Organisers of \u201cNo Kings\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
Organisers say more than 3100 events have been registered in all 50 states, with more than 9 million people expected to participate.<\/p>\n
And they\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cNo Kings\u201d theme, kicks off Tuesday in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n
Minnesota organisers have told state officials they expect 100,000 people could converge on the Capitol grounds, where last June\u2019s event drew an estimated 80,000 people.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The White House dismissed the nationwide protests as the product of \u201cleftist funding networks\u201d with little real public support.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only people who care about these Trump Derangement Therapy Sessions are the reporters who are paid to cover them,\u201d White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cNo Tyrants,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
For those unable to attend in person, another activist group, Stand Up For Science, is hosting a \u201cvirtual and accessible\u201d event online.<\/p>\n
National organisers told reporters in an online news conference Thursday that they expect Saturday’s (local time)<\/p>\n
protests to be larger than the first two rounds of No Kings rallies, which they estimate drew more than 5 million people in June and more than 7 million in October.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis administration\u2019s actions are angering not just Democratic voters or folks in big blue city centres \u2014 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\u2019s (local time) mobilisation is not just how many people are protesting, but where they are protesting,”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“Millions of us are rising up from all walks of life, from rural communities to big cities at No Kings,\u201d said Katie Bethell, executive director of MoveOn, another major organiser. \u201cAnd 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Organisers of \u201cNo Kings\u201d rallies across the country are predicting that the protests against the actions of President…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[65,42,43,64,40,38,41,39,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-352147","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-north-america","12":"tag-top-news","13":"tag-top-stories","14":"tag-topnews","15":"tag-topstories","16":"tag-us-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}