I went to our local No Kings Rally on Saturday. It was the first time I attended an anti-Trump protest. As much as I support the good intentions of the people who have been involved all along, as much as I appreciate that there have been a few thousand La Crosse residents braving the cold this past winter to express their frustrations, I had no desire to join them.
Saturday morning, however, a couple of friends who I consider apolitical called to ask whether I would be at the rally. As indifferent to politics as these friends usually are, something in them has broken, and they felt the need to be there. Manyu and I decided to go to the rally, not so much to support the cause as support our friends.
I have attended dozens of protest rallies in my lifetime: antiwar protests on the University of Wisconsin campus in the early 1970s and occasional environmental protests ever since. The rally on Saturday felt different from the others in one important way. In the 70s, nearly all of the people at the protests were college students. At the various environmental protests I’ve attended, I would describe most of the participants as “little old ladies in tennis shoes.” In other words, the participants at both the antiwar and the environmental events were outliers within society. They were a politically active minority who did not necessarily represent the priorities of the majority of citizens.
In spite of what spokespeople for the White House are claiming, the people at Saturday’s rally were exactly the opposite. They were mainstream Americans. They felt like my neighbors. They were my neighbors, as I stopped and talked to several people who live on my street.
I’d been avoiding the No Kings Rallies in La Crosse because the events were no more than people standing on a busy corner waving signs. I now feel stupid, because I’ve come to realize that standing on the corner and waving signs is exactly what the rallies ought to be. There was no one grandstanding with megaphones or microphones. There were no self-appointed leaders telling everyone else what to do. In a recent New York Times op-ed column, Thomas Friedman quoted a Minneapolis resident who was commenting on the city’s ICE OUT efforts. The man said, “There were hundreds of leaders of this movement, and I don’t know a single one of their names.”* I don’t think that any of the people carrying signs on Saturday consider themselves leaders, but the same sentiment applies. There had to have been organizers for the event, but no one stood out.
I did not expect the No Kings Rally to provide me with new hope – and it did not. For the past year I’ve known that things have been bad and will continue to be bad. I’ve simultaneously believed that this too will pass. Nothing about Saturday moved the needle. Still I’m glad that I went.
* Friedman, T. (March 15, 2026.) Why Minnesota Matters More Than Iran for America’s Future. New York Times. Found at: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/15/opinion/columnists/minneapolis-ice-trump-neighbor.html.
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