"Among the hundreds, maybe thousands, of people lining the main street of a small town in upstate New York on a perfect fall Saturday afternoon, this man and his words stuck with me. He was the sort of mild, ordinary-looking person you'd never notice in a crowd if not for his sign. And that was true of almost everyone. These were not the America-hating, Hamas-loving, paid street fighters that Republican leaders had dreamed up in the days before the countrywide "No Kings" rallies."
"The tone of the protest was good-natured indignation, as if something these people cherished had been taken from them and defiled: This Is the Government the Founders Warned Us About; Make Orwell Fiction Again; Longtime Republican, First Time Protester; He doesn't even own a dog; I ❤️ USA. So many signs referred to the patriotic events of 250 years ago that you might have thought you were at a Tea Party rally."
A large crowd assembled on a main street in a small upstate New York town on a clear fall Saturday, composed mainly of ordinary-looking, often older people. Participants carried many American flags alongside a few Palestinian and Ukrainian flags, and signs invoked the Founders, patriotism, and humorous local commentary. The mood combined good-natured indignation and reverence for civic traditions, with no unruliness or violence and minimal police involvement. Attendees gathered later in a park to hear a reading beside a giant inflatable Donald Trump and then dispersed amicably. By nightfall political opponents framed the protesters as irrelevant.
Read at The Atlantic
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]