No Kings rallies were held across the country and around the world Saturday. The protests against Trump administration policies drew thousands to Albert Johnson Park in Las Cruces.
Main and Picacho Streets in Las Cruces were lined with people Saturday morning. Triano was holding a sign that on one side said, “immigrants make America great.” And on the other side, “the only king I want is King Julian.”
“Yeah, we're out here protesting. There should be no kings in America. We should all have a fair say in what goes on in the government, even as citizens,” Triano said.
Former New Mexico State Representative Bill McCamley shared why he thought it was important for people to be there.
“America demands better. We demand better. And that's why we're out here making our voices heard in a very nonviolent, very positive, very energetic way today,” McCamley said.
Indivisible sponsored the event. Sherry Reinhart and Kelly Waggoner were representing the Indivisible Las Cruces chapter and were excited about the turnout.
“I am so full of chills. This is a huge turnout. I'm going to say, in my opinion, we've doubled what we did at the last Kings, No Kings,” Waggoner said.
“So at the last No Kings rally, we estimated about 1,500. We're thinking about, I'm thinking about 3,000 today. Yeah, so we like doubled our count. So, we were here at the No Kings 1, and we'll be here at the No Kings 3,” Reinhart said.
The day before the protest, we spoke with Janice Williams, chairwoman of the Republican Party of Doña Ana County. She expressed her thoughts on the protest, saying there are bigger problems in the county to be worried about.
“We have issues with cartels, smuggling, drugs across our borders all along I-10, human trafficking. We have problems with our wells in Hatch are drying up. We have problems with rents increasing here in the city of Las Cruces, over 25%,” Williams said. “These are the things that we need to be paying attention to, not these political theatrics that they hold with rallies such as this.”
Jane Asche, part of the Federation of Democratic Women of Doña Ana County, was at the protest. She expressed the importance of voting.
“Social justice is such an important issue to us, and we know that at this point in time, we have to stand for social justice for all people in our country,” Asche said.
This was the second No Kings protest to happen across the country. The last one happened on June 14th, which is President Trump's birthday
