‘No Kings’ Georgia protests: Dispatches from Macon, Savannah and Athens

Here are their dispatches.

Credit: Joe Kovac Jr.

Credit: Joe Kovac Jr.

Macon: ‘A lot more of us than there are of them’

A few hundred protesters rallied without incident in a tree-lined park along Poplar Street, a main downtown thoroughfare in the Middle Georgia city.

They chanted at times, “Protect the Constitution!” and sang freedom songs. A few children played with bubbles.

The first 125 protesters who showed up in Macon were handed red clown noses. Anita Hayes, a former truck driver and pastor, sported one.

“I’m very concerned that we’re on a walk in this country that’s leading us away from everything that this country has stood for,” said Hayes, 67, who lives in Wilkinson County.

Karen Hatten, a nurse practitioner from Fort Valley, showed up toting a sign decorated with dog paws and a slogan she saw on the internet: “I’d rather be with my dog, but one of us has to fight fascism.”

“This is going to be the weekend,” Hatten, 67, said, “that is going to hopefully turn the tide, where people realize there’s a lot more of us than there are of them.”

Gary Simson, a law professor at Mercer University, carried a cardboard sign that bore a version of a Benjamin Franklin quote: “We must all hang together or we shall all hang separately.”

Simson, 75, said public voicings of discontent like the ones Saturday can be influential.

“Then I think our elected representatives will pay more attention,” Simson said. “We need our elected representatives to stand up. Congress has to start acting like it’s a branch of government.”

- AJC staff reporter Joe Kovac Jr.

Credit: Adam Van Brimmer

Credit: Adam Van Brimmer

Savannah: Citizens sit on the throne

The “No Kings” demonstration in Georgia’s oldest city drew more than 2,000 protesters, many of whom took turns sitting on a stage prop throne rented for the occasion.

The message? That the American people rule the United States.

Organizers emphasized the “We the people” theme throughout the gathering. No elected officials or other high-profile community leaders spoke. Instead, activists advocating for a number of causes — such as pro-democracy, pro-immigration, pro-LGBTQ — delivered short speeches in a city park adjacent to Savannah’s historic Bull Street Library just south of downtown.

After the speeches, most of the protesters marched a mile north to Forsyth Park, where they circled the park’s landmark fountain while chanting, “This is what democracy looks like.”

The demonstration ended about 90 minutes after it began with Kris Mecholsky, one of the protest’s organizers and the chair of the activist group Coastal Georgia for Democracy, telling attendees the “No Kings” effort is “a marathon where we have to keep the pressure up.”

He singled out coastal Georgia’s U.S. House member, Rep. Buddy Carter, R-St. Simons Island, as a Trump enabler and referenced Carter’s support for expanding an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Folkston to be the country’s largest.

“He’s known as Buddy Carter, but he’s no buddy to you, his constituents,” Mecholsky said. “Call his office. Let him know how you feel.”

The demonstration was peaceful and no protesters were arrested, according to the Savannah Police Department.

One veteran of Savannah protests, former Mayor Otis Johnson, lauded the demonstration and the diverse “cross section of Savannah residents” who attended. Johnson participated in the city’s civil rights movement as a young adult and in 1964 desegregated Savannah’s Armstrong State University, which today is part of Georgia Southern University.

- AJC staff reporter Adam Van Brimmer

Credit: Jim Thompson for the AJC

Credit: Jim Thompson for the AJC

Athens: ‘Lot of things that don’t seem like America’

Jammed storefront to storefront across the wide, block-long College Square pedestrian plaza, and in front of the University of Georgia’s iconic Arch, a large and diverse crowd in Athens stayed through a late Saturday afternoon downpour, chanting and waving signs at a peaceful “No Kings” protest.

An Athens-Clarke County police spokeswoman said there were no arrests and an estimated 1,000 people in attendance.

Two reporters estimated the crowd closer to 2,000.

Brenda Maggs Walsh, a resident of nearby High Shoals, said she was at “No Kings” because she “wanted to be part of the whole movement” challenging the actions of Trump and his administration. She wanted to be just “one more body” and “one more sign” in the movement.

A friend, Brenda Sloan, said she worries about the potential for citizens “to be afraid to speak out.” And, she added, today there are “a lot of things that don’t seem like America. ... I just want it to stop now.”

Elsewhere in the crowd, a younger protester, 21-year-old Jax Tucker, working toward a master’s degree in public health, said he worries that, in the Trump administration, a lot of basic research principles are being ignored.

Barb Burt of Indivisible Georgia District 10, one of the groups that organized the Athens “No Kings” event, said her organization wants “to make it clear to the Trump regime that they don’t have a mandate to do the things they’re doing.”

Also sponsoring the Athens event were the Athens-Clarke County Democrats and the Oconee County Democrats. Among the speakers was Michael Thurmond, a former Athens state legislator who also served as CEO of DeKalb County.

“If we will lock arms together, we are going to take this country back and give it to the people who built it,” Thurmond said.

- AJC freelance reporter Jim Thompson