ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) – Organizers 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 to one of the largest demonstrations in US history, with Minnesota taking center stage.
The organizers say more than 3100 events have registered in all 50 states, with more than 9 million people expected to participate.
And they’ve scheduled the rally at the Minnesota Capitol in St. Louis. Paul as the main national event, in recognition how the state where Federal agents shot and killed two people who were monitoring Trump’s immigration crackdown became an epicenter of resistance.
The title that respect will be Bruce Springsteen, performing “Streets of Minneapolis”, which he wrote in response to the death of Renee Good AND Alex Pretti, and in tribute to the thousands of Minnesotans who took to the streets during the winter. Springsteen’s The land of hope and dreams The American tour, which has a “No Kings” theme, begins Tuesday in Minneapolis.
Minnesota organizers have told state officials they expect 100,000 people could gather on the Capitol grounds, where last June’s event drew about 80,000.
The singer will also be at the Saint Paul rally John Baezactor Jane Fonda,Senator Bernie Sanders and a long list of other activists, labor 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 therapy sessions are the reporters who are paid to cover them,” White House spokeswoman 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 that runs the events, said in an interview. Countries with constitutional monarchies call the protests “Not tyrannical”, he said.
For those unable to attend in person, another activist group, Stand Up For Science, is hosting a “virtual and accessible” event online.
On Saturday morning in Paris, several hundred people, mostly Americans living in France, along with French labor unions and human rights organizations, gathered at the Bastille.
“I protest against all of Trump’s illegal, immoral, reckless and reckless, endless wars,” said Ada Shen, organizer of Paris No Kings. “It’s clear that he doesn’t have a plan. It’s clear that abuse of power is the goal. It’s very clear that he is a strongman who is abusing the authority given to him by the American people as our president-elect.”
In Rome, thousands of people marched with defiant chants aimed at Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose right-wing government saw its referendum on the reorganization of Italy’s judiciary failed miserably earlier this week amid criticism that it was a threat to the independence of the courts. Protesters waved placards protesting Israeli and US attacks on Iran, calling for “a world free of wars”.
US organizers told reporters at an online news conference Thursday that they expect Saturday’s protests to be bigger than the first two rounds of No Kings rallies, which they said drew more than 5 million people. in June and more than 7 million in October.
“This administration’s actions are not just angering Democratic voters or people in big blue-collar urban centers — they’re crossing the line for people in red and rural areas, in the suburbs, across the country,” said Leah Greenberg, Indivisible’s other co-executive director. “The defining story of this Saturday’s mobilization is not just how many people are protesting, but where they’re protesting.”
Two-thirds of the RSVPs have come from outside major urban centers, Greenberg said, citing enrollment increases in conservative-leaning states like Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, South Dakota and Louisiana, as well as in the 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 in No Kings,” said Katie Bethell, executive director of MoveOn, another major organizer. “And as we do so, we will send the loudest, clearest message that this country does not belong to kings, to dictators, to tyrants. It belongs to us.”
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By STEVE KARNOWSKI Associated Press
Associated Press videographer Nicholas Garriga in Paris and Associated Press reporter Colleen Berry in Milan, Italy contributed to this report.
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