In the days leading up to Saturday’s nationwide “No Kings” demonstrations against the direction of the country under the Trump administration, Republican leaders in Washington sought to demonize the rallies as anti-American.
House Speaker Mike Johnson described the protests as “hate America” rallies, a gathering of “the Marxists, the socialists, the Antifa advocates, the anarchists and the pro-Hamas wing of the far-left Democrat party that is the modern Democratic Party.”
Then there was Harmeet Dhillon, an assistant U.S. attorney who heads the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights division. She warned that the demonstrations were “not your average protest” and described them as “attempts to gaslight the public and destabilize our government.”
Yet among the several thousand protesters who gathered Saturday in Emmet Park for Savannah’s “No Kings” protest, it was obvious there were many who took exception to the GOP’s messaging, especially the notion that they were anti-American. And nowhere was it more evident than in the U.S. flags that a notable number of demonstrators clutched in their hands or waved above the crowd.
A 62-year-old man from Beaufort who identified himself as Mike was one of them. He held a small stars and stripes in his hand as he talked about why his presence at the demonstration was in the finest tradition not only of his country but his family. The historic irony of branding the “No Kings” demonstrations as “anti-American” was not lost on him.
“I’m here because my five times great grandfather fought in the Revolution, and he fought for the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution,” he said. “I’m here because my family fought for the rights that are afforded in the Constitution, and I’m here to honor that, and to fight for what I believe is the right thing.”
The “right thing,” he said, to protest what he fears is a “fascist, authoritarian takeover” in America.
Also conspicuously displaying the stars and stripes was a bespectacled young man who identified himself as Mark, a software manager living in Savannah.
“I am really worried about the executive branch getting uncontrollably strong — that Congress is not doing its job enforcing its power of the purse at all. There’s very little the courts can do if Trump just says, ‘Nah.’”
He was attending the protest, he said, to count himself among those who, in the spirit of the country’s founding, are saying, “I don’t like this.”
As one speaker after another exhorted the crowd to stand firm against what they described as the ravages and abuses of power of the Trump administration, Rebecca Flood stood listening intently, her shoulders draped in a U.S. flag whose canton, instead of containing 50 stars, bore the words, “Abide no hate.”
As the speeches ended and the demonstrators began moving in a procession along Bay Street, Flood insisted she was hardly anti-American — let alone acting, as Dhillon alleged, to “destabilize our government.” Rather, she said, she was acting out of what it best means to be an American.
“I think anyone who is afraid of protests is anti-American,” said Flood, a 25-year-old bartender in Savannah. “It’s very important we exercise our rights.”
For Flood, the reason for her attendance at Saturday’s rally was self-evident, as she referred to the words emblazoned on her flag, “Abide no hate.”
As a woman, as someone who cares about her neighbor, and as someone whose family operates a non-profit that aids immigrants and refugees, she said, “it’s incredibly important to me to make sure that we stand by what our country was originally founded on.”
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