No Kings

Scenes from the No Kings protest at the Austin Capitol on Saturday. It was hot and crowded and did I mention hot? I rounded up a van full of friends and we went for it anyway. My 17yo even came along for his first political event.

"Give me your tired, your poor..." and "Hold my hoops"

Lots of Mexican representation:

Sometimes I'm a little petty; what can I say?

"No Kings, No Tyrants, No Gestapo"

Loads of signs with "Abolish ICE", plus an excellent Cheeto Puff in chief

After a while, the crowd felt a bit too close, so we walked the perimeter of the grounds. 

It was a relaxed feel, more spread out but still tons of people. I saw one claim that the total attendance was around twenty thousand.

The cops we encountered were calm and friendly.

Perfectly nasty women

Hideous, friendless, and so very terrible at his job

"Don't confuse our rage for hate. This anger is rooted in love and humanity."

Brief detour for a couple signs I saw online, that were from other protests...

Our group had joked about waiting for our checks for being paid protesters. 

We saw a couple like this in Austin, too.

This one caught my middle schooler's eye, and we had an immature chuckle about it being captured on the MSNBC coverage:

Anyway, back to Austin.

Our group ranged in age from 17 to 84, and that was pretty representative of the crowd, too. 

A good day to exercise those ever more precarious rights. My son and I talked later about how it was actually kind of boring, just standing there in a crowd for a couple hours, not able to see the stage or even hear the speakers very well. But of course, boring is better than eventful in this case, and the point is that you just keep showing up and saying out loud, "I insist that we do better than this."