Utahns rally at ‘No Kings’ protests from Logan to Salt Lake City, St. George to Moab

Marching in Moab, gathering alongside farmers markets in Logan and Provo, and singing King George’s anthem from “Hamilton” in Salt Lake City, thousands of Utahns turned out for peaceful “No Kings” demonstrations on a hot June Saturday — part of a sweeping national movement opposing President Donald Trump.

But an evening protest in Salt Lake City ended abruptly after shots were fired near the end of a march from Pioneer Park to the Wallace F. Bennett Federal Building. Salt Lake City police said one person was critically injured and one person was arrested.

The morning and afternoon protests came as Washington, D.C., prepared for a military parade celebrating the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army — which coincides with Trump’s 79th birthday — and after the president deployed soldiers and Marines to protests in Los Angeles.

The evening march was the second No Kings event in the capital, after people gathered in the morning at the University of Utah’s Marriott Library Plaza.

At the U., Francie Barber, 74, said she is saddened by the direction the country is going in under Trump’s leadership.“ We don’t trust Trump,” said Barber, a lifelong Salt Lake City resident, while proudly holding up her handmade sign that said, “Immigrants are the heart of this country.”

Half of Barber’s family is from Mexico, and she said she disagrees with Trump’s immigration policies. “A great number of people are dissatisfied, and it’s great to see that they are in Salt Lake,” Barber said, noting that many participants in the U. demonstration are around her age.

The No Kings effort, led by the activist group 50501 Movement — named for its call to mobilize protests in all 50 states — organized demonstrations in over 2,000 cities and towns across the country.

At least 17 No Kings rallies were scheduled across Utah on Saturday from Logan to St. George, with the earliest events held in Park City, Cedar City, Bluff, Provo and Moab. Salt Lake City saw two ‘No Kings’ protests on Saturday — one organized by Salt Lake Indivisible at the U., and the later march sponsored by Utah 50501.

Sarah Buck, an organizer for the protest at the U., said Indivisible groups in Utah organized all of Saturday’s No Kings events across the state, with the exception of the Ogden protest and the downtown march to the Federal Building, which were both organized by Utah 50501.

Buck said in a news release that the No Kings movement “is to remind Americans and the administration that we broke away from a king and that we are founded on a Constitution, and that we demand our leaders follow that Constitution.”

Hundreds march in Moab

In Moab, more than 530 protesters marched through downtown, gathering before and afterward at Swanny Park. While counterprotesters were scattered along the path, the event was peaceful.

Protesters’ signs carried varied messages: No kings, no fascism; protect the Constitution and due process for undocumented people; protect public lands, reproductive rights, Indigenous tribes and the LGBTQ community; and address climate change.

Everett Hildenbrandt, one of the organizers, told the crowd, “In America, we don’t do kings,” drawing loud applause. “We’re here to exercise our First Amendment rights to free speech, to peaceful assembly and to air our grievances and petition our government for change,” he said.

It’s not surprising Moabites would show up for the protest, Times-Independent Editor Doug McMurdo wrote in his coverage, quipping: “After all, this is a town that didn’t even support Burger King.”

Rallies join farmers markets in Provo, Logan

In Provo, the normal bustle of the Saturday farmer’s market was the backdrop to a No Kings group chanting and cheering, and cars honking in response.

Demonstrators waving American flags and homemade signs lined the block in front of the Provo City Center. One protester, dressed as the Statue of Liberty, yelled into a bullhorn as children played on steps next to her.

In Logan, a crowd of just under 500 demonstrators gathered at the Cache County Historic Courthouse downtown. Co-organizer Kaira Dark said the gathering provided a space for folks that didn’t have the resources to make it to bigger protests in Ogden or Salt Lake City.

The weekly Cache Valley Gardeners’ Market was taking place just behind the courthouse, with market goers wandering over to listen to the speakers and pick up pamphlets.

“I can’t stand to sit by and watch our rights be stripped away,” said protester Eric Jensen, “and so I’ve been coming out to all the protests — every one they’ve had here in Logan, I’ve been coming to. They’re getting bigger.

Several demonstrators held their phones up so that friends and family on video calls could watch and listen to the speakers — many of whom spoke about the fatigue of repeatedly protesting the Trump administration.

A large crowd gathers at the U.

It was 80 degrees and rising as protesters, carrying homemade signs, American flags and water bottles, crowded the Marriott Library courtyard nearly an hour before the 10 a.m. start.

“To believe in the United States Constitution is to believe there is no American king,” said author and community activist Darlene McDonald, the first speaker.

Leaders in the Trump administration “get the general population to assist in attacking their neighbors by stoking fears and manipulating anger,” McDonald said, which garnered a chorus of boos from the crowd.

Referring to those who buy into what she called the “fear factor,” she told demonstrators “you are here today because you have not.” She chanted, “Ain’t no power like the power of the people, the power of the people don’t stop,” which the crowd repeated back.

Protesters continued to file in nearly an hour into the speeches and performances, as the crowd grew to roughly 2,500 people. University police later confirmed there were an estimated 3,000 in attendance.

While the event was hosted at the university, albeit in the summer, the crowd was mostly older adults who first flocked to the shade cast by buildings and trees before nearly filling the entire courtyard.

U. law professor Teneille Brown criticized Trump’s immigration policies, asserting he is infringing on the rights of immigrants by deporting them without due process.

“He uses the law when he pleases and otherwise ignores it,” Brown said. “We are here because we know that being great is not just some slogan to put on baseball caps while we obliterate the Bill of Rights.”

