GOSHEN — Cliff Yehle’s sign was simple: black marker on white styrofoam with the words “Wake up America!”
From the first election in which he was old enough to vote — when he cast his ballot for Dwight D. Eisenhower — Yehle considered himself a life-long Republican. That started to change after Jan. 6, 2021.
“I mean, the whole party has just fallen apart,” he said. “I was a strong Fred Upton supporter, a moderate Republican my whole life. … I’ve been a fiscally responsible Republican, and the party has just basically deviated from all of that.”
On Saturday, March 28, Yehle — a resident of Union, Michigan, who now jokes that he’s a RINO (Republican in Name Only) — attended his first-ever No Kings protest outside the Historic Elkhart County Courthouse in Goshen.
“It’s finally time to speak up and show up,” he said “It’s the responsibility of us citizens to pay attention. In any organization, if the members of the organization don’t pay attention to what is going on, the organization fails. That is what’s happening with our country. People are either uninformed, misinformed or don’t care.”
Approximately 500 people lined the sidewalks around the courthouse in Goshen as part of Saturday’s No Kings protest, one of more than 3,000 planned nationally, including in South Bend, Elkhart and other nearby cities and towns.
Many of the attendees brought signs with messages such as, “Stand up for democracy or live on your knees,” “Hate will not make us great” and “We can’t feed the poor but we can fund a war??”
The event was organized by 17-year-old Ranay Miller, founder of Goshen Youth United, who, after organizing a student walkout from Goshen High School at the same location in February, decided to do something for No Kings.
“If I didn’t do it, who else was going to?” she said.
Miller’s sign said, “Not a paid protester I hate fascism for free.”
The event brought all ages to Goshen, including Nina Lanctot, who wore a monarch butterfly cape and handed out what she calls peace cranes. The Bristol resident says that she makes the origami birds as a way to deal with all of the things she sees happening in the current political climate.
“For me, doing something with my hands really helps … so I go between folding cranes and knitting,” she said. “I have a prayer intention that I pray for each crane. I have prayed for (Secretary of Defense) Pete Hegseth and (President) Donald Trump and all of our lawmakers because the intention is for peace and I want them to be taken up by that intention as well.”
A dragon, a councilman and more in Elkhart
Earlier in the day, an estimated 650 people gathered at Civic Plaza in downtown Elkhart, where the program included speakers, music and a march around the city block.
The crowd featured a number of costumes, including a bumble bee, a hotdog, a pink frog and an inflatable dragon sported by Steven Fair with a sign around the dragon’s neck that said, “Prosecute the Epstein conspirators!!! If you don’t act you are complicit!!!”
Saturday was the second time the Middlebury resident has worn the outfit for a No Kings event. He said he originally wanted to buy a costume to stand in solidarity with Portland and decided on the dragon because as he put it, “dragons eat kings.”
Other signs at the Elkhart protest included messages such as, “We the People means everyone,” “Just so you know — I LOVE America!” and “Who would Jesus deport?”
Wendell Wiebe-Powell, part of Elkhart County Indivisible’s executive team, which organized the Elkhart event, was one of the speakers who addressed the crowd on the chilly Saturday morning.
“We’re outside under the beautiful blue sky,” he said. “We’re together in solidarity, we’re here in all of our diversity representing many different interrelated causes and we’re standing up for an evermore fully representative democracy, a more perfect union, always a work in progress. This is America at its best.”
For Dwight Fish, who stood in the crowd on the plaza waving a pair of American flags and a pride flag, protesting isn’t new. The city of Elkhart 4th district councilman now in his 70s says that he began protesting when he was a teenager.
“I want to be a peaceful protestor the rest of my life, but I would rather not need to protest,” he said. “I’m going to turn 71 in less than a month and I’m still having to fight like we did when we were teenagers, and there’s just something wrong about that. We’re upside down. We’ve let a handful of people take over the messaging of America, and it’s the wrong message.”
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: No Kings draws more than 1,100 total to Elkhart and Goshen
Reporting by Becky Malewitz, Special to The Tribune / South Bend Tribune
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
