Around 425 people gathered in downtown Spearfish on Oct. 18 to protest United States President Donald Trump as part of the nationwide No Kings protest.
The protest in Spearfish was one of over 2,700 peaceful protests nationwide that saw over 7 million people take to the streets to exercise their First Amendment rights.
“The President thinks his rule is absolute,” read a message on the No Kings website. “But in America, we don’t have kings – and we won’t back down against chaos, corruption, and cruelty.”
The cause spoke to people on either side of the political divide, including BHSU student Finn Schulte. Schulte was on the scene of the protest with several members of the BHSU Campus Democrats.
“I think it’s important to come together and show that we care, and to show that we’re not just gonna let all this affect us so much and not do anything about it,” Schulte said.
The Spearfish protest was coordinated by Angela Anderson, who has organized protests in the Black Hills area since May, and Indivisible, a progressive movement started in response to President Trump’s first term in 2016. Attendance was in line with Anderson’s expectations.
“For No Kings 2.0, we had 400 [people] and I think this one will have more, we’ll get a final count later,” Anderson said.
The event was organized as a way for local folks to come together in a unified, peaceful manner. Anderson acknowledged folks from outside the immediate area who were also in attendance.
“There’s people who came from Wyoming and other places to be here,” Anderson said. “There’s people visiting who say, ‘Oh, is there one around?’ and are joining us.”
One of the protesters from outside the Black Hills was a woman from Sioux Falls. She agreed to an interview but wished to remain anonymous.
“I’m in town babysitting my grandchildren for two weeks, and I can’t be in Sioux Falls, so I’m here,” she said.
The woman explained that she isn’t normally politically active but attended the event because “the state of our country and the state of our democracy” made her want to do something.
Mike Johnson, the U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives, called the No Kings protest held in Washington, D.C., “the hate America Rally.” Johnson and others have called the protests anti-American.
“It’s all the pro-Hamas wing and the Antifa people, they’re all coming out,” Johnson said. Antifa is an antifascist movement, but it is not the large, well-funded organization that Johnson and like-minded Republicans make it out to be. Organizer Anderson spoke of the allegations of paid agitators that the movement has faced.
“On social media, in the news, that we’re paid, that we’re bussing people in, that we’re part of Hamas and Antifa, Anderson said. “Well, really, Antifa is basically anti-fascist, so maybe everyone should be anti-fascist.”
House Speaker Johnson said that the movement would “Bring together the Marxists, the socialists, the Antifa advocates, the anarchists, and the pro-Hamas wing of the far-left Democrat Party,” but the protestors on the scene were clearly different than Johnson’s claims.
One of the protesters in attendance was Ariel Hammercrest, a budget analyst with the state government. Like many others, her reasons for protesting pertained to the alarming actions taken by the federal government in recent months.
“It’s not an issue of ‘conservative [or] liberal,’ it’s an issue of, ‘Do you believe in democracy at all or do you not?’” Hammercrest said.
Sweeping federal budget cuts have cost tens of thousands of Americans their jobs and cut vital funding to programs that millions of Americans depend on, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, and the Department of Education. Cuts to these programs do not discriminate based on political affiliation but instead affect Americans on both sides of the aisle.
“I care about government,” Hammercrest said. “I think that government exists to serve the people, to improve our communities and improve lives, and right now that’s not what it’s doing.”
She noted that she has friends who were furloughed by the federal government in the wake of the, at the time of writing, ongoing government shutdown. She said that state governments and even local governments could also be affected by the cuts.
“So, there is the possibility of me losing my job, either one from speaking out or two, due to federal cuts,” Hammercrest said.