On Saturday, June 14, rural communities showed up to protest against the Trump Administration in the largest day of protest to date.
According to a Daily Yonder analysis, at least 600 rural communities protested across the country on that day, with at least one rural protest held in every state except New Jersey, Delaware, and Rhode Island.
The “No Kings” protests were the largest protests to date in most rural communities, bigger in scale than the “Hands Off” protests held in April and the several nationally organized protests held since.
According to data collected by We the People Dissent and analyzed by the Daily Yonder, out of those 600 rural protests, 391 self-reported attendance numbers with a low and high estimate. The low total estimate of those 391 reported attendees was 192,932, and the high estimate landed at 242,315, which is still likely a low estimate given how many towns and counties held protests but did not report attendance to We the People Dissent.
At least 355 of those rural protests broke local records for protest attendees, including one in Bluefield, West Virginia, which held its very first public protest ever. The largest protests were held in Traverse City, Michigan, with between 7,000 and 8,000 attendees, and Concord, New Hampshire, with between 5,000 and 8,000 people in attendance.
The Daily Yonder defines rural using the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) list of Metropolitan Statistical Areas. Merrimack County, where Concord is the county seat, is a nonmetropolitan, or rural, area with a population of 157,000.
Seven rural areas held protests with single-digit attendance rates, including one single protester in Hamburg, Arkansas, and Loogootee, Indiana. Elwood, Indiana, and Waitsfield, Vermont, both reported six protesters.
The “No Kings” protests began in response to Trump’s plan to hold a parade on the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, which coincided with his birthday.
Over 700 people showed up in Cortez, Colorado, population 9,000, more than 100 more people than showed up on April 5th. June 14th was the largest turnout the town has seen at any Trump Administration protest.
Many attendees of the Cortez protest said they came to the event to find people with whom they share values. Several, like Jill Steindler, recently moved to the area and “wanted to find their people”. Small town protests become a hub for local progressives and inspire community building and future organizing, said attendees, including Steindler.
Julia Anderson recently started (or re-started) a Montezuma County chapter of Indivisible, a national progressive movement that began as a response to the 2016 Trump Administration. Indivisible Montezuma put on the protest on June 14th, and Anderson said she was very impressed they pulled off a national day of organizing only two months into the chapter’s existence.
“A lot of people can say, ‘Oh, we’re just in Cortez, a small, little community in the middle of nowhere. But if every little community is doing it, which every little community is doing it, you make a statement to your neighborhood and your community,” said Anderson in a Daily Yonder interview.
Laurie Hall, with the Montezuma County League of Women Voters, who helped organize the Cortez protest, said it’s important for community members to see how many people in the community show up for such a protest.
“We depend a lot on federal dollars for hospitals, for our public lands, for our food programs, and it’s really critical that people who might not have other exposure to news media other than their traditional conservative outlets, to see how many people in their own community are really concerned,” said Hall.
“It’s not about politics, it’s not about right or left, it’s not about Democrat or Republican. It’s about our Constitution, and we’re worried about it,” said Anderson.
