By Sarah Whites-Koditschek | swhites-koditschek@al.com
Protesters in Birmingham joined the nationwide “No Kings” rallies Saturday to challenge policies of the Trump administration. Some held homemade signs. Others wore blow up animal costumes or revolutionary war attire to cheer on speakers and march.
“The No Kings movement stands against government overreach, political excess and corruption and the erosion of democratic values,” said the Rev. Julie Conrady of Birmingham’s United Universalist Church to a large crowd that covered much of the grassy center of Railroad Park Saturday.
Deborah Robinson, 65, of Mountain Brook said this was her first protest. She had thought of going to rallies at different points in her life but had been afraid. This moment feels historic to her, she said.
“If I could change one thing, I would get Trump out of office immediately,” said Robinson, a former pediatric nurse. “He seems to be a lot more blatant with his attempts to destroy our democracy and he appears to want to be a dictator.”
Stuart Caper, 78, of Cahaba Heights is a former UAB public health professor. He said he’s very bothered by Trump sending federal troops into cities. Caper is a former CDC employee and feels the agency has been “decimated.” He worries about disease outbreaks.
“They’re the ones that track it down and without them these things will just blow up, you know, just continue until they’re much larger and hurt many more people than they really need to.”
Former U.S. Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., criticized the Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., for hypocrisy in claiming to uphold freedom of speech but calling the “No Kings” protests “hate rallies.”
“We have the greatest country in the world, and you are here today to defend it. And we can’t ever let that fight. We can’t let that hope die inside us,” he said. “We cannot let that hope be put out by anybody.”
Stephanie May, 45, of Homewood, wore a T-shirt promoting the rights of transgender children. She said a friend of hers has a transgender daughter and she feels the government is taking parents’ rights to raise their kids as they see fit.
She said her biggest concern though is that President Trump has publicly stated ambivalence about the U.S. Constitution.
“Trump has said that he doesn’t know if he needs to uphold the Constitution, so that would be most concerning.”
Ashley Kauhn, 48, of St. Clair County, said she is a lifelong Democrat. She is a stay-at-home mom and her husband works in a steel plant. She worries that health insurance premiums will “go through the roof” when Obamacare subsidies end next year. And she is alarmed by the administration’s anti-immigrant tactics.
“When you’re snatching people up at their hearings, at their legal hearings, waiting for them outside the courtroom, when you are snatching productive citizens off the streets, off of their jobs, that not only hurts those people and their families, it goes against the Constitution.”
