Atlanta fights back: Largest protest in American history
An estimated seven million people participated in nationwide “No Kings Day” protests on Oct. 18, the largest single-day political protest in American history. The Georgia Reporter estimated between 10,000-12,000 people gathered at Atlanta’s Civic Center and marched through downtown to the state capitol, joining together to denounce the Trump administration.
Harvard researcher Erika Chenoweth studied 323 violent and nonviolent movements to overthrow incumbent leadership or establish a new territory. She found every time at least 3.5% of the population protested, they were successful; 3.5% of the U.S. population is about 11.5 million people, and the numbers in October reached around 60% of that.
“I don’t know if this is going to make a difference,” protester Rose Medley said. “I am afraid of that. Many of our institutions are now dismantled. Even the Supreme Court, we can’t trust, and so I’m not sure really what a protest does now, other than for us to come together and show our dissent.”
Protester Sara Eckert drove over an hour to join Atlanta’s protest.
“This is my first big protest; so it’s kind of awesome,” Eckert said, “I’m from a small town, so I wanted to come to the bigger protest. It’s really cool to see young people and older people and just everybody here.”
Crowds at the protest have had a wide diversity of age. Fulton County Board of Commissioners chairman Robb Pitts said it was refreshing to see people of his age represented in the crowds.
“I’m so proud to see even people of your age here and people my age, going back to the 60s and 70s, who are here expressing themselves, their point of view,” Pitts said. “So, that’s why I’m here and to thank as many people as I can for being here.”
The protest drew participants of all ages, including senior Zoe Diamond-Wilding. Diamond-Wilding attended the No Kings on June 14th and said the Trump administration’s recent actions concerning cuts to the CDC and funding motivated her to protest again.
“Things have just gotten worse in the past few months especially with the CDC and public health and funding for science being cut,” Diamond-Wilding said. “I think it’s especially important to be out here.”
Diamond-Wilding believes protesting is a way for students to be engaged in social activism, even if they are not of age to vote yet.
“We’re the people that are going to be going to college soon; we’re the next generation of leaders and activists,” Diamond-Wilding said. “I’ll be turning 18 in a few months, so I’ll be able to vote then. We’re kind of limited in what we can do before we can vote, which is really frustrating.”
Linda Potts* said she was scared of protesting in the past and many of her immigrant friends stayed home, fearful of deportation.
“As a person of color, I honestly have always been scared to go to protest because I don’t want to be singled out, and I’m just very concerned about how people treat people of color, especially with police violence,” Potts said. “It’s really nice to see that there are a lot of white people here, and especially older people. I didn’t realize how involved and invested people in the community really were in topics like this, especially when they’re not the main targeted groups.”
Politico recently exposed racist and pro-Nazi comments made by leaders of the Young Republicans and Vice President JD Vance has publicly dismissed these statements. Protester Rose Medley said she’s concerned rising racism could affect her mixed-race son.
“I’m worried about the racism that is prevalent here, that people are openly using violent talk,” Medley said. “Violent talk turns into action, and that is not a safe world for my son or any other children.”
Eckert said federal funding cuts have made it harder for her to support low-income students at her school.
“I teach at a really low-income school, and so, I see how it’s affecting our students and their families,” Eckert said. “Our school funding has been cut, so we struggled anyhow, but now we’re struggling even more just to be able to teach them just the basics.”
More specifically, funding cuts have resulted in a lack of support staff, external literacy support and more.
“Federal funding has been cut,” Eckert said. “So, we don’t have as many support staff, so we’re having more kids and less teachers to help those kids. We have a lot of kids that just struggle in all ways with education, so just wanting them to have the extra support that we used to have, like, reading support from outside of the school and things like that.”
Trump deployed National Guard troops to Washington on Aug. 11, declaring a crime emergency in the city. Since then, troops have been seen spreading mulch, picking up trash and completing other groundskeeping duties around the nation’s capitol.
“My husband’s in D.C., and he’s like, ‘yeah, the National Guard is doing a really great job cleaning up trash and pulling weeds,’” protester Teresa Basch said. “When you don’t need the National Guard in place because there’s no actual, real crisis, it’s waste, fraud and abuse.”
Medley said she thinks Trump will deploy the National Guard to more cities in the coming months.
“I’m a positive person by nature, but I think things will get worse before they get better,” Medley said. “I think that Trump will try to use people like you and I to grab more power, to have more power in the streets, have military in the streets; it’s completely un-American.”
People from all over the country were present at the protest. Pitts said, as chairman, it was his job to make sure that the protest was a safe space, to cement and support Fulton County as a place for activism.
“This is the bedrock of civil rights in Fulton County, Georgia, and the whole world knows that, and so, it’s fitting and appropriate for this event to be taking place in Fulton County,” Pitts said. “It shows that people have a right in this country to express themselves. There are always going to be different points of view, but the bedrock, the foundation of life in this country and democracy, is the right of freedom of speech.”
At least 1.4 million federal workers, along with 2 million active-duty personnel and National Guard members are either furloughed or continuing to work without pay during the government shutdown.
“It’s ridiculous that people can’t have discourse and try to solve problems,” Eckert said. “The fact that Republicans are not even there in Washington and not even willing to discuss and compromise is crazy. I can’t imagine not having a job to pay my bills, it’s got to be really tough.”
Trump has blamed the shutdown on Democrats’ unwillingness to agree to cutting the Affordable Care Act. If the Democrats agree to end the shutdown, insurance premiums could increase for millions of Americans.
“I think it is horrible that so many people are losing their jobs, and, especially, that they’re able to get away with blaming the Democrats for the government shutdown despite the fact that Republicans rule all three houses, and when the Democrats’ main thing that they want is just Medicaid,” senior Emory Jane Drinen, who was a protester, said.
Drinen said she hopes students will be inspired to focus on education and media literacy.
“I think it’s just important to stay educated because media literacy is more important now than ever and losing that is exactly what the Trump administration wants. It sounds stupid, but keep up with your classes. I’m in AP Gov right now, and that is such an informative class, and it teaches me how to be a better U.S. citizen.”
Protester Teresa Basch said she felt reassured by the crowd.
“I have been to six protests this year, and I feel like it’s very empowering,” Basch said. “It makes you feel like you’re not alone. It helps you look around and see that there’s kindness and goodness in people.”
Fairlie Mercer is a senior and this is her third year writing for The Southerner. She currently serves as an Editor-in-Chief and is excited for her second year as an editor. Outside of journalism, she enjoys hanging out with friends and dance.
