WASHINGTON – Saturday’s No Kings protest was so peaceful that Shawn Benson, a 50-year-old man wearing a red “Make America Great Again” cap, said he was able to make his way through the thousands crowding Pennsylvania Avenue without being confronted.
The software engineer from Colorado was in the U.S. capital for a work trip. Having never attended a political rally before, he decided to go.
“It seems peaceful,” he said. “Nobody has been hostile to me or anything at all. I love that we are able to protest in this country.”
Both the organizers and the participants of the protest said they made efforts to keep the event civil. That message was reflected everywhere, from the official website to the signs carried by attendees.
“Love not hate, makes America great,” read one of the signs that the rally participants carried as they gathered on Pennsylvania Avenue and Third Street NW, facing the U.S. Capitol.
House Speaker Mike Johnson had dubbed the event a “hate America” rally about a week before.
But Carolina Celnik, a spokesperson for the D.C. Republican Party, declined to comment on the rally, stating the organization is focused on local elections.
The Saturday protests that organizers said reached into every state were the second that the No Kings movement had staged. The first round was on June 14, when President Donald Trump organized a parade through the streets of Washington to commemorate the Army’s 250th anniversary, which fell on his birthday.
But in June, the No Kings movement didn’t hold a rally in D.C. because organizers didn’t want to engage during Trump’s military parade, said Liz Cattaneo, a spokesperson for MoveOn, a nonprofit advocacy group that’s part of the larger coalition.
She said the Saturday protests that attracted millions across the country were “a peaceful national day of action and mass mobilization in response to the increasing authoritarian excesses … which they have doubled down on since June.”
Responding to the weekend’s protests, an AI video posted on Trump’s Truth Social account depicted the president wearing a crown on a military plane dumping what appeared to be sludge or mud on protest attendees.
Many attendees in Washington Saturday went as families, taking small children and pushing strollers. Kevin Gilligan, 38, who attended with his wife and young son, explained why he took his child to the rally, which organizers said was one of about 2,700 No Kings demonstrations hosted across the U.S., in cities that included Baltimore, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles and St. Louis, Missouri, as well as small towns and communities such as Hyattsville, Silver Spring and Columbia in Maryland.
“This is what we need in the country,” said Gilligan, a resident of Washington, D.C. Pointing down to his son, he added, “He needs to know people out here are being themselves and sharing what they think, and that’s important: speaking out.”
Many federal employees were present at the protest, motivated by the government shutdown, which will reach its 20th day on Monday. No resolution was in sight to a budget impasse that has Democrats in Congress pressing for an extension of tax credits that make health care affordable for millions of Americans and Republicans pushing for a vote on a short-term spending measure before negotiations on health care take place.
Participants in the protest vented by shouting and displaying signs, some funny, others political, but with many focused through the lens of free speech and the Constitution.
Although the protest was scheduled to start at noon, Kerry Stenke, a 55-year-old graphic designer from Raleigh, North Carolina, was at the stage location at 10 a.m. to hand out dozens of posters she had designed and printed, which said things like “U.S. cities are not military training grounds” and “Without due process, it’s just kidnapping.” The president has been criticized for moving National Guard troops into Los Angeles, D.C. and Memphis, and for detaining and expelling immigrants said to be in the country illegally without due process.
“I can’t stop making these. And then I got too many,” Stenke said of her signs. “It is my way of venting. It is my way of feeling I can do something when everything can feel very hopeless right now.”
Even as the avenue grew more difficult to navigate, courtesy prevailed. Attendees laughed, apologized while moving through the dense groups, and thanked a group of veterans who had set up portable chairs on the sidewalk near the National Gallery of Art’s East Building.
Cattaneo explained why the organization asked the participants to wear something yellow to the rallies.
“Movements that choose yellow announce, ‘We are here, we will not disappear.’ By choosing yellow, we align ourselves with a number of past pro-democracy movements globally,” she said.
The two hours of speeches on a stage that had the Capitol as its backdrop passed in a calm but festive atmosphere. Attendees closest to the loudspeakers listened intently while teachers, scientists, activists and Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut addressed them. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent, closed the rally, expanding on Cattaneo’s explanations of the protest.
The president, Sanders said, “sues and intimidates the media,” undermining the First Amendment to the Constitution. He presses for the arrest of political opponents and attacks law firms that oppose him in court, Sanders said. “He refuses to spend money Congress appropriates,” and takes away money from states that oppose him.
But Sanders closed on a hopeful note.
“Brothers and sisters, this is not the end, this is just the beginning. Together, when we stand united, when we don’t allow Trump or anyone else to divide us by the color of our skin, or where we were born, or our sexual orientation,” Sanders said.
“When we stand together, we will create the kind of nation that you and I know we can create,” he said.