Thousands turned out for No Kings political rallies across Western North Carolina on Oct. 17.
Buffalo Springfield and Edwin Starr’s “War” played on loudspeakers on Hendersonville’s Historic Courthouse Square in the morning. Protesters chanted, “stand up, fight back,” in Asheville’s Pack Square Park and marched through downtown that afternoon.
Many of the anti-Donald Trump administration signs and slogans were the same during what was at least the fourth in a series of nationwide No Kings days of action, objecting to what protesters called overreaches of federal power.
But some other aspects of the message and of the overall vibe had changed, with an emphasis on voter turnout just days after the opening of early voting in North Carolina Oct. 15.
“It’s not so much of a protest as it is proactive,” Laura Bannister, an organizer of the Hendersonville event, told the Times-News. “This (rally) is just further incentive to get people to go out and vote.”
“I don’t care who you vote for. If you want to vote Republican, vote Republican, but vote your heart out,” Jill Nelson, 54, told the Citizen Times as she marched in Asheville.
‘Fire and enthusiasm’
Protesters looped through downtown, accompanied by a marching band, on a roundabout route from Pack Square Park to Martin Luther King, Jr Park, at times blocking traffic as they passed.
“This has the fire and enthusiasm behind the upcoming election. I think people are really motivated to go out and mobilize and talk to their friends and talk to their neighbors,” rallygoer Mirra Stillman, 30, told the Citizen Times at MLK Park.
Retired public health official Paul Weichselbaum, 74, had been a handful of previous No Kings events in Hendersonville, he told the Times-News on Historic Courthouse Square.
“What’s different is probably there’s more of a sense that something positive is going to happen in the short term, which means in the election,” he said.
Henderson County Democratic leader Drake English said half the people he had talked to as he passed out sample ballots told him they had already voted.
“They’re feeling empowered,” he said,
“I don’t think we’re here because there’s hope, I think there’s hope because we’re here,” Stillman said in Asheville.
Oct. 17 turnout lower than past rallies
Bannister estimated that as many as 1,200 people turned out in Hendersonville.
That’s far fewer than the 5,000 who attended a No Kings protest in March and she wondered if the chilly, windy weather had something to do with it.
“There are a ton of people out volunteering today, knocking doors, greeting at all the polling locations,” rather than at the rally, English said.
Upwards of 600 people had showed up by the time marchers left Pack Square Park, progressive organizer Leslie Boyd told the Citizen Times.
Nonetheless, she said she was feeling “guarded optimism” as Election Day approached.
The rally had two purposes as she saw it: encouraging voting but also help people “plug in” to community organizations. That groundwork could prove important in the case of any potential upheaval in the wake of the elections, she said.
“I just don’t know if they’re going to lose gracefully,” she said. “If ICE descends on us, we need to be able to bring meals to people who don’t dare to go out,” for instance, she said.
At the park, booths were set up to connect people with nonprofits and service organizations, including the Sierra Club, the Southern Appalachian Solidarity Network, the Patients Union and WNC Votes. There were also “know your rights” trainings, Tori McKinney, who was directing marchers along the route, told the Citizen Times.
“We’re going to be able to walk through the streets but we can’t stop there. We still have to come together as a community to make the changes that we want to see,” she said.
“We’ve been waiting two years for this election, and we are going to come out in huge numbers and there will be a change," Nelson, the Asheville protester, said. "And then we will get prepared for two years from now."
George Fabe Russell is the Henderson County Reporter for the Hendersonville Times-News. Tips, questions, comments? Email him at GFRussell@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: No Kings pushes for early voting at Asheville, Hendersonville rallies
