LEBANON — Songs and speeches featured prominently at a “No Kings” rally in Colburn Park on Saturday afternoon, where more than 1,300 people showed up to protest the Trump administration.
Around 1 p.m. in Lebanon, people carrying signs with messages such as “No Kings, No ICE” and “Try peace” filtered into Colburn Park as sing-songwriter Devan Tracy sang to the crowd from the bandstand.
“You’ve got to put one foot in front of the other and lead with love,” her voice rang out.
The event was among more than 3,000 “No Kings” rallies planned across the country on Saturday, Associated Press reported.
This is the third round of “No Kings” rallies that have happened nationwide. The other rounds happened in June and October of last year.
In addition to Lebanon, rallies were planned in Upper Valley communities including Bradford, Vt.; Claremont, Charlestown, Enfield, Fairlee, Grantham, Hanover, New London, Randolph, White River Junction and Windsor.
“I am very anti-Trump,” said Deana Sansing, a 70-year-old Lebanon resident who stood in the crowd as Tracy sang.
“He’s making a mockery of us to the world,” she said.
Among the issues close to her heart is women’s access to reproductive health care, especially after the Supreme Court overturned Roe. v. Wade in 2022.
“I’m as pro-choice as anyone can be,” she said.
She came to the Lebanon rally, which was organized by Indivisible NH Upper Valley, a local chapter of the nationwide grassroots organization, to be in solidarity with others and to “support the cause,” she said.
As cold winds swept across the park, the rally’s emcee Sherry Boschert took to the bandstand in an inflatable cat costume to introduce New Hampshire Executive Councilor Karen Liot Hill, D-Lebanon, who previously sat on the City Council.
Boschert’s playful getup was a reference to the protesters in Portland, Ore., who donned inflatable frog costumes in rallies against Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents’ aggressive deportation tactics and community presence. The costumes “instantly showed ICE for what they are: ridiculous, insecure thugs trying to bully a peaceful frog,” Boschert said to the crowd.
Over the course of the roughly hour-and-a-half rally she would emerge as an inflatable chicken and a carrot, among other characters.
Liot Hill reminded protesters that even though “it may feel like things are getting worse, and in fact it’s true,” there is strength in standing together.
“We are here because ultimately we love one another,” she said. “We will outlast the forces that are gathered against us.”
She led the crowd in singing a song shared among protesters in Minneapolis, Minn., where an ICE agent shot Renee Nicole Good in early January and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers killed Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse, a few weeks later.
“We are here with each other,” the crowd sang. “Our love for each other will carry us through.”
Wilder musician Jes Raymond also referenced ICE’s presence in Minneapolis in a song she performed with her brother-in-law, singer-songwriter River Breitbach, who uses the stage name River Glen.
“Well, prairie roots grow deep, Minnesotans plant their feet. A winter people know ice can be broken!” she cried out, her voice hoarse with emotion.
“I was honored to be on stage with such a large, attentive, caring crowd,” she said in an interview off stage. “It feels good to be reminded you’re not alone.”
In the center of the park, photos of eight people who have died at the hands of ICE or in detention in the past year, including Good and Pretti, were attached to a tall structure.
Boschert led people in a moment of silence to acknowledge their deaths.
As the crowd grew hush, the sound of children yelling on the park’s playground broke through the quiet.
While protesters gathered to decry Donald Trump, a lone supporter of the president picked his way through the crowd. He wore a baseball hat that read “Take America Back 2024” and a black “Make America Great Again” T-shirt.
Martin Camber, 65, of White River Junction, stopped by the rally to see if anyone would be hostile to him, he said.
He got a “thumbs down,” from someone, while another woman “yelled at (his) face,” he said.
Camber, who’s voted Republican since Ronald Reagan ran for office, supports Trump in part because he “protects the border” and he’s “taking care of Iran,” he said, referring to the president’s recent decision to go to war.
Camber’s wife is an immigrant from Thailand, but he has a “problem with illegal immigrants,” he said, because they need to “support our immigrant laws.”
As for Saturday’s rally in the park, “It’s America. They’re free to do what they want,” he said.
While some of the rally’s speakers focused on ICE, Chuck Wooster, who owns Sunrise Farm in White River Junction, spoke about the Trump administration’s threat to the environment, including withdrawing from global treaties addressing climate change.
As people burn more fossil fuels, the weather becomes more extreme and unpredictable, he said.
In the midst of droughts in the Upper Valley, Wooster has had to invest more than $100,000 in irrigation, while contending with excessive rain in other parts of the year.
Warmer temperatures have also given way to a surplus of insects such as ticks, Wooster added.
But beyond the rising temperatures and volatile weather, “there’s just the plain immorality of destroying our creation,” said Wooster, choking up.
“Those of us who are farmers are first and foremost stewards of this earth. We spend our lives in the soil because we love the soil,” he said.
Destroying the planet is not just bad for the economy, he said, “it’s repugnant.”
He encouraged people to vote for politicians who want to protect the environment and to “vote with your dollars,” by investing in electric vehicles and solar panels, and supporting area farmers.
He closed by quoting environmental activist and writer Wendell Berry.
“We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world,” Wooster said.
“We must change our lives, so that we live by the (contrary) assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us.”