Thousands of people gathered peacefully outside Orlando’s City Hall for Saturday’s No Kings protest, in a colorful conflagration of rainbows, inflatables, and red-white-and-blue. They kicked off the event where multiple speakers decried the Trump administration and its policies with the Pledge of Allegiance and an impromptu dance party. Inflatable unicorns, chickens, and frogs bounced along to music that made the atmosphere feel light.
But attendees were drawn there for sober reasons and shared concerns about the future.
D.J., who would only give her initials for fear of retribution, said she and her family are seeing the consequences of President Donald Trump’s policies firsthand. “I have a brother-in-law who's in government, a scientist – now his grants and his work [are] being jeopardized. So it's greatly affected our family.”
D.J. said he still has a job, but his family is on edge and bracing for the worst, and that constant state of uncertainty is taking a toll. “You know, it's taxing not just on the moneymaker for the family or the homemaker for the family,” she added. “The children, that's trauma they're going to live with for the rest of their lives…it affects people for generations.”
Elsewhere in the crowd was Dennis Dowd, a disabled Navy veteran who served in the Vietnam era. “I'm troubled a great deal by how much the military, my old military, are involved in non-military, non-defense-of-our-country actions,” he said. Dowd was referencing the bombing attacks President Trump has ordered on Venezuelan boats the administrations said, without offering evidence, were carrying drugs into the US. “We said we’d defend democracy, not go around and kill people in other parts of the [world] because we think they were doing something they shouldn't do.”
Dowd fought back tears as he said he hopes more people speak out against these actions, but he understands why it’s hard. “People like me, in all fairness to other people, are really afraid to do anything. You know, I have a lot invested in society. I'm a disabled veteran. I get VA benefits and Social Security benefits, and I had a good life. And I worry that I'm afraid to make too much of a stir, because I might lose that.”
Amid the crowd of thousands of No Kings protesters were a handful of counter protesters, at a table with a sign reading “Prove Them Wrong” in a reference to slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s oft-used phrase, “Prove Me Wrong.”
Although the group was not formally affiliated with Kirk’s college campus group Turning Point USA, counter protester Matthew Floyd is a member of the UCF chapter. He said he was there to have discussions with No Kings attendees and perhaps find common ground, adding he thought he could see some both in the number of American flags in the crowd, and in the belief in the right to protest.
“I absolutely believe in the right to assemble, on the right, on the left, in the middle, no matter who you are. I believe in peaceful protests,” he said.
“I think the main difference between many of us is just that we have different ideas for, you know, for what this country should be like,” he said, “different core values… But at the end of the day, those of us who love this country and want to see it prosper, I think, I think we can find common ground in certain areas of politics.”
