PORT CLINTON – Despite low temperatures and strong winds off Lake Erie, several hundred protesters showed up to make their voices heard in the third No Kings rally.
More than 300 protesters lined West Ohio 163 along the Erie Dearie section of Waterworks Park in downtown Port Clinton March 28. Temperatures were down in the 30s despite the sunny day.
A Minnesota flag and impromptu memorials to Alex Pretti and Renee Good were part of the No Kings protest.
The Port Clinton event was organized by We The People, Ottawa County, which involved demonstrators from Marblehead to Elmore. They are a standalone group not part of the Democratic Party, Indivisible or 50501. The two women doing the organizing are Susan Mulligan and Sher Bowersox.
“People get really emotional, and they cry sometimes, and I feel like I’m going to cry sometimes. It’s because we feel helpless. It’s like we don’t have another way to go,” Mulligan said. “By allowing them to express themselves and find like-minded people, they are emotional, so emotional. So, by the end of the day, so am I.”
Mulligan frequently turned off the protest music, some old and some new, to lead chants with her megaphone.
“It’s such a good feeling to join other people in protest right here in Port Clinton. We have good people,” Bowersox said.
The messages were many, from a Vietnam veteran to people angered by the deaths in Minnesota of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, to the No Kings message.
Richard Nolte sat, displaying a flag that read “Veterans against Trump.”
“I’m here because I served in Vietnam for my country and I’m very discouraged by the way this administration is treating veterans,” Nolte said. “It started off with Trump calling veterans ‘suckers’ and ‘losers,’ and it’s just gone downhill since then.”
Nolte served from 1968 through 1971. He was in the Army with the 101st Airborne as an infantry platoon leader in Vietnam.
Port Clinton native Jeff Cutcher is a retired union boilermaker, whose wife is Canadian. They are frequently visiting family in Canada.
“Oh boy, they have a different personality. They do speak out, but they are not blaming the citizens. They just blame [our] government,” Cutcher said. “They don’t like the bullying. I don’t blame them. Yeah, they are upset. Basically, it’s global. I think we see that, because