By Liam Niemeyer and Jamie Lucke
Kentucky Lantern
Thousands of Kentuckians turned out Saturday in cities large and small to warn that democracy is under threat from what they say is autocratic rule by President Donald Trump and his administration.
The demonstrations were part of “No Kings” protests across the nation on Flag Day and before a military parade in Washington, D.C., over which Trump presided on his 79th birthday.
In Louisville, crowds hoisting homemade signs gathered in front of city hall and marched through downtown as police blocked traffic. Andrew Schmidt, 46, who identified himself as an Army veteran and retired police officer from Vine Grove, wore his field uniform and carried a U.S. flag. He said he loves the flag and was holding it upside down to express his conviction that the country is in distress.
“It is your duty to honor your oath, and I feel like I’m doing that now as a retired officer and as a veteran,” Schmidt told the Lantern. “That oath is to the Constitution first and foremost, and it is also to defend the American public against enemies, foreign and domestic. Well, I feel we’re at the ‘domestic’ part right now.”
In Lexington, protesters spilled out of the Robert F. Stephens Courthouse Plaza onto sidewalks along Main and adjoining streets, chanting “No kings. No crowns. We, the people, won’t back down.” Passing motorists joined in with a cacophony of car horns.
Dr. Craig Blair, a Lexington veterinarian and leader of Peaceful Bluegrass Resistance, estimated the crowd in Lexington at 5,000.
Blair said his group has held 86 small roadside protests since February “to keep the news of the day in front of people” and participated in several larger protests. He said Saturday’s gathering was the largest and most diverse yet. “That’s been the big difference today because we’ve not had immigrant or minority participation in our previous rallies.”
Kim Edwards, a founder of the Lexington group Gathering for Democracy, agreed Saturday’s protest was the most diverse crowd yet, including more young people. Her group handed out information about actions to take as an “antidote to despair” and displayed a copy of the Declaration of Independence.
“It’s really exciting to see so many people who are interested in democracy and who are standing up and fighting for democracy,” Edwards said.
The national “No Kings” organizers, led by the
50501 Movement
, say people across the country gathered at more than 1,500 demonstrations Saturday. In Kentucky, protests were planned in multiple towns, including Bowling Green, Owensboro, Frankfort, Hazard, Morehead, Richmond, Madisonville, Shelbyville, Paducah and Ashland, according to the organizers’ national “No Kings” website.
‘A sense of community’
The protests were on the same day as a military parade in Washington D.C. taking place on the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary and Trump’s 79th birthday. The military parade, featuring thousands of soldiers and dozens of tanks and planes, is expected to cost the Army $25 million to $45 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Sophie Graf, a 50501 Movement organizer, said organizing groups estimated the turnout in Louisville at more than 5,000 people. Louisville police put the crowd at about 4,000.
Among them was Isabella Herrera, 25, who moved to Louisville from south Texas. She said she has friends at home who are afraid to go out during the day for fear of being targeted by immigration enforcement simply for appearing Hispanic. She said it was encouraging to see the large gathering opposing the Trump administration.
“It’s not only me that feels this way, it’s a shared feeling,” Herrera said. “It gives a sense of community.”
Denouncing the recent crackdown by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and advocating for law-abiding undocumented immigrants were common threads.
As a steady but brief rain fell, one of the first Lexington speakers, the Rev. Brian Chenowith, minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church, said “this is a time for truth, for denouncing authoritarianism.” Chenowith decried as “evil” the Trump crackdown that he said is separating families and deporting without due process immigrants who have worked for decades in service and other jobs.
Chenowith ended his speech by pulling out a Mexican flag, saying, “I defy you, Donald Trump.” Chenowith explained Trump had labeled protesters displaying Mexico’s flag in Los Angeles as insurrectionists.
Afterwards, he told the Lantern “the president and his people were the ones who actually had an insurrection, brought swastikas and Confederate flags into our nation’s Capitol. It’s not an act of insurrection to be proud of your heritage, to be proud of your neighbors’ heritage from Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean or beyond. In Kentucky, we should celebrate Latino and Hispanic folks because a significant part of the industries that make Kentucky what it is rely on immigrants.”
JP Lyninger, a Louisville Metro Council member and Democratic Socialist, told the Louisville crowd that “facism is here and that we have to fight back.”
“We’ve got a political movement in control of the White House that goes after immigrants. We’ve got a political movement in the administration that’s going after union leaders, a political movement that’s against women’s rights and queer rights, a movement that wants to stop us from engaging in civil democracy and expressing our opinion,” Lyninger said.
Teen’s detention sparks ‘outrage’ in Bowling Green
In Bowling Green, Tom Morris, an organizer with SOKY Indivisible, estimated at least 1,000 people, maybe as many as 2,000, turned out. The detention of a Kentucky teenager, Ernesto Manuel-Andres, by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had
sparked community protests in the Warren County seat earlier in the week.
“There’s a lot of outrage,” Morris said. “From what everyone understands, he was legally here and they had no right to take him. People feel like they were just trying to reach a quota. A lot of people know him; he had just graduated from high school. Adults say he’s a good kid. It really brought it home. It’s dawning on some people, hey, this isn’t far away, this isn’t LA, this is here.”
Louisville resident Kristen Lisanby, 34, told the Lantern the “No Kings” event in Louisville was her first protest. She said friends in Louisville have told her about people who have been “deported” from their workplaces. “We just want to make sure that we’re here, heard here hopefully,” Lisanby said.
Graf, a 50501 organizer, said the plan by the group is to keep demonstrating to show unity in opposition against actions by the Trump administration but to also pressure local officials to stand against “what the federal government is imposing on cities across the U.S.”
Elected officials at the Louisville protest included Democratic state senators David Yates and Karen Berg, both of Louisville, and U.S. Rep. Morgan McGravey of Louisville.
In Lexington, writer Silas House, a former state poet laureate, addressed the crowd.
Blair, one of the Lexington protest organizers, said “the right tries to paint us as un-American. We wouldn’t be out here if we weren’t patriots. We’re fighting because we love the country.”
Blair said the founding fathers enacted the U.S. Constitution to prevent the rise of autocratic rule in the U.S. “It’s worked for 250 years. I’m not going to let Trump tell me he’s got a better idea.”
Kentucky Lantern
is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions:
.