WASHINGTON: Demonstrators decrying President Donald Trump\u2019s policies took to city streets across the United States on Saturday in the third edition of the \u201cNo Kings\u201d rallies that organisers hoped will be the largest single-day non-violent protest in US history.<\/p>\n
The two previous No Kings events attracted millions of participants.<\/p>\n
Singers Bruce Springsteen and Joan Baez headlined a rally at the state capitol in Minnesota, where upward of 100,000 people gathered in an area that became a flashpoint over Trump\u2019s crackdown on illegal immigration and the incursion of federal immigration agents into Democratic-led urban centres.<\/p>\n
Other major rallies took place in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, but two-thirds of the events were happening outside major city centres, a nearly 40 per cent jump for smaller communities from the movement\u2019s first mobilisation last June.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe defining story of this mobilisation is not just how many people are protesting, but where they are protesting,\u201d said Leah Greenberg, co-founder of Indivisible, the group that started the No Kings movement last year and led planning of Saturday\u2019s events.<\/p>\n
Republican strongholds<\/p>\n
With mid-term elections later this year in the US, organisers say they have seen a surge in the number of people organising anti-Trump events and registering to participate in deeply Republican states like Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and Utah.<\/p>\n
Competitive suburban areas that have helped decide national elections are seeing \u201chuge\u201d surge in interest, Greenberg said, citing as examples Pennsylvania\u2019s Bucks and Delaware counties, East Cobb and Forsyth in Georgia, and Scottsdale and Chandler in Arizona.<\/p>\n
\u201cVoters who decide elections, the people who do the door-knocking and the voter registration and all of the work of turning protests into power, they are taking to the streets right now, and they are furious,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson in a statement dismissed the rallies as \u201cTrump derangement therapy sessions\u201d of interest only to journalists.<\/p>\n
In northern Virginia, just outside Washington, several hundred people began gathering close to Arlington National Cemetery before a planned march across the Potomac River to the capital\u2019s National Mall.<\/p>\n
Some passing drivers honked their horns in support, but others slowed down to berate the protesters.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re all idiots,\u201d one man shouted from his car.<\/p>\n
John Ale, 57, a retired air-conditioning and heating contractor, said he drove 20 minutes from his home in Virginia to join the march.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s happening in this country is unsustainable,\u201d he said. \u201cThe middle class, the little people, can\u2019t afford to live anymore. And he (Trump) is breaking the norms, the things that made us function as a country.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: Demonstrators decrying President Donald Trump\u2019s policies took to city streets across the United States on Saturday in the third edition of the \u201cNo Kings\u201d rallies that organisers hoped will be the largest single-day non-violent protest in US history. The two previous No Kings events attracted millions of participants. Singers Bruce Springsteen and Joan Baez […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17215,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17214"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17216,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17214\/revisions\/17216"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}