By Arnie Alpert, Active with the Activists
Arnie Alpert spent decades as a community organizer/educator in NH movements for social justice and peace. Officially retired since 2020, he keeps his hands (and feet) in the activist world while writing about past and present social movements.
Thousands of people took to streets and parks in dozens of New Hampshire communities Saturday to protest the drift toward authoritarian and militaristic rule led by President Donald Trump. It was part of a national mobilization titled “No Kings,” which coincided with a Flag Day military parade in Washington DC and the president’s 79th birthday.
News of the assassination of a Minnesota legislator did not appear to deter attendance or dampen resolve. To the contrary, Trump’s plan for an overt display of military might reinforced resistance to his use of force against immigrants and their supporters, which has been most visibly on display in Los Angeles over the past week. Signs supporting immigrants and protesting ICE were common.
My day began in Hanover, where clusters of protesters lined both sides of Lyme Road, probably numbering more than 400. The Los Angeles “debacle” led to “people signing up in droves,” said Laura Dorow, a retired education professor who moved to Hanover from upstate New York three years ago and was the principal organizer. While many participants were residents of nearby retirement communities, there were also some teenaged protesters and parents with their children. It was the third Lyme Road demonstration since early April, but there have been weekly ones beside the Dartmouth Green in the center of town for the past 16 weeks, according to Deb Nelson.
Shirlee Mitchell, 95 years old, was sitting with a “Melt ICE” sign in a lawn chair by the entrance to The Greens, a 55+ retirement community. “I’m worried about our democracy,” she said. “I lived through the days of Hitler.” Annelies Ostler remembered Nazism, too. She was born in Germany and was about fourteen when WW2 ended. Her sign said, “We are all immigrants” on one side, and “Tax the Rich” on the other.
“I’m 82 and I figure I’ve got to raise my voice,” said Lois Jackson, who held a sign protesting kings, tyrants, and fascists. Trump is “taking money away from health care for veterans while staging his parade,” she said.
Also by Lyme Road and wearing the Green Beret he brought back from his military service in Vietnam sixty years ago, John Jones told me, “I have wonderful grandchildren, and I’m worried about their future. I think my country is being led into darkness, okay, and my ancestors are speaking in my blood now, because I do come from the revolution in this country. And we don’t have kings, okay?” Jones carried a large sign reading “Donald Trump is a Traitor.”
There were younger protesters, too, including Rachel Shook, accompanied by her 4-year old daughter and another who was almost 2. The 4-year old carried a “No Kings” sign, but wasn’t quite able to explain its meaning. “Remember what we talked about,” Mom asked. “Everyone has a right to have their own….” “Sign!,” the girl piped up. I think Mom was hoping for her to say “opinions.”
A Hanover police officer who said his name was Ethan strolled by and told me he was “just getting my steps in.”
Sixteen miles up the road in Orford, another demonstration formed on the bridge to Fairlee, VT at 10:30 a.m. It was the second demonstration there this protest season, perhaps the first ones held in Orford in decades. At least, Sandra Moffat, who says she’s almost 97 and has lived in Orford for 45 years, said she could not remember another one.
Holding a small American flag by the Orford side of the bridge, Moffat said she remembers the 1930s and knows “how little it takes to push a country over the edge.” When I asked what got her out on a bridge on a windy Saturday morning, she said, “disgust and fear.”
Liz Gesler, who has lived in Orford 25 years, told me Trump should have been convicted during his first term impeachments and prevented from running again. “As individuals, we’re pretty powerless,” she said, “but to come together as part of a group, we take steps toward being able to effect change.”
“Melt ICE” was the message on Gesler’s sign.
The Connecticut River isn’t especially wide in Orford, but the Samuel Morey Memorial Bridge is still a healthy span, and protesters were shoulder to shoulder on the sidewalk from one side to the other. Vanessa DeSimone tried to get an accurate count, and told me there were about 350 people there. Deborah Merrill-Sands, who chairs Orford’s Democratic Town Committee and was the principal organizer, estimated that about two-thirds of them were from the New Hampshire side of the river. It was double the turnout she expected, she said.
A Piermont police officer keeping watch from Bridge Street in Orford had little to do.
I hoped to get to the No Kings demonstration in Plymouth and had a lovely drive on the Governor Meldrim Thomson Scenic Highway, but protesters were already walking away from the Plymouth Common when I rolled into town. So it was on to Concord, where downtown was so crowded it was hard to find a place to park.
Other than crowded streets, the first sign of the mass rally I found was a young woman sitting alone by the N. Main Street hotel which is in the process of being transformed from one hotel chain to another. There were thousands of people at the State House, she told me, and she was content to be by herself for a while. Her sign had a rainbow and said, “Peace. Love. ICE Moratorium.”
Kris Hancarik is holding a sign at the rally Saturday in Concord at left. ARNIE ALPERT photo
Since I am not skilled at crowd estimates, I can’t say whether there were one, two, or three thousand “No Kings” protesters in the State House vicinity. What I can say is that the State House lawn was crowded, with hundreds near the NH 50501 stage, where a series of speakers defended LGBTQ+ rights and decried authoritarianism. The City Plaza, where Mike Bradley and Chris O’Connor, aka Fortune’s Favor, sang protest songs, was thronged. Both sides of Main Street, from Park Street to Warren Street, were filled with protesters. And the supportive honks from people driving by (some waving protest signs out their windows and sunroofs) created an incessant noise storm lasting hours.
