State College ‘No Kings’ rally draws hundreds, part of nationwide anti-Trump protest
Despite a steady rain Saturday that alternated between drizzle and a downpour, hundreds of protesters descended on downtown State College with signs and raincoats as part of a nationwide series of anti-Trump “No Kings” demonstrations.
The peaceful protest had been scheduled for 1 p.m. at the Allen Street Gates, and for about an hour, people filled that area and spilled along College Avenue, as well as the opposite side of the sidewalk. Residents stood shoulder-to-shoulder for about the length of a football field, from the bar Chumley’s to just past the clothing store Lions Pride. Some believed the attendance hovered around 1,000.
“This is the largest protest I’ve ever seen here,” added protester Melissa Deines, who said she moved to Happy Valley in 1970.
About 2,000 protests were planned across the U.S. as a “day of defiance” in opposition to what organizers see as President Donald Trump’s authoritarian overreach. Locally, in State College, the crowd remained diverse — from schoolchildren to a few gray-haired attendees pushing walkers.
For about an hour, different rain-soaked attendees took turns sharing their stories and fears through a megaphone. One mother worried what might happen to her adult son with intellectual disabilities, after her death, if cuts to Medicare and Medicaid go through. A transgender person lamented the erosion of their rights. A high school senior expressed her desire to help the world — and then wondered aloud if research cuts might prove to be too big an obstacle to overcome.
“The list goes on,” said Matt Yarnell, president of SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania who brought the megaphone, when he discovered there was no audio equipment at the gates. “I really wanted to encourage people who came out just to share why they’re out here.”
The “No Kings” protests were scheduled shortly after Trump’s plans for a grand military parade were officially confirmed in early May. Saturday’s D.C. military parade, which featured thousands of U.S. service members, tanks and military aircraft flyovers, was supposed to honor the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary. It also coincided with Trump’s 79th birthday.
Some came downtown to oppose that parade, which was estimated to cost up to $45 million. Others opposed Trump’s hard-lined approach to immigration, what they saw as his contempt for the Constitution and/or his proposed budget cuts. But most everyone had a story and a reason for their attendance.
“Why am I here? Our country is in real serious trouble, and I don’t want to be silent,” local resident Lisa Maras said. “We’re backsliding on all the things that made us great. So I love my country. I’m a patriot right now. And we have tyrants in the White House; we have traitors in the White House.”
The crowd was so tightly packed near the gates that most protesters couldn’t open their umbrellas. Many, simply resigned to their fate, left the protest soaked from head to toe. Deines — who’s followed protests in Happy Valley for more than a half-century — tussled her wet, gray hair Saturday afternoon and joked it would be easier if she were bald.
But, rain or shine, she said she wouldn’t have missed it. Although the rain wasn’t great for her hair, she added the protest was good for the soul.
“This crowd is a shot in the arm,” Deines said. “... It’s very easy for folks to get depressed or feel helpless. But when you come to something like this, you’ve got that feeling of, ‘I’m not by myself.’ You share some degree of enthusiasm, energy and outrage — and those are three good qualities at the moment.”
The crowd was so large that it wasn’t unusual for two separate chants to start at different ends of the protest. Speakers on the megaphone also couldn’t be heard by everyone. But numerous protesters like Deines commented on that feeling of unity, and plenty of signs reinforced the reasons they were there — such as ones that read “Resist like it’s 1938 Germany,” “America has no kings” and “Happy birthday, Old Donnie TACO!”
The protest came together despite minimal local planning. The national group Indivisible largely organized “No Kings,” but the Centre County chapter — Keystone Indivisible — and other local groups agreed to combine with Blair County’s chapter to hold a protest in Hollidaysburg. (They didn’t want to interfere with the downtown’s all-day Juneteenth celebration Saturday.)
But a group of friends, who anticipated standing at the Allen Street Gates anyway, decided to post their plans online and invited others to join them. They had more than 340 RSVPs by Thursday evening, with hundreds more showing up Saturday. (More than 500 showed up to Hollidaysburg, an organizer said.)
The State College protest limited itself to the public sidewalk, not the streets. And it ended without incident by 2 p.m., when a previously scheduled Ukraine rally took over at the gates. Those celebrating Juneteenth on South Fraser Street also said the event didn’t interfere, as enough distance existed between the two events that the sound didn’t carry.
“I’m not surprised at the number of people, but I have never seen this level, or this volume, of people out for an event like this,” said State College Mayor Ezra Nanes, who said he wanted to stand in solidarity with the protesters. “The rain does not matter. People are out there because they care about this.”
