‘No Kings’ protesters at SC State House on Saturday aim for biggest crowd yet
Opponents of President Donald Trump will return to the S.C. State House on Saturday for the latest in a series of “No Kings” protests.
Organizers hope the latest version of the ongoing protest series, which kicked off with large crowds last summer, will become one of the largest single-day protests in American history.
This week’s protests coincide with election season. On the schedule for Saturday’s event will be several candidates for public office.
Scheduled to speak between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. will be four Democrats seeking to unseat U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham in November: Annie Andrews, Brandon Brown, Catherine Fleming Bruce and Kyle Freeman. Also scheduled to speak are other candidates for statewide office — including two third-party governor candidates, Michael Addison of the United Citizens Party and Walid Hakim of the Green Party — and candidates for Congress and the State House.
“I’m really excited for the opportunity to educate voters about the different candidates who are going to be speaking, because the more they know, the better decisions they can make,” said Nicole Sanchez, president of Better Ballot SC, one of the organizations sponsoring Saturday’s event. Sanchez said her organization reached out to all the state’s parties to invite as many candidates as they could for the event.
South Carolina’s candidate filing period for federal, state and local offices closes at noon on Monday. Party primaries will take place on June 9.
Better Ballot is also pushing for a bill in the Legislature this year that would introduce instant runoff voting for local elections in South Carolina for the first time. The bill would allow voters to rank their preferred candidates on the ballot, moving votes to a voter’s second preference as candidates are eliminated, and determining a winner without the need for a separate, costly runoff election between the top candidates.
“Hopefully in the future we would have it in more than just municipalities,” Sanchez said. “In primaries, we have the same problem. With instant runoff, you can find a majority winner without the expense of a low-turnout runoff, where we know voter participation drops by about half.”
Saturday’s event will feature a rally on the north side of the State House along Gervais Street starting at 10:30 a.m., followed by an “activism fair” featuring local community and advocacy groups. The candidates’ forum will be taking place simultaneously on the south steps of the State House.
Unlike the last No Kings protest in October, which featured a march from the State House to the Governor’s Mansion, this one will stay focused on the State House grounds.
“Last time, we marched to the Governor’s Mansion, which is the seat of executive power, and this time, we’re going to surround the seat of legislative power with a sea of unhappy people,” said Sam Gibbons, the state liaison with the 50501 movement, the primary group organizing the protests nationwide.
Previous protests organized under the “No Kings” moniker have drawn thousands to downtown Columbia in some of the biggest demonstrations of dissatisfaction with the Trump administration.
“We can get people to show up in not insignificant numbers,” Gibbons said.
At least two dozen other events are planned across South Carolina for Saturday, coinciding with thousands of planned “No Kings” protests in other cities in the U.S. and beyond.
This week’s protest comes on the one-month anniversary of the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran that have continued to destabilize the Middle East and drive up gas prices because of an Iranian blockade of oil shipments out of the Persian Gulf.
The demonstrations also follow a controversial surge in Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions in Minnesota and elsewhere earlier this year, during which two U.S. citizens were shot and killed protesting ICE activity. The National Nurses Union has announced plans to join the protests in honor of Alex Pretti, a nurse who was shot and killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis.
.jpg)