ELK CITY, Okla. — Few, if any, thought they were going to change minds by standing on a patch of grass along Route 66 and holding signs decrying Donald Trump’s presidency. All 77 Oklahoma counties voted to return him to the White House. Here in Beckham County, at the state’s western edge, he carried 84% of the vote.
Still, many of the 40 people who gathered Saturday for Elk City’s piece of the nationwide “No Kings Day” protests said, at least for that moment, they felt less alone.
“When you live in a rural area and you’re a blue dot, you can feel very isolated,” said Shelly Larson, 61, a native Oklahoman who has been counted among the town’s 11,000 residents for the last five decades. “Just knowing there are others, it’s good for the soul.”
More than 1,500 protests are believed to have been staged in cities and towns across the country Saturday, timed to coincide with Trump’s 79th birthday and the military parade his administration organized in the nation’s capital to mark the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary.
Organizers of the Elk City protest said they registered it on the “No Kings” website and spread the word on Facebook.
“We wanted to let people know they’re not the only ones thinking against the norm,” said Chris Roland, 41, who lives east of Elk City but works in town. “It can be scary out here.”
To illustrate the point, realtor Karen Holmes, 36, grabbed her phone and pulled up a community Facebook page in which one anonymous member wrote in response to the protests: “Just shoot them duh.”
“People are moving because they’re afraid to live here,” Holmes said.
Two police officers kept watch on the protest from a business balcony across Route 66. Some motorists revved their engines as they passed by. One car slowed to a crawl as it passed; a woman in the passenger seat stared menacingly from her open window but said nothing.
Other motorists honked in support, with one man raising his left arm in a fist as he drove west.
Follow our road trip: Route 66, ‘The Main Street of America,’ turns 100
Retired rancher GeoReta Jones, 77, said someone drove by shortly after the protest started at 11 a.m. The person stopped the car, she said, approached the group and started crying, saying they didn’t know there were others in town who felt the same as they did.
“The isolation people feel is terrifying,” Jones said, joined by her sister and her niece, a retired district judge who held a sign that read: “Due Process Protect the Third Branch”.
“I fear violence against judges,” said Jill Weedon, 58, who retired in November after 25 years on the bench. “Our system doesn’t work when judges are afraid to do their jobs.”
Nearby, 69-year-old Linda McCormack held up a sign that read: “I AM A REPUBLICAN BUT I AM NOT INSANE”.
McCormack and her husband, 77, said this was their first protest.
“There are people willing to be seen and not be shamed into being quiet,” she said before calling Trump’s “big beautiful bill” a “big ugly pile of cow (manure).”
“If I don’t agree with it,” she added, “I don’t care what party it is.”
As the protest neared its end, cars continued to pass along Route 66. Some honked. Some sped by. Church bells played the Lee Greenwood song, “God Bless the U.S.A.”
Read the tenth dispatch, Print day at a 145-year-old Kansas newspaper, here >>>