The crowd held a moment of silence for Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, who were killed at their home in the Minneapolis suburbs in “an act of targeted political violence,” law enforcement officials said Saturday.

A person pretending to be a police officer also shot and injured another Minnesota Democratic lawmaker and his wife, officials said.

Sheltering in shade in St. George

On Saturday afternoon, roughly 500 protesters sheltered under shade trees from temperatures nearing the century mark as they gathered in St. George’s Vernon Worthen Park.

For organizer Geoff Allen, the newly minted chair of the Washington County Democratic Party, the protest was an opportunity to galvanize opposition to Trump and MAGA Republicans and enlist more people to join with the county’s Democrats, who have not won elective office in nearly six decades.

“For too long …, we have felt as if we are little specks of blue, little specks of opposition to Donald Trump, little specks of rationality in an irrational world,” Allen told the crowd. “That’s not true. There are hundreds of [us] here … because of what we believe in, what we value and how the Trump administration is challenging and obliterating those values.”

David McGrath, a former U.S. Army Ranger who has sons serving in the military, signaled his displeasure and desire for change by carrying an upside-down American flag, a long recognized sign of distress and protest.

“We are in some serious trouble,” the St. George resident said. “The veterans I know are not dumb. We have known about the threat comrade Trump represents for a long time. I do not understand why the Republican Party is behaving this way. I was a Ronald Reagan Republican, and now I’m an American who believes right is stronger than left or right. And right now, we are just wrong, so we have got to fix this.”

Carrying signs emblazoned with the slogans “Democracy dies when Trump lies” and “Keep your tiny hands off my rights,” Ginny Sparks, who is Navajo and from Arizona, said the federal government has already taken away many Native Americans’ rights, and her people are not about to surrender the few freedoms they have left.

Sparks, now living in St. George, said she has seven brothers who have served in the military, and Americans might well be speaking Japanese or German if the Navajo warriors who served as code talkers had not played such a vital role in winning World War II.

“My people have been through a lot of trauma,” she said. “But we are still here, and will fight this administration to protect our freedoms.”

Despite the sweltering heat at the eight-acre park about a block north of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ St. George Temple, protesters and a mini-convoy of Trump supporters, the latter circling the park in pickup trucks trailing large American flags and pro-Trump banners, did not lose their cool. About a dozen or more St. George police officers patrolled the park just in case.

Small towns join in

English Brooks, an organizer of the No Kings event in Ephraim, estimated that 150 people attended in the small college town.

Other organizers, Ann and Paul Gardner, stood atop a red pickup truck with an American flag and signs that read “God bless America” and “Kindness and love and lawfulness, not cruelty, fear and chaos,” as they spoke at the event.

It was held at the former Kent’s Market parking lot on Main Street.

Further north, more than 400 demonstrators rallied in Park City and Heber, according to KPCW.

In Park City, the protest kicked off at 9:30 a.m. on the pedestrian bridge over Interstate 80, where over 200 demonstrators raised their signs to a steady chorus of honks and cheers from passing drivers, KPCW reported. Later in Heber, protesters lined Main Street in front of City Hall.

Approximately 150 residents from across Carbon and Emery counties took to Price’s Main Street for the No Kings rally there, Castle Country Radio reported.

“Politics have divided Carbon County,” said Donna Dmitrich, daughter of the late Mike Dmitrich, a former Utah House and Senate minority leader.

“But my father believed — and I believe — that we still share core values. And he would want us to lead with those values," the station reported she said. “Because this division is not putting food on the table and it’s not bringing back good jobs. And frankly, it’s making us sick and tired.”

‘Law enforcement is prepared’

Tensions have escalated nationally recently after Trump deployed National Guard troops and U.S. Marines into Los Angeles to suppress immigration protests, against the wishes of California’s governor.

“While we recognize the right to assemble,” Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz said on social media Thursday, “let us be clear: violence and vandalism will not be tolerated.

The speaker said Gov. Spencer Cox had worked with state and local law enforcement agencies to create a public safety plan. “Resources are deployed, and law enforcement is prepared.”

Utah Senate Democrats said they support the constitutional right of Utahns to protest. Peaceful gatherings, they said in a statement, are “an effective and powerful way to stand united with our community and spark meaningful, necessary change.”

The Utah State Emergency Operations Center, where officials monitor and coordinate responses to disasters and emergencies, progressively increased its level of activation over the week.

On Monday, a spokesperson for the Department of Public Safety’s Division of Emergency Management told The Salt Lake Tribune that the SEOC was increased from Level 5 for day-to-day operations to a Level 4 “monitoring” activation in response to the protests in Los Angeles.

That was then increased to “Level 3 Enhanced Monitoring” on Wednesday, “in anticipation of potential protest activity and in support of Utah Highway Patrol during the Red Bull Soapbox Race Saturday at the Capitol, emergency officials wrote in a report.

[Read more: Motorless vehicles mix speed and silliness at Red Bull Soapbox Race at the Utah Capitol]

A spokesperson for the Utah National Guard told The Tribune that troops were not deployed or staged ahead of Saturday’s protests. The spokesperson noted that the Air Guard’s security forces squadron has an ongoing, emergency response relationship with the state and can be quickly activated in an emergency or public safety event.

Salt Lake Tribune Statewatch editor Jeff Parrott, Times-Independent Editor Doug McMurdo and Salt Lake Tribune journalist Trevor Christensen contributed to this report.

Updated, June 16, 12:45 • This story has been updated to include more details from a protest organizer and a new crowd estimate from law enforcement officials.