BY QUINN COFFMAN | Staff writer
Source: The Advocate Baton Rouge
Incessant honks rung out along Perkins Road for two hours Saturday morning, as motorists showed their support for Baton Rouge’s No Kings rally protesting the Trump administration.
The protest, organized by Indivisible Baton Rouge, drew hundreds of participants who lined the edge of BREC’s Perkins Road Community Park armed with drums, signs, slogans, jokes and costumes.
Cities across the country, and even foreign capitals like London and Madrid, held their own No Kings events Saturday to rail against what organizers see as oversteps from President Donald Trump in his role as the United States’ highest executive. Several rallies were held around Louisiana, including in Lafayette, Hammond and New Orleans.
Jerel Giarrusso, an organizer with Indivisible Baton Rouge, said Saturday’s events were to call attention to protesters’ beliefs that Trump is increasingly ruling the U.S. by fiat, with more frequent and broader-reaching executive orders and less respect for other government branches’ checks and balances.
“The whole point of the Revolutionary War was to get away from a mad despot who thought that they could rule everybody’s life,” Giarrusso said. “So we fought a war over that. We became an independent country until now.”
While the “No Kings” title for the protests refers to that executive overreach, protesters gathered along Perkins on Saturday had a cornucopia of reasons they oppose the current administration, from increased deportations and domestic National Guard deployments to a rising cost of living and perceived concealment by the Trump administration of files showing the president’s ties to Jeffery Epstein.
Protesters also identified themselves as antifascists, socialists or critics of Israel’s war in Gaza.
Colorful and varied signs showed this broad array of messages among protesters, from the simple and supportive (“Honk and celebrate diversity” or “Democracy needs your Courage”), to the specific and personal (“I’m proud of my immigrant daughters”).
Rebel Ellerbee, 58, said she had “a million and one reasons” to come out to Saturday’s protests.
Ellerbee worked for the East Baton Rouge Parish school district for 35 years as an educator and later principal of Broadmoor Middle School.
He said he had been expecting a quiet retirement for himself. Instead, on Saturday, Ellerbee walked with a sign as tall as his body and led chants using a megaphone.
“What I am is an old history teacher that understands the danger that we’re facing in in this country while we watch history repeat itself right in front of our eyes,” Ellerby said. “But, I try to keep it fun. As fun as fascism can be.”
For Mary Crombie, 78, from the Southdowns neighborhood, Saturday was her first protest.
“No Kings means that we don’t want an authoritarian government with one person in charge,” Crombie said. “This is America. Checks and balances. (Trump) is acting like an authoritarian.”
Jessica Eberhard, 57, brought her friend Crombie out for the protest Saturday. She attended the first No Kings protest, held on June 14 in downtown Baton Rouge, and meant to coincide with a Washington, D.C., military parade Trump organized.
Eberhard said Saturday’s turnout looked bigger, a fact she was grateful for because she believes there are more people who agree with No Kings who couldn’t come out in public over fears of detainment and deportation or backlash from their employer.
The two neighbors said it was their job to speak louder for those who couldn’t attend.
“The best way to distill it to singular points is to say we feel like there’s a gross misuse of power and a lack of respect in checks and balances,” said Christopher Gibson, 28, who works in law enforcement. “In the White House, currently our government is … working for causes that actually harm the people of Baton Rouge.”
Gibson talked about the rising cost of living and his mother’s own fight to get him and the rest of his family into a safer neighborhood and out of food insecurity.
To him, Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. is punishing people who are only looking to provide a better life to their families in the same way.
“I’m naive enough to still believe in the American Dream,” Gibson said, “but I’m realistic enough to see that there are people who are actively trying to take it away from not only myself, but from my future children.”
Gibson delivered these thoughts to The Advocate while dressed as Spider-Man from the neck down. In contrast to similar anti-Trump protests from a decade ago, recent events have included more costumes, especially inflatable animal costumes like the ones seen in protests outside of Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in Portland, Oregon.
Viktor Gard, 21, of Walker, said the costumes bring a fun, community-centric air to the protests and highlight their nonviolent nature.
“It’s more about controlling the optics,” Gard said. “They come in as military dudes and they expect military dudes to come out (in response), and then they can turn around and say ‘they’re being violent.'”
While some costumes were silly, others were obvious pillories of Trump or were otherwise obviously political, like the red-cloak and white hood of Margaret Atwood’s book “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
Superheroes, specifically, act both as images of massively popular franchises and as symbols of hope in the fight against injustice, said Kate Villemarette, 20, of Zachary, who was also dressed in a Spider-Man costume.
“I love Spider-Man, and I love the message that has always been behind Spider-Man,” she said. “It’s like the little people, anyone could be behind the mask. And it’s about fighting for everybody and protecting everybody, and especially the people in your community.”
Throughout the protest, organizers with Indivisible Baton Rouge registered residents to vote in the 2026 midterm elections and for the highly anticipated 2028 presidential election.
“In Trump’s first term, he was outrageous, right?” said Indivisible Baton Rouge’s Giarrusso. “We voted him out. You know, a majority of Americans said, ‘nope, this is not the America that we want.’ He’s gone.”
According to organizers, over 2,500 individual No Kings events were held across the country Saturday, and in at least 18 other countries.
The Baton Rouge protest was held at the park due to cleaning and construction taking place on the Capitol grounds and other events taking place downtown on Saturday.
Email Quinn Coffman at quinn.coffman@theadvocate.com.
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