison. Federal authorities decided tear gas was necessary because of this refusal. In Minneapolis, the flagship protest location this time, an estimated 200,000 people attended. There was one arrest.
Trust me when I say the Republicans have good reason to make a big deal of a No Kings Rally arrest, and despite the hysterical articles coming from MSN, even they don’t specifically cite more than a handful. Even if I multiply the ones reported by a hundred, it still constitutes less than 0.001% (that’s one one thousandth of one percent) of the crowd nationwide. In other words, you are 6 times more likely to be struck by lightning in your lifetime than you are to encounter one person who will be arrested at a No Kings Rally. You’re safe. You really are.
Because I was confident in this knowledge, this time around I wasn’t nervous at all about going to the rally. In fact, I was looking forward to it. And for good reason. Most of the time, as all this insanity swirls around us, we all start to feel a little isolated. We forget that the majority of us do not agree with what is going on. I mean, we see that the Trump approval ratings are less than 40%, but we still hear all the hate and angry support he gets, and all the false information his followers are buying into, and we begin to wonder if the whole world has gone mad. (For instance, you can slap the Antifa label on us all you want, but there is no such organized group, and, by the way, if you are a freedom-loving supporter of our American democracy and you aren’t anti-fascist, then there’s something seriously wrong with you, and yet the word antifa strikes fear in the hearts of MAGA. It’s so sad.)
Incidentally, only Truman, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and George W. Bush had approval ratings this low at this point in their administrations, so, conservatively, that ranks him at least the 6th worst out of 47. He’d be the bottom 11% of his graduating class by those standards, which makes you wonder how he’d graduate at all.
The White House dismisses these Rallies as Trump Derangement Therapy Sessions. They are half right. It’s easy to dismiss the first two words, because:
- none of them are mental health professionals and therefore are as unqualified to make a diagnosis as they are to hold the positions they currently hold,
- no mental health professional would diagnose 8 million people at a single stroke,
- any individual who dismisses every single person in the world who disagrees with him as being mentally ill should genuinely seek professional help himself, and
- they use the term simply to get a rise out of us, much as 13-year-old boys do when they bully kids due to their own insecurities.
But the second half, the therapy session bit? I totally agree. What I saw were thousands and thousands of people who care about society just as much, if not more, than they care about themselves. I saw people who love this country as much as I do, and who are equally concerned about its survival. I saw people of all ages, from small children to people in their 90’s, engaging in free speech and showing one another that they are not alone. I saw people of every race, creed, religion, and sexual orientation standing side by side in solidarity. I was reminded that compassion, love, and respect for one’s fellow man and for the rule of law still exists. And it felt good.
It felt like what I had always thought was the rule rather than the exception for the first 50 years of my life. God, how I miss that. The assumption that people were not your enemy unless they proved otherwise. I know a lot of that was due to the white privilege that I haven’t earned, but still, this state of constantly feeling under siege is exhausting. There is absolutely nothing great about this.
I hope that you join us for the next No Kings Rally, and experience this for yourself. It really is cleansing. It restores your faith in humanity, and that is exactly why Trump is so hellbent on making you terrified of attending. The last thing he wants to see is the strength of the people renewed.
For all of you who have been too nervous to attend one of these rallies, or are unable to do so, I decided to take it upon myself to show you how wonderful these events can be, Dear Reader. So buckle up. You’re going to this rally with me.
We got there ahead of much of the crowd, so one of the first things we experienced were the Seattle Raging Grannies. This delightful group only sings parody songs that they have written themselves, and you can tell that they have a great deal of fun doing it. I was charmed by them. I wanted to ask them if they’d adopt me. I could use some grandma energy right about now.
Do they look like domestic terrorists to you?
Next, I’ll show you a compilation of two videos I took of sections of the march. I had to take a break in the middle to rest my arms, because they kept coming and coming and coming… It’s a long video, but a lot of the signs and the performances are quite fun. I encourage you to look at all the faces of the people. They are just people. Your next-door neighbors, your friends, your family, your fellow Americans, crying out for things to be better. They mean you no harm.
I have to admit that I got tears in my eyes a few times while filming this. It’s history. Some of these younger people, especially, will be able to talk about this someday and know that what they did mattered. They fought for this country’s values.
That’s another good reason to go to the next one: You can take kids with you. Let them be a part of history. It will show them that some things are bigger than themselves, and that we’re better together. There’s no better lesson than that.
Lastly, I’ll leave you with photos of some of the many signs we saw, in case you’re unwilling or unable to watch the videos. Having read as much as I could about all of the other 3,300 rallies that took place across the country, my favorite sign this time around is one that I didn’t get to see in person. It’s so good I may just get it tattooed on my backside:
“Put down the crown, clown!”
Sources beyond my own experience:
At third No Kings rally in Seattle, tens of thousands decry Trump
‘No Kings’ flagship protest brings spotlight back to Minneapolis
What naysayers don’t get about ‘No Kings,’ the biggest protest in U.S. history
Wikipedia–2026 No Kings Protests
Anti-Trump ‘No Kings’ rallies pop up in thousands of US cities
Several arrested at anti-Donald Trump ‘No Kings’ protest as thousands of ‘rioters’ take to streets
Seattle’s ‘No Kings’ rally stays peaceful with zero property damage reported
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