Hundreds protest administration at Uniontown No Kings rally
The history of anti-Trump protests could be traced through the layers on Merrill Pearson’s sign.
“Every day, every hour, there’s a new issue to be bothered about,” said Pearson, of North Union Township.
The top message of the sign she held at Saturday’s No Kings protest in Uniontown invoked German pastor Martin Niemöller’s response about failing to speak up about the mounting brutality of Nazi Germany: “And then they came for me.”
“If we don’t have the democracy and the right to speak without being scared of being censored or worse, we can’t do anything else after that,” she said. “If people cannot speak out, it just falls like dominoes. So I have to start from there.”
Pearson and about 300 others waved signs at motorists, chanted back and forth and spoke out against the war in Iran, the detention of immigrants and a range of Trump administration actions at Saturday’s event, which began with a rally on the steps of the Fayette County Courthouse before a march down to the George C. Marshall Plaza.
The third installment of No Kings protests drew large crowds across the U.S. and Europe Saturday. The flagship march was held in the Twin Cities, where Renée Good and Alex Pretti were killed earlier this year in encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
Saturday’s Uniontown protest was organized locally by the Democratic Women of Fayette County, which holds protests at the Marshall Plaza or in Connellsville every Saturday.
“I wish they’d paid more attention in history class,” said Barbara Cortese of Connellsville, the group’s treasurer. “Too many people don’t seem to see what’s happening. And this lets me feel like I’m not alone, lets other people feel like they’re not alone.”
Organizers reported one attempt to disrupt the protest as they were setting up in the Marshall Plaza before the protest. The mood was generally supportive during the protest itself, with many drivers honking their horns as they drove past the lines of protesters on either side of the street.
Christine Buckelew of Uniontown came out to protest what she sees as democracy slipping away. She was also irked by his level of self-promotion (“everything needs to have his name on it”) and concerned about Trump using the office to enrich himself and his cronies.
“He is absolutely stealing everything in plain sight, and there isn’t the objection to stop him or even question him, and if they do it in the back rooms, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “He’s getting billions and billions of dollars, and he won’t stop until he gets a trillion out of this presidency.”
Jack Connor of Point Marion objected to Trump’s tax breaks for the wealthy and the lack of a check on Trump’s power by Congress.
“Donald Trump shouldn’t be able to do whatever he wants off a whim, wake up one morning and decide that he’s going to war with another country,” he said, referencing Trump’s comment on Friday that “Cuba is next.”
Andy Keener of Smithfield said he needed to use his privilege as a white man to speak out against what was going on in the administration.
“I think the immigration thing is just a complete farce, just going into courtrooms where these people are having immigration hearings and just dragging them out, separating those families from their children and each other,” he said.
Saturday’s protest started with a rally and several local figures and political candidates on the steps of the Fayette County Courthouse.
Fayette County Commissioner Vince Vicites called on those present to help register new Democratic voters to make a difference in the midterms and the next presidential election, and to move away from the havoc of Trump.
“In the end, he has taken women’s rights away, destroyed the institutions, the courts, justice, elections and the rule of law, turned America against Americans, humiliated us on the world stage, weakened our alliances while our enemies celebrate, and taken 250 years of democracy and treated it like his own personal property, and that’s why you just can’t hand over power to a guy like this — not in politics, not at work, not in your home, not anywhere,” he said.
Jo Ann Jankoski, associate professor of human development and family studies at Penn State Fayette, decried the developments on numerous fronts — the economic burdens of tariffs, the rollback of reproductive rights, voter access laws that could limit participation and Trump’s “excursion” in Iran.
She asked how future generations would remember them for choosing “hope and love over fear, community over isolation, and humanity over indifference.”
“We are not here just to resist,” she said. “We are here to rebuild, restore trust and to demand justice, to protect the most vulnerable among us, to strengthen the promise that this country made.”
As Democratic Women of Fayette County member MaryEllen Snyder began ringing a bell — more than 150 times, to honor both American soldiers killed in Iran and then more than 150 students and teachers killed by an American strike that hit an Iranian school — the crowd marched over to the Marshall Plaza, where they would spend the next two hours.
Near the end of Saturday’s protest, Keener hoped it and others like it would instill some fear in the Trump administration.
“I think they do a lot of stuff out of fear, and they want people to be afraid,” he said. “But by doing this, you just show that you’re not willing to sit by and let this stuff happen, and we the people have the power. We just need to believe that.”