By Clarice McKenney
Saturday’s grass roots No Kings protest of the current presidential administration on the Bonners Ferry Bridge was part of our country’s largest-ever public demonstration. The 57 of us waving to drivers and holding handmade signs was almost twice as big as the June No Kings rally held here, and there were similar increases in the size of the crowds, which are estimated to have been between seven and eight million U.S. citizens, spread throughout all 50 states.
Whereas during the last demonstration on the bridge, when there had been disrupting counter protesting, this time there was almost none of that.
Last time, half a dozen armed men and women angrily marched through our volunteers. One armed man rudely and disrespectfully put his finger in the face of a volunteer in her 80s and verbally assaulted her. At least half a dozen pickup trucks drove close to the protestors and belched black exhaust smoke over the crowd.
Rally coordinators Saturday credit Bonners Ferry Police Chief Willie Cowell and Boundary County Sheriff Travis Stolley for monitoring the event from a distance. The drivers of three trucks who tried to smoke out the protestor were pulled over by a sheriff’s deputy, precluding confrontation.
When a truck driver with his window rolled down threw the finger at a retired librarian in the group of protestors, she called to him, “Love you!”
The younger man to my right said, “Now, that’s a message straight from Jesus.”
Many others who attended expressed their wonder that there are so many folks in this little community who feel as they do against the policies and actions of Donald Trump.
In spite of loud, hateful and intimidating statements from the President and many of his Republican allies in Congress, more demonstrators participated this time. The courage of all of those who were defending their right to free speech on the bridge proved beyond doubt the fallacies of the man who seeks to be lyin’ king.
Way to go, Bonners Ferry!