Tens of thousands of people gathered in Chicago on Saturday for No Kings rallies, defending democracy and denouncing the Trump administration’s authoritarianism.
Even more protestors convened across the western suburbs, including in Forest Park. The Forest Park No Kings rally coordinator Tom Holmes, a longtime columnist for the Review, estimates that nearly 200 people packed Constitution Court on June 14.
Mayor Rory Hoskins and Commissioner Michelle Melin-Rogovin were present, and both U3 and Caffe De Luca brought out beverages to protestors.
Most protestors brought homemade signs with them. Throughout the afternoon, dozens of cars passing by honked their horns in support. Two drummers kept the beat as attendees chanted, “Hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go.”
They “spilled over onto the sidewalks outside Louie’s Grill and U3 Coffee to protest what they considered to be Trump’s overreach regarding the Executive Branch and his deportation of migrants without due process,” Holmes said.
Holmes added that, several weeks ago, a comment that David Brooks made on the PBS News Hour hit a nerve. Brooks said the founding fathers intended for the three branches of government to be checks and balances for each other.
“But if one party controls all three branches, there is a ‘fourth branch,’” Holmes said of what he heard Brooks say. That branch is the American voters.
Holmes said he was surprised by the number of such voters who came to the No Kings event in Forest Park. When he included his email at the end of his column in the May 21 edition of the Review and asked who would join in a demonstration, he received eight affirmative responses.
“The seed I planted will have borne fruit if 20 people show up,” Holmes said he thought to himself. “I was stunned by the size of the turnout.”