By Tim Reid and Brad Brooks
WASHINGTON, March 28 (Reuters) – Demonstrators decrying U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies took to city streets across the country on Saturday in the third edition of the “No Kings” rallies which organizers hope will be the largest single-day protest in U.S. history.
More than 3,200 events are planned in all 50 states and several cities outside the U.S. The two previous No Kings events attracted millions of participants.
Singers Bruce Springsteen and Joan Baez will headline a rally at the state capitol in Minnesota, where upward of 100,000 people are expected to gather in an area that became a flashpoint over Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration and the incursion of federal immigration agents into Democratic-led urban centers.
Other large rallies are taking place in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, but two-thirds of the events are happening outside major city centers, a nearly 40% jump for smaller communities from the movement’s first mobilization last June, organizers said.
On the National Mall in Washington, the crowd chanted pro-democracy slogans and held anti-Trump signs. Outside one high-rise assisted-living center in Chevy Chase, Maryland, a group of elderly people in wheelchairs held signs encouraging passing cars to “Resist tyranny,” “Honk if you want democracy” and “Dump Trump.”
In Austin, Texas, a brass band provided the soundtrack as protesters gathered outside City Hall before a march through downtown.
Thousands gathered in midtown Manhattan, where actor Robert De Niro, one of the organizers, said that “there have been other presidents who have tested the constitutional limits of their power, but none have been such an existential threat to our freedoms and security.”
“The defining story of this Saturday’s mobilization is not just how many people are protesting, but where they are protesting,” said Leah Greenberg, co-founder of Indivisible, the group that started the No Kings movement last year and led planning of Saturday’s events.
The rallies come as Trump’s approval rating has fallen to 36%, its lowest point since his return to the White House, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
A spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee criticized Democratic politicians and candidates for supporting the rallies.
“These Hate America Rallies are where the far-left’s most violent, deranged fantasies get a microphone and House Democrats get their marching orders,” spokesperson Mike Marinella said in a statement.
MARCHING AHEAD OF MIDTERMS
With midterm elections later this year in the U.S., organizers say they have seen a surge in the number of people organizing anti-Trump events and registering to participate in deeply Republican states like Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and Utah.
Competitive suburban areas that have helped decide national elections are seeing “huge” increases in interest, Greenberg said, citing as examples Pennsylvania’s Bucks and Delaware counties, East Cobb and Forsyth in Georgia, and Scottsdale and Chandler in Arizona.
“Voters who decide elections, the people who do the door-knocking and the voter registration and all of the work of turning protests into power, they are taking to the streets right now, and they are furious,” she said.
In northern Virginia just outside Washington, D.C., several hundred people began gathering on Saturday close to Arlington National Cemetery before a planned march across the Potomac River to the capital city’s National Mall.
Some passing drivers honked their horns in support but others slowed down to berate the protesters.
“You’re all idiots,” one man shouted from his car.
John Ale, 57, a retired air-conditioning and heating contractor, said he drove 20 minutes from his home in Virginia to join the march.
“What’s happening in this country is unsustainable,” he said. “The middle class, the little people, can’t afford to live anymore. And he (Trump) is breaking the norms, the things that made us function as a country.”
A CALL TO ACTION AGAINST IRAN WAR
The No Kings movement launched last year on Trump’s birthday, June 14, drew an estimated 4 to 6 million people across roughly 2,100 sites nationwide. The second mobilization in October involved an estimated 7 million participants in more than 2,700 cities, according to a crowd-sourcing analysis published by prominent data journalist G. Elliott Morris.
That October event was largely fueled by a backlash against a government shutdown, an aggressive crackdown by federal immigration authorities, and the deployment of National Guard troops to major cities.
Saturday’s events come amid what organizers said was a call to action against the bombardment of Iran by the U.S. and Israel, a conflict that is now four weeks old.
Morgan Taylor, 45, attended the Washington protest with her 12-year-old son, and said she was enraged by Trump’s military action in Iran, which she called a “stupid war.”
“Nobody’s attacking us,” Taylor said. “We don’t need to be there.”
(Reporting by Tim Reid and Deborah Gembara in Washington, Brad Brooks in Colorado, Maria Tsvetkova in New York and Ryan Jones in Toronto; Editing by Sergio Non and Alistair Bell)
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