A festive mood mingled with anxiety and resolve at the “No Kings” rallies in East Hampton Town and Sag Harbor Village on Saturday, a protest against the Trump administration that coincided with multiple events, including a parade ostensibly to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Continental Army, Flag Day, and the president’s 79th birthday.
The head-spinning news cycle of President Trump’s second term continues apace. The days leading up to Saturday’s rallies — some 2,000 such rallies took place nationwide, including in Southampton, Riverhead, and Orient — saw federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement raids and the abduction of suspected undocumented immigrants, often by masked men emerging from unmarked vehicles and bearing no identification, actions that spurred large and sustained protests in Los Angeles and elsewhere. In East Hampton and nearby municipalities, rumors of ICE raids spread on social media and through word of mouth, though they were later debunked.
The president’s move to take control of California’s National Guard, deploying 4,000 troops to Los Angeles as well as 700 United States Marines, purportedly to protect ICE agents and federal property, was met with California lawmakers’ accusations of provocation and usurpation of state authority. A Trump administration official suggested last week that Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass could face arrest. Last Thursday, Senator Alex Padilla of California was shoved, wrestled to the ground, and handcuffed by Secret Service agents as he tried to question the secretary of Homeland Security during a news conference.
Events further accelerated on Saturday as word of the assassination of a Minnesota state legislator, the murder of her husband, and the shooting of another state legislator and his wife — all of them Democrats — sent shock waves through the large crowds gathered at East Hampton Town Hall and John Steinbeck Waterfront Park in Sag Harbor.
“This is a protest about unlawful and cruel and unconstitutional actions that have been taking place repeatedly,” Katherine Stahl of People for Democracy East Hampton, a chapter of the Indivisible movement, said to the large crowd that gathered behind Town Hall. “Those who study autocracies tell us that the answer to this moment is the peaceful strategic organizing of everyday people. That’s us,” she said to cheers. “We’re not here to argue. We’re here to affirm.” This is important, she said, “because we’re going to need a lot of people . . . to protect the right to vote, to protect elections, and to bring more people into the fold.”
Citing a recently issued poll, she said that 64 percent of Americans opposed the military parade that took place in Washington, D.C., later on Saturday. It was ironic, she noted, that the Continental Army was formed “in order to free us from the tyranny of a mad king. Our military do not wish, and should not be called upon, to stand up against those who are their fellow citizens. It is unjust, it’s immoral, and a number of military folks have come out . . . to say this is just a terrible thing that’s been happening.”
Councilwoman Cate Rogers read from the Gettysburg Address, delivered by President Lincoln in 1863. “This was said by another Republican president in the past,” she said, later calling for a moment of silence in honor of those killed and wounded in Minnesota.
Those in the rain-soaked crowd that filled Steinbeck Park were largely locals, and a jovial, neighborly mood prevailed. A dark undercurrent ran through conversations, though, as people asked in lowered voices, “Did you hear what happened in Minnesota?”
Sag Harbor Village Police Chief Robert Drake said 225 people had registered for the protest but guessed there was nearly twice that number filling the park and spilling onto both sides of the Lance Cpl. Jordan Haerter Veterans Memorial Bridge. They held a multitude of signs, many using humor as a device to highlight serious concerns about what they say is the authoritarian bent of the president and his administration. One played off a song by the band Nirvana: “Smells like fascism.” Another pictured a toilet atop the words “The only throne Trump deserves.” Even dogs got into the act. Leashed though they were, they exercised their constitutional rights by wearing slogan-filled T-shirts.
“I think all of Sag Harbor is here,” Dale Larocca, the wife of a former village mayor, said as rain streamed down the sides of her hood.
Silas Marder stood behind a foldout table on which rested piles of signs. As participants entered the park, some would stop at the table, grab one, and move toward the bridge. “There’s a good vibe here,” he said as he held down a sign flapping in the wind. One woman returned one and took another. “I’m going to take this one out for a ride,” she said.
Across from Mr. Marder, in the middle of the park, a black sheet hung with the words “No Kings” in large white letters. It was a popular selfie and picture spot.
One difference between this protest and the “Hands Off” protests of early April was a greater concentration of young people. Still, the crowd skewed older and white. One Latino woman with two small children holding signs asked not to be quoted.
“No ICE, no kings! C’mon people, let freedom ring!” came the shouts from the bridge. A pickup truck full of Trump flags inched over the expanse and was booed lustily by the crowd before those gathered broke into a loud chant of “Shame! Shame! Shame!”
After the protesters cleared out, a man in an otherwise unmarked truck rolled down the driver’s-side window, held out his Trump hat, pointed at it, and said to two men standing in front of the windmill, “That’s right!”
In East Hampton, where an estimated 1,200 to 1,500 people gathered, a pickup truck adorned with flags including one bearing the message “Trump 45 & 47” drove back and forth on Pantigo Road, a chorus of boos directed at its driver, who stared straight ahead. The pickup was alone amid a slow procession of vehicles traveling in both directions, a majority of their occupants honking their horns in support and giving thumbs-up signals to the crowd lining the road, some even waving signs protesting the president and ICE.
“They’ve been really amazing,” one attendee, Kim Dempster, said of the passing motorists. “Like, 90 percent have beeped or fist-pumped.”
“It’s important for people to come out and respond to what’s going on with this crazy military-fascist parade,” Christopher Kelley, the East Hampton Democratic Committee’s campaign chairman and the longest-serving Democratic committeeman in Suffolk County, said of the parade in Washington. “I think people all over the country recognize that.”
A woman dressed in a lab coat who declined to give her name but said she is retired from a career in science lamented the gutting of funding for science. Funding for research for the National Institutes of Health “should not be optional,” she said. “This is for our future, it’s for our children’s future. We need funding for science, and we need pseudoscience to go away,” an apparent reference to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a conspiracy theorist, anti-vaccine activist, and the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, who last week dismissed all 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel.
“I came out today because I think the country and the world is in trouble with leadership,” said Norbert Weissberg of East Hampton. “What’s going on in Washington today is headed by a man who has the making of a criminal, and a corrupt person. I think that his designs are intentional to be authoritarian, to promote himself and the group around him, without the nation’s best interests at heart. I think it’s a terrible thing in the history of this country, and it needs to be attended to. That’s why we’re here in the rain, to protest his leadership.”
“We’re here to protest all the evils that Trump has inflicted on us,” added Nancy Posternak, “and to say that kings are not welcome in this country.”
Barbara Burnside, of People for Democracy East Hampton, said on Monday that a video conference with Indivisible officials was scheduled for that evening to discuss a next national day of protest. “It was wonderful to see how enthusiastic people were in spite of the weather,” she said of Saturday’s action. “I think it sent a message to all of us that we’re well supported and definitely not outliers in this community. There are a lot of people who are really fed up with what’s going on.”
“That’s a really important message about fear,” she added. “We don’t have to be afraid. We won’t be silenced.”
