The Army celebrated its 250th birthday last weekend. Part of the celebration was non-partisan, but when the administration added a military parade on the President’s birthday, it became highly politicalized. The No Kings organization called for a day of protest, and there were No Kings demonstrations in 2,000 cities and towns across the country, with an estimated 5 million attending. Here’s what we saw:
Philadelphia
The No Kings organizers designated Philadelphia as ground zero of the protests, given the city’s historic importance. One of our editors, Miki Jourdan, went to see the demonstration.
San Francisco
In San Francisco, thousands marched to Civic Center Plaza. One of our editors, Angela N., was on a trip to San Francisco at the time and photographed the demonstration.
Capital Region, New York State
Stacey Lewis photographed the No Kings demonstration in the Albany area.
Protesting in D.C.
The organizers of No Kings deliberately did not schedule a No Kings demonstration in D.C., wanting the demonstrations to concentrate on showing the extensive nationwide support throughout many cities and towns.
But it being D.C., it couldn’t go completely without a protest, so there was an unofficial march from Logan Circle down to the White House.
Army festival on the Mall
The Army had a day-long celebration of its 250th birthday on the Mall. This was a separate event from the parade, and was closer to the tradition of non-partisan celebrations of past military events than the more militaristic parade.
There were a lot of kid-friendly activities, like this tall climbing structure:
There was a demonstration of push-ups with enthusiastic crowd participation. The soldiers doing the pushups are part of the “22 Pushup Challenge” which is to bring attention to the 22 veterans who die by suicide each day.
Scenes from near the parade
We didn’t go into the parade viewing area, but we walked around the lines of people waiting to get in, and it was surprising to not see much – very few protestors, and not nearly as many people waiting to get into the parade area as for some comparable past D.C. events.
Preparations for the parade
The estimates for the cost of the parade were around $45 million. Between the security needs, the steel plates installed to lessen road damage from the trucks, and the 18 miles of security fencing installed, we are guessing that it will end up costing much more.
