Winchester protesters rally to defend democracy

While President Donald Trump was in Kentucky Saturday to sup­port Republican can­di­dates for Congress, thou­sands of peo­ple gath­ered at No Kings ral­lies across the com­mon­wealth to protest the pres­i­dent they say is gov­ern­ing more like a monarch. 

“He’s a tyrant!” Pat Hodge of Winchester said as she and Jennifer Kennedy held home-made signs in front of the Clark County Courthouse. 

Hodge said she was upset with the pres­i­dent for the way he is treat­ing Ukraine as that coun­try defends itself against Russian aggression. 

“He’s threat­en­ing to do what­ev­er he wants,” she said. 

Kennedy said she is “tired of the cor­rup­tion,” and her anx­i­ety lev­el is worse since Trump took office a sec­ond time. She feels “less safe now” than she did under President Joe Biden. 

“I didn’t agree with every­thing Biden did, but I didn’t feel like I had to reach for my phone each morn­ing to see if the world was blow­ing up,” she said. 

Kennedy, who works for a Canadian com­pa­ny and is the daugh­ter of an immi­grant from England, said she doesn’t like the way Trump is behav­ing toward America’s allies, and she finds his treat­ment of undoc­u­ment­ed peo­ple, even for­eign­ers who are here legal­ly, “appalling.” 

Across the street, Bob Ford and Steve Crites held up a large No Kings ban­ner so peo­ple dri­ving by on Main Street could see it. 

“We’re stand­ing up for democ­ra­cy” and the rule of law, which “Trump is ignor­ing,” Ford said. 

American democ­ra­cy con­sists of three branch­es of gov­ern­ment — the exec­u­tive, the leg­isla­tive, and the judi­cial — but the sys­tem isn’t work­ing, Ford explained. 

“He’s rul­ing by exec­u­tive order. Our leg­is­la­ture isn’t work­ing because they’re use­less,” he said, refer­ring to Congress, which is con­trolled by Republicans “who are not stand­ing up to him.” 

“Everybody’s doing what he wants them to do,” he said. 

Many dri­vers honked their horns in sup­port of the pro­test­ers, but as Ford was speak­ing, a young man hang­ing out a back win­dow of a car yelled at the pro­test­ers and made an obscene gesture. 

Chris Hughes, who stood on the high side of Main Street with his wife, Bailey, held a card­board sign with a no-swasti­ka symbol. 

Asked whether he was imply­ing that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion was fas­cist, Hughes answered: “The type of peo­ple who are embold­ened by the admin­is­tra­tion are peo­ple like the Patriot Front, who lit­er­al­ly have the fasces as their sym­bol,” he explained, ref­er­enc­ing an alt-right, white suprema­cist group that split off from the neo-Nazi group Vanguard America. 

In front of the cour­t­house, a young man dressed in a Captain America cos­tume, who wouldn’t give his name, led some in the crowd to repeat a chant he had writ­ten, which end­ed with a line about shoot­ing the president. 

A woman who was dis­pleased with his attempt at dark humor said the protest was sup­posed to be pos­i­tive and friend­ly, but “that young man seems to have lost the plot.” 

A woman at the ral­ly also wore a T‑shirt that includ­ed an obscene word fol­lowed by Trump’s name.

Chelsea Kirk, a Democratic can­di­date for state rep­re­sen­ta­tive, dis­tanced her­self from some of that language. 

“I nev­er sup­port any type of polit­i­cal vio­lence. I think some of the stronger lan­guage is a lit­tle bit — it’s not some­thing I would say per­son­al­ly,” she said. 

But she added that she sup­ports the right of cit­i­zens to gath­er and demon­strate peacefully. 

Unlike ear­li­er No Kings demon­stra­tions, the No Kings Day of Action was intend­ed to focus on vot­ing. In some states, there were vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ves, but in Kentucky, Oct. 5 was the last day to register. 

There was, how­ev­er, a sign-up sheet for those who need a ride to their vot­ing place on Election Day and anoth­er one for peo­ple who want­ed to offer to dri­ve vot­ers to the polls. 

There were also peti­tions to reg­u­late Flock cam­eras and data centers. 

And the Rads, a group of local vol­un­teers, had a food dri­ve at the cour­t­house to feed hun­gry people. 

“Voting is a great place to start,” how­ev­er, “get­ting involved in things going on in the com­mu­ni­ty” is also impor­tant, Kirk said. 

Adam Johnson, one of the orga­niz­ers of the No Kings protests in Winchester, said peo­ple could also check on their vot­ing loca­tion at the rally. 

“We’re kind of view­ing it as a com­mu­ni­ty resource fair,” he said. “It’s our Day of Action. I think we’ve got about fifty or six­ty peo­ple on a cold, drea­ry day, so we’re hap­py to get peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate in things that we think matter.” 

It is esti­mat­ed that nation­wide, about sev­en to eight mil­lion peo­ple attend­ed No Kings protests Saturday, includ­ing near­ly 40 protests in Kentucky. 

In-per­son absen­tee vot­ing at the cour­t­house, for those who have qual­i­fy­ing rea­sons to be away on Election Day or dur­ing ear­ly vot­ing, is Oct. 21–23 and 26–28. Early vot­ing with­out an excuse is Oct. 29–31, and the polls are open on Election Day from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.