ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Minnesota will be the flagship of the “No Kings” protest movement Saturday when Bruce Springsteen performs “Streets of Minneapolis” in a state where emotions are still raw over President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and the deaths of two residents shot by federal officers.
More than 3,100 events are being organized in communities large and small across all 50 states, with more than 9 million people expected to participate.
A growing number of them will be in suburbs, which are increasingly on the front lines of resistance against Trump’s policies.
The movement is spreading around the world, said Ezra Levin, a cofounder of Indivisible, the activist group spearheading the events. Rallies are also planned in more than a dozen other countries, he said, including Canada, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden, Mexico and Australia.
In counties with constitutional monarchies, he said, they call the protests “No Tyrants.”
Organizers announced Saturday’s protests in January, shortly after the killings in Minneapolis of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Plans had already been in the works, but their deaths during the surge of around 3,000 federal officers into Minnesota provided a new focus.
Opposition to the war in Iran, which the U.S. and Israel launched with airstrikes on Feb. 28, is expected to draw even more people to the protests, Levin said.
