LOGAN – The latest “No Kings” rally here on Oct. 18 drew the usual crowd –ranging from grey-haired, former hippies to young liberals advocates and everything in between — to protest on the grounds of the Historic Cache County Courthouse in Logan.
Estimates of the crowd size varied from some 500 by objective observers to 1,700 by optimistic rally organizers. But the size of the local protest was a drop in the bucket compared to the turnout nationwide, where organizers claimed that nearly 7 million people attended “No Kings” rallies in more than 2,700 cities and towns across America.
If those estimates are accurate, Oct. 18 marked the largest single-day demonstration in U.S. history, according to a news release from Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg, co-founders of Indivisible, the parent organization of the nationwide protests.
Those widely separated protest gatherings may have eclipsed even the massive anti-war demonstrations of the 1960s and 1970s, organizers said.
“Today, millions of Americans stood together to reject authoritarianism and remind the world that our democracy belongs to the people, not to one man’s ambition,” the news release read.
Protesters flooded the streets of America from New York to Los Angles proclaiming their free speech rights with homemade signs and chanting.
Despite speculation that inflammatory rhetoric may have contributed to the death of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University last month, there were plenty of homemade signs evident at the Cache Valley rally condemning President Donald Trump and administration officials as Nazis and comparing Immigration and Border Enforcement agents to the infamous Schutzstaffel or SS.
In preparation for the protests, some state governors activated their National Guard units and Trump expanded military deployments to Democratic bastions like the cities of Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
But, as organizers predicted, the nationwide protests remained peaceful, as did the rally here in Cache Valley.
The local protest was coordinated by WeThePeopleCacheValley, an affiliate of Indivisible, to show rural resistance to Trump’s authoritarian policies, according to organizer Jim Evans.
The latest round of “No King” protests followed up on similarly themed demonstrations in June, “Good Trouble Lives On” events in July and the “Workers over Billionaires” nationwide protest organized on Labor Day.
This Oct. 18 protests were coordinated by the usual coalition of left-leaning groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Federation of Teachers, Common Defense, the Human Rights Campaign, Indivisible, the League of Conservation Voters, MoveOn, National Nurses United, Public Citizen and the Service Employees International Union, among others.
In addition to showing local resistance to Trump policies, WeThePeopleCacheValley also held a local food drive, distributed voter/election information and highlighted community groups during its Oct. 18 rally.