Pendleton to Host “No Kings” Rally Saturday

Observer Reports

Pendleton’s village green will serve as a stage for a quiet, sign-waving dissent, organizers are preparing for Saturday’s “No Kings” rally that they say will join others in a nationwide day of protest. Across the country, more than 3,000 demonstrations are expected to attract millions as part of the movement’s latest mobilization.

The local event is scheduled from 2-4 p.m. and organized by Indivisible Clemson Area with 50501 South Carolina, who bill the day as a nonviolent gathering against the Trump administration and what organizers describe as corruption, cruelty and abuses of power. The the rally organizers ask participants to meet near the Mechanic Street side of the square, with signs, flags, music and a brief march through downtown Pendleton.

Organizers are encouraging a tone of disciplined civility, warning attendees not to engage counterprotesters and to alert event leaders if tensions rise. It is, in their telling, a protest meant to be loud in principle but orderly in practice — an effort to show, as the national movement’s own language has it, that there are “no kings in America.”