Mary Bernatas from Amherst was standing with three friends by the corner of Main and Warren Streets in Concord with a sign reading, “Trump is a traitor to Democracy. We are here to defend it.” She’s been to earlier Trump-themed protests, she said, but this one was definitely large and with more energy. “I’ve never done anything like this before,” she said, but she keeps coming back because the atrocities don’t stop.
More photos from Arnie Alpert’s Saturday story: https://indepthnh.org/2025/06/14/no-kings-kick-out-the-clowns-day-in-nh/
Kris Hancarik, a 22-year-old tattoo artist with a shop in Northwood, was leaning against the metal tree sculpture by Eagle Square with a Pride flag and a sign that said, “No human is illegal.” While horns blared and protesters cheered, they praised the demonstration as a powerful expression of dissent. “I really hope that it shows that we are not happy. I hope that it really screams that, like, what the hell are you doing up there? Why do you think that you can make these changes and think that we’re just gonna sit here and take it? I hope, some part of me hopes, that Trump just gives up and he’s like, ‘Oh man, like this totally sucks. Nobody likes me. I’ll just go crawl in a hole and die.’ It may not, but I do hope also that our legislators sit down and they’re seeing all this shit and we’re all screaming and that they’re like, I can’t do this without consequence. I can’t do this without people getting angry at me.”
“I hope for change,” Hancarik said, “even in the smallest amount, but I hope this is a big change.”
State and local police were nowhere to be seen. “We are committed to ensuring public safety while protecting the rights of our residents and visitors to lawfully and peacefully gather to exercise their First Amendment rights, including free speech and assembly,” the NH Department of Safety told InDepthNH on Friday.
From the stage near the State House steps, Suraj Budathoki, who came to New Hampshire as a refugee and now serves as a State Representative for Manchester, recalled the ethnic cleansing that forced him and 100,000 Bhutanese from their homes in the 1990s. Budathoki said he knows from experience what can happen under autocratic rule. “Anyone who didn’t conform became a threat and so we were pushed out,” he said. “This is how tyranny operates.”
“And today in America, I am alarmed to see the same warning sign here,” Budathoki said. “Under Trump’s administration, we saw immigrants demonized, communities torn apart, and legal residents deported without trial or recourse. Some of them were Bhutanese Americans, people who lived here for decades, suddenly ripped from their lives and sent back to a country they fled as children.” Trump’s policies targeting immigrants, attacking the free press, and undermining elections are not acts of patriotism, he said, “They are clear signs of authoritarianism.”
Bob Ehlers took a break from his duties as a peacekeeper to share his views on Trump’s military parade and the use of troops in the streets of Los Angeles. “I think it’s a total disgrace to use the military in this way for to celebrate his birthday,” said Ehlers, who served in the U.S. Marines in a variety of capacities from 1967 to 1988. Speaking of the parade, “He can say it’s a 250th birthday of the Army, but actually, the Army’s had birthdays every year, and they never had to go down and march for the president. He’s totally using it for his own gratification,” he said.
As for the deployment of Marines in Los Angeles, Ehlers said, “It’s a total, total misuse of power. They didn’t pull out military police units. They pulled a military combat unit. Now the combat unit is trained for a lot of different things, but not for police work.”
“They’re not trained to calm people down. If you tell them to take a street, they’ll take the street. You tell them to take a building, they’ll take the building. That’s what they train for. That’s what they do,” Ehlers said.
Concord, Orford, and Hanover were only a few of the communities where turnout was high. Facebook friends are posting photos and videos from other parts of New Hampshire and all over the country. Reports on crowd sizes included 1000 in New London, 1000 in Conway, 1200 in Wolfeboro, 2000 in Keene, 75 in Acworth, 520 in Littleton, 1000 in Derry, and 5 people holding signs at the Epsom Traffic Circle. Thirty-two demonstrations had been scheduled and posted on the “No Kings” and “Women’s March” websites prior to the events, joining about 2000 across the country and some in other countries, too.
Troops in the streets, assassinations, abductions, denial of what we thought were accepted norms about the rule of law in a democratic republic, it’s all pretty overwhelming. But on the whole, the spirit I witnessed Saturday was one of determination, not despair, and hope rather than fear.
Grace Kindeke of the American Friends Service Committee was the final speaker at the Concord rally. Kindeke, who arrived in New Hampshire as an immigrant child and lived here for some time without authorization before becoming a citizen, was unsparing in her criticism of America’s past and present, but upbeat about the possibility of change.
“We recognize the bully in the White House,” she said. “We recognize the bullies in the red hats. We recognize the bullies who use hate in order to silence truth. We recognize those bullies, and yet we surround them with love. We surround them with care.”
“We are a young nation, and if we want to live another 250 years, we must live those years together,” she said.
I met Linda Tremblay passing out red roses by the corner of Capitol and N. Main Streets. “They’re imbued with protective, loving, compassionate, non-violent energy, and I wanted to share them,” she said.