Organizers in Georgia want to channel momentum from Saturday’s latest “No Kings” protests into civic engagement heading into next year’s midterm elections.
After thousands of demonstrators marched through Atlanta to denounce the Trump administration Saturday, Andrea Young, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, said she wants to channel that energy toward engaging Georgians in state and local government.
“What we’re about is building the broadest possible coalition of people who are committed to a democratic system, and within that system you can work out policy differences,” she said. “But if we lose that system, then the only person who will get the policy they want will be the person in the White House.”
To help achieve that, Young said, the ACLU and other groups in the coalition are hosting town halls to inform voters about upcoming elections.
“We want people to cast an informed ballot,” she said.
Laura Judge of the Indivisible Georgia Coalition called Saturday’s rally and march an “entry point for people who have not always been politically active.”
Kieran Doyle, the North America research manager at the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, a nonpartisan organization that monitors political conflict across the globe, said there appears to be no sign of the movement slowing and people should expect future large-scale demonstrations nationwide.
“Organizers have succeeded in mobilizing millions of people across the country and have maintained much of the momentum from the previous No Kings demonstrations,” he wrote in an email to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Organizers claim more than 7 million people showed up at more than 2,700 events nationwide.
“This is no small feat, displaying widespread energetic opposition to the Trump administration, as well as a well-oiled infrastructure for protest organizing,” Doyle said. “The coalition of organizers seems to be standing strong.”
While the Atlanta demonstration was the state’s largest, there were dozens of smaller rallies across Georgia Saturday.
A group of DeKalb County residents held their own Saturday afternoon. Many of the demonstrators were in their 80s and 90s and walked from the nearby Clairmont Place senior living community.
“I’m just really bothered by the direction the country is going in,” said Doug Joyner, a retired social studies teacher who worked for three decades at Decatur High School. “It’s just not the way to govern.”
Joyner, 87, said he and dozens of other seniors from his community come out each Monday to protest the president’s policies. On Saturday, he held a sign that read “Restore the CDC.”
He said the president seems to have trouble telling the truth, and he questioned the integrity of those Trump has appointed to cabinet positions.
The Trump administration has made a series of provocative decisions since the first protests in June, including deploying the National Guard in major Democratic-led cities, slashing federal agencies, conducting large-scale immigration raids and laying off additional federal workers amid the ongoing government shutdown.
Saturday’s “No Kings” demonstration in Atlanta drew thousands of demonstrators, comparable to the turnout of the city’s June protest, but fell short of the massive crowds in other Democratic-led cities.
Early estimates for Atlanta’s demonstration ranged from more than 5,000 to more than 10,000, but it didn’t reach the turnout of some large cities across the country like New York and Chicago, where some estimates gauged turnout in the hundreds of thousands.
Judge of the Indivisible Georgia Coalition credits part of that disparity to the limited space organizers were able to obtain at the Atlanta Civic Center for holding the rally.
“It’s just really hard to get that number of people in one area,” she said.
After a back-and-forth between City Hall and organizers, officials approved a march from the Civic Center to Liberty Plaza.
Young of the ACLU of Georgia emphasized that “No Kings” protests occurred beyond Atlanta.
“We want people across the state to also make this statement in their own communities, because this is affecting everyone everywhere,” she said.
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