Planned "No Kings" protests grow in number after LA militarization: report
NEW YORK, June 12 (Xinhua) -- About 2,000 protests and rallies featuring "No Kings" Day are planned with millions of Americans to turn out across the country on Saturday, nearly double that of the April 5 "Hands Off" protests that saw millions taking the streets in big and small cities nationwide, reported USA Today on Thursday.
Organizers say it is more important than ever to have a "national day of peaceful protest" following the decision by President Donald Trump to send in Marines and the National Guard to Los Angeles. "I think we will see the largest peaceful single day protests that this country has seen certainly since the first Trump term," said Indivisible cofounder Ezra Levin, one of the organizers.
The protests occur the same day as a parade to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army in Washington, D.C., which also falls on Trump's 79th birthday.
"The 'No Kings' Day protests were planned long before Trump called in the California National Guard to quell largely peaceful protests over immigration enforcement raids in Los Angeles," noted the report.
Still, there have been pockets of high-profile clashes with police in Los Angeles, leading California Governor Gavin Newsom to bring in extra state resources and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass to impose a curfew. Hundreds of people have been arrested, mostly for violating the curfew.
Protests have since spread across the country, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott has deployed the Texas National Guard to immigration enforcement protests there.
"Mobilizing military forces into American cities is going to be seen as an overreach, and it's going to be now met with a wave of peaceful, boisterous moms and dads and grandmas and kids and their dogs and families showing up, saying, 'we're not going to put up with this authoritarianism,'" Levin was quoted as saying.
On June 11, the White House said Trump is fine with peaceful protests during the military parade, walking back comments Trump made the day before that any protesters would be met with "very big force." That same day, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested that more national guard units could be deployed.
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