Minnesota Prairie Roots

I AM AN AMERICAN, a Minnesotan, a resident of Rice County and the city of Faribault. I am a writer, photographer, blogger, poet. I am a wife, mother, grandmother. And I am also a protester.

On Saturday I joined millions across the country and world participating in NO KINGS rallies in my fourth protest since June 14. I care about America. I love America. But I don’t like what’s happening here under the Trump administration, which is eroding our democracy and taking, or attempting to take, away our rights, freedoms and, oh, so much more by authoritarian rule, force, threats, retribution, control, manipulation…

I refuse to remain silent at a time such as this. So I exercised my rights to free speech and freedom of peaceful assembly under the First Amendment to the Constitution by participating in a protest in neighboring Northfield along with a thousand or more others. We packed Ames Park along the Cannon River and lined the east side of Minnesota State Highway 3 for a block to listen to speakers, to share our concerns, to hold protest signs high, to hear plans of action, to sing and pray and reflect, and to engage in conversation.

At times throughout the 1 ½-hour event, I protested next to a Vietnam War veteran, a mechanic, a retired professor of Spanish and Latin American literature (also a poet), a retired college office employee, a retired engineer, a retired elementary school teacher… I also mingled among countless others there for the same reason—to protest. To express our concerns about healthcare, education, the economy, immigration, due process, freedom of speech, a free press, free and fair elections, government funding cuts, the presence of military in our cities, the balance of power, the judiciary, the overreach of power, clean energy… The list goes on and on.

I saw a baby strapped to his/her mom. Kids on shoulders. Kids with signs. Young people of high school age and early adulthood. Those in their middle years. Those in their sixties, like me. And those even older, some probably pushing ninety. The turn-out for this protest was even bigger and more diverse age-wise than the one in June in Northfield on the date Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Doug, were assassinated.

To be among this group of peacefully protesting concerned Americans during the NO KINGS rally felt empowering. Uplifting. We were unified in our movement, even as one speaker pointed out that we may not agree on everything. Another termed what’s unfolding in America today as not “normal.” It is not, and should not be, normal. Ever.

Support from motorists passing by was overwhelmingly positive with honking horns and waves. Of course, we got a few middle fingers and intentionally roaring, racing vehicles. Only once did I feel unsafe—when a car sped by at a dangerously high speed, the driver clearly attempting to antagonize and threaten us. That was the only overt hatred I witnessed.

Those of us peacefully gathered did not, as some Republican politicians adamantly and wrongly stated, come because we hate America. Far from it. We love America. That was clear in the peaceful tone of the event, in American flags waving, in recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, in singing of the national anthem, in signage, in our desire to uphold the Constitution, in our genuinely deep concern about the state of our country under President Donald Trump. In our voices rising. Loud. And free.

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