As military groups prepare for weekend celebrations, ‘No Kings’ activists organize protests, including here in NC

Activists in hundreds of cities nationwide, including here in North Carolina, are planning anti-Trump protests on Saturday, June 14, under the banner of “No Kings.”

Military groups nationwide are planning celebratory events to commemorate the Army’s 250th anniversary while officials face off over whether thousands of soldiers and Marines should be used to quell protests in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, activists in hundreds of cities nationwide are planning their own showing on Saturday, June 14, under the banner of “No Kings.”

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[Editor’s Note: There are numerous protests planned across North Carolina Saturday. For an interactive map of them, go here.]

Dozens of like-minded rallies with anti-Trump administration sentiments were planned across the state Saturday, according to posts on social media.

The goal is to pull attention from a military parade in Washington, D.C., and instead bring attention to the joy of using Americans’ right to protest, said Nathan Derusha, director of operations for one activist group, 50501 Michigan.

His group and others, including the Troy Democratic Club and We The People Dissent, have rallies planned for Saturday in cities like Detroit, Lansing and Troy.

And there was an accompanying tagline for the Lansing rally for which Derusha’s group was one of the organizers: “Kick Out the Clowns.”

It follows numerous such rallies and protests since President Donald Trump took office again this year, and more recent ones nationwide following Los Angeles clashes.

By late Tuesday, activists gathered in a couple of dozen cities, including Atlanta, Boston and Dallas, with thousands reportedly amassing in Chicago and taking up several city blocks of Manhattan streets.

More protests, according to social media posts, were expected Wednesday, including one in Detroit at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office.

A coalition of labor unions, including the United Auto Workers, Service Employees International Union, and National Education Association, issued a petition demanding an “end to the assault on the right to organize and protest.”

A No Kings group has scheduled online meetings this week, including organizing sessions for Saturday — which is Flag Day — and training on how to “stand up for your rights.”

The group seems to be adopting the language of the American colonists.

Thomas Paine — who wrote the Revolutionary War pamphlet “Common Sense” urging colonists to break free from British rule — used the words “no kings” and denounced the monarchy, which he associated with tyranny.

Police and California National Guard officers sent by the president confront protesters June 9 outside a federal building in Los Angeles.

While Trump has said military troops are needed in L.A., to “make sure there is going to be law and order,” protesters are framing their actions as resistance to an unconstitutional presidential power grab.

Even if there is no violence this weekend in Michigan, the clashes elsewhere — both physical and political — are creating a confounding context for local and national celebratory events set to unfold throughout the next year.

On Friday morning, high school students in Detroit seeking to serve in the military are set to raise an American flag at the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center, and in the evening, the Association of the United States Army is throwing a formal ball.

For Detroiters old enough to remember, what’s unfolding in L.A. brings up bad memories.

In 1967 and 1968, National Guard troops were mobilized in separate incidents when protests, then referred to as riots, turned deadly. In both cases, however, Michigan’s governor — not the president — deployed the soldiers.

More recently, toward the end of Trump’s first term as president, protesters took to the streets in multiple Michigan cities to march against racial injustice and police brutality after George Floyd, a Black man in Minnesota, was killed by a white police officer.

In Grand Rapids, the protests turned violent, with demonstrators busting windows and setting fire to cars and government offices. In Detroit, residents and police were on edge for months as the protests unfolded daily. Police and protesters clashed multiple times, and the city ended up paying out a $1 million settlement amid a lawsuit from protesters over police tactics. Police leadership denounced the move and overwhelmingly stood behind the actions of its officers.

The Detroit Police Department, when asked about current protests, said that if anything arose that required a public safety response, it would act.

Derusha said his group’s work and that of their partners are “explicitly” nonviolent and even planned to be family-friendly. His organizers in Lansing have been in touch with local and state police; there have been numerous trainings done on de-escalating protests and lots of conversation around it, given the incidents in L.A., he said.

Those clashes in L.A. are meant as a scare tactic by the government, he said. The activist events are focused on coming together and building community.

“It’s an attempt to give levity and redirect to joy,” he said.

Organizations, including the No Kings website, have encouraged protesters to keep their actions out of Washington, D.C.

On Saturday, the Army’s 250th birthday, the Army is holding what Trump has called a “big beautiful parade” in Washington, D.C., with tanks and other military vehicles set to roll along the National Mall.

On Tuesday, the Republican president said in the Oval Office that during the parade, demonstrators would be met with “very heavy force.” Later, at Fort Bragg in North Carolina he added “we will liberate Los Angeles,” describing protests there as a “foreign invasion.”

Some politicians have characterized the parade as a display of force more associated with a dictatorship than a democracy. And some protesters pointed out Saturday is Trump’s 79th birthday, raising the question whether the celebration is for America or the president.

Marines prepare to depart for Los Angeles.

Deploying the Marines

To stop protests in California, Trump federalized 4,000 National Guard troops.

And, in an even more unusual move, he deployed 700 Marines to Los Angeles, where television news has shown confrontations between protesters and police that have included burning cars and rubber bullets.

Meanwhile, California Gov. Gavin Newsom — who has called the use of troops a presidential “abuse of power” and a “step toward authoritarianism” — is arguing in court that Trump and other federal officials are violating the Constitution.

The Democratic governor accused Trump of “intentionally causing chaos, terrorizing communities, and endangering the principles of our great democracy” and attempting to “usurp state authority.”

Newsom called Trump’s order unprecedented, adding that the “military presence inflamed the very protest and violence it was supposedly meant to suppress” and in a speech Tuesday, said “we do not want our streets militarized by our own armed forces.”

James Mattis, a retired four-star Marine Corps general and secretary of defense during Trump’s first term, released a statement criticizing the use of the military as a “bizarre photo op,” adding that “keeping the public order rests with civilian state and local leaders.”

So far, in cities outside L.A., the protests against the president’s immigration crackdown have reportedly led to some arrests. They have been described in news accounts as mostly nonviolent, but with crowds that appear to be growing.

2 views of patriotism

The different perspectives of the Trump protests and the Army events that have been planned present conflicting political views and perhaps opposing concepts of what American patriotism means.

The Army events — including the Detroit ball, which is set to feature a Vietnam draftee who was awarded a Medal of Honor for saving the lives of other soldiers — are seeking to celebrate two and a half centuries of national service.

The No Kings activists, however, are attempting to recast those events as personal tributes to Trump, a leader who they say has “authoritarian aspirations,” and counter them with hundreds of local protests, large and small.

Trump, when questioned during his first term as president in 2020 about tamping down protests, in his own words, noted the law did not allow his administration to “call in the National Guard unless we’re requested by a governor.”

But on Monday, Trump defended his actions, calling Newsom an “incompetent governor.”

Retired Brig. Gen. Michael McDaniel, a Cooley Law School professor and former Pentagon official, in his own statement, said the deployment of thousands of National Guard and Marines was improper.

Some have also suggested Trump’s law-and-order rhetoric is inconsistent.

In January, he pardoned and commuted the sentences of those convicted of offenses related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. He described them as “patriots” and called the charges against them “a grave national injustice.”

The No Kings protesters, however, are attempting to turn Trump’s appeal to patriotism and revolution on its head, suggesting that they — not the current administration — are more like the colonists who signed up to join the Continental Army.

“They’ve defied our courts, deported Americans, disappeared people off the streets, attacked our civil rights, and slashed our services,” the group posted on its website. “The corruption has gone too. far. No thrones. No crowns. No kings.”

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect