Minnesota (US) | Organisers of Saturday's “No Kings” rallies across the country are predicting that the protests against the actions of President Donald Trump and his administration could add up to one of the largest demonstrations in US history, with Minnesota taking centre stage.
Organisers say more than 3,100 events have been registered in all 50 states, with more than nine million people expected to participate.
The protests began with a gathering in Paris, France, on Saturday morning. Several hundred people, mostly Americans living in France, along with French labour unions and human rights organisations gathered at Bastille with anti-Trump signs that read “War for profit, our troops are not for sale” and “When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.”
“I protest all of Trump's illegal, immoral, reckless, and feckless, endless wars,” Ada Shen, the Paris No Kings organiser, said. “It is clear he doesn't really have a plan. It is clearly that the abuse of power is the point. It is very clear that he is a strong man who is abusing the authority vested in him by the American people as our elected president.”
And they've designated the rally at the Minnesota Capitol in St Paul as the national flagship event, in recognition of how the state where federal agents fatally shot two people who were monitoring Trump's immigration crackdown became an epicentre of resistance.
Headlining that observance will be Bruce Springsteen, performing “Streets of Minneapolis”, which he wrote in response to the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and in tribute to the thousands of Minnesotans who took to the streets over the winter. Springsteen's Land of Hope & Dreams American Tour, which has a “No Kings” theme, kicks off Tuesday in Minneapolis.
Minnesota organisers have told state officials they expect 100,000 people could converge on the Capitol grounds, where last June's event drew an estimated 80,000 people.
The St Paul rally will also feature singer Joan Baez, actor Jane Fonda, Sen Bernie Sanders and a long list of other activists, labour leaders and elected officials.
The White House dismissed the nationwide protests as the product of “leftist funding networks” with little real public support.
“The only people who care about these Trump Derangement Therapy Sessions are the reporters who are paid to cover them,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement.
Rallies are also planned in more than a dozen other countries, from Europe to Latin America to Australia, Ezra Levin, a co-executive director of Indivisible, a group spearheading the events, said in an interview. Countries with constitutional monarchies call the protests “No Tyrants,” he said.
For those unable to attend in person, another activist group, Stand Up For Science, is hosting a “virtual and accessible” event online.
National organisers told reporters in an online news conference Thursday that they expect Saturday's protests to be larger than the first two rounds of No Kings rallies, which they estimate drew more than five million people in June and more than seven million in October.
“This administration's actions are angering not just Democratic voters or folks in big blue city centres — they are crossing a line for people in red and rural areas, in the suburbs, all over the country," said Leah Greenberg, the other co-executive director of Indivisible. "The defining story of this Saturday's mobilisation is not just how many people are protesting, but where they are protesting,"
Two-thirds of the RSVPs have come from outside of major urban centres, Greenberg said, listing registration surges in conservative-leaning states like Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, South Dakota and Louisiana, as well in competitive suburban areas of Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona.
"Millions of us are rising up from all walks of life, from rural communities to big cities at No Kings,” said Katie Bethell, executive director of MoveOn, another major organiser. “And as we do so, we will send the loudest, clearest message yet that this country does not belong to kings, dictators, tyrants. It belongs to us.”
