America was founded nearly a quarter of a millennium ago as a rejection of the British monarchy and the establishment of self-government through an interlocking system of a federal government with three equal branches—each designed to check the power of the other.
Today, the party of the current administration has control of the White House and both chambers of Congress and has control of the Supreme Court; and they have called the protests that gripped the United States on October 18 a “hate America rally”. But across Washtenaw County, all of the protestors who spoke with Current Magazine said that they showed up specifically for the opposite reason.
“I just think it’s really important that we exercise our right to legal, non-violent protests, before everything gets taken away from us. If we don’t keep practicing our rights, people like Trump will feel they’re not necessary and he already thinks they’re not necessary,” Deborah Gress said while standing with around 70 others, including her grandson and daughter, on the 6 Mile Road Bridge over US 23 in Whitmore Lake.
When asked what she feels most strongly like protesting, she raised up a list on her sign. “Women’s healthcare, due process for everybody, the picking up of immigrants who are registered is appalling. We need to have respect, compassion and acceptance for our fellow man. We have to defend our Constitution, because that’s what we’re all built on. We need sanity and not this foolishness, funding for school programs, and we need healthcare benefits for seniors and low income individuals.”
No Kings is a grassroots protesting organization dedicated to non-violent demonstrations across the country in protest of the Trump Administration and its MAGA and Project 2025 agenda. As Whitmore Lake’s demonstration proves, it is not just big cities where these protests are happening.
“I’m concerned with everything that’s going on on a daily basis,” Azhar Paracha told Current at the Ann Arbor No King’s demonstration.
They are happening in communities big and small and across the political spectrum. Seven million people participated across 2,700 protesting locations nationwide, according to the organizers of the event. Nearly seven million people protested on October 18, two million more than the number they claim from the previous No Kings protest last June.
Each blue dot on this interactive map that No Kings has set up shows a demonstration location. You can sign up for updates on when and where the next demonstrations will be at mobilize.us.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (Republican – Louisiana) told reporters in the days before October 18 that this protests would “bring together the Marxists, the socialists, the antifa advocates, the anarchists, and the pro-Hamas wing of their party. That is the modern Democratic Party, and the hate America rally is the common theme of where they’ve gone. That is the common theme among those groups.”
There were a handful of signs with “Antifa” on them across Washtenaw County. But it is important to remember that Antifa is not a formal organization, simply a group of people who believe in standing up against fascism in favor of diversity, compassion and representative democracy. President Trump recently signed an executive order declaring Antifa to be a terrorist organization despite, again, there not being any actual Antifa organization. But those signs were few and far between in any case. Most signs were direct attacks on Trump and this MAGA movement, or signs decrying fascism or racism, or signs expressing patriotism and love for the United States.
President Trump had a 45 percent approval rating as of October 17, according to Emerson College. Emerson found that it was the same back during last summer’s No Kings’ protest.
RELATED: How the First Weeks of Trump’s Second Term has Impacted Washtenaw County
The sloping grass lawn that goes from downtown Ypsilanti to Riverside Park swelled with people as the afternoon began. Ann Arbor Indivisible told Current that an estimated thousands of individuals showed up with signs as creative as they were colorful, and each more dripping with highly specific political points than the last.
Angela Green said her motivation for protesting was “For my grandchildren, my mother, myself; just to take a stand. I never thought in 58 years I would see where they’re sending the military into cities and snatching people out of their homes, and disconnecting children from their homes, and zip tying children. I had to do something or I would become hopeless.”
President Trump has repeatedly sent the National Guard into Democratic run cities claiming a grand emergency, despite the fact that each of those cities have seen declining crime rates. What Green is referring to is where Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted a raid on a five story apartment in the majority-minority South Shore neighborhood of Chicago, where 37 suspected migrants were zip tied after being arrested, including multiple children.
When asked what she would like to see happen next in American politics, Green said she wanted “more people to stand up, and we need to do everything we can to remove Trump. He frightens me because he took the veil off. I didn’t realize there was so much prejudice, racism and sexism until he took office.”
The Ypsilanti protest was attended by Washtenaw County Commissioner Yousef Rabhi (Democrat – District 8), who gave a brief speech surrounded by signs and by people from across the community. He then started a march from the park to the western side of the Cross Street Bridge, and then south to downtown Ypsilanti and beyond. A counter from Ann Arbor Indivisible estimated that somewhere between 3,500 and 4,000 people participated in a march, according to a written statement from the group.
Speaking to Current Magazine once the crowd was underway, Rabhi said that the protest was even bigger than the one he attended last summer, and that despite “disillusionment with leaders within the Democratic Party, who have not shown themselves to be effective or willing to fight for the people and to become more beholden to corporate interest” it represented what he saw as part of a new movement that “can rebuild from the ashes of the old left [and] build a new left that is built on people centered policies, that is fighting for working people, and is not beholden to corporate interest. I think that’s the excitement that you see here—for a moment that is going to protect people’s neighbors from arrest and is going to restore our democratic principles in this country. That is the clear moral urgency that you can see from people today—we are recovering our movement and our country. To say that the left is dead ignores the people who are turning out across this country… and this is not just the left, there are people from across the country—Republicans, Liberals, Democrats and Green Party—and all walks of life, to be part of this day.”
When asked what he made of the Republican Party’s strategy of framing these protests as anti-American, Rabhi said: “I think it’s a clear flag of insecurity on their part and that they know they’re ruining America. What they’re doing is destroying our democracy from its foundations, and what we’re doing is fighting for America—you can see their American flags out because we are patriots stepping up to fight against fascism. We are not a country that tolerates kings or dictatorships, and the way that the Trump administration is governing is by fiat, and being king. That is not tolerated here in America and that is the most patriotic thing that one could do. There’s a tradition in this country to show up as citizens, as members of this community, and voicing that this is unacceptable.”
Drew Saunders is a freelance business and environmental journalist who grew up just outside of Ann Arbor. He covers local business developments, embraces his foodie side with reviews restaurants, obsesses over Michigan's environmental state, loves movies, and feels spoiled by the music he gets to review for Ann Arbor!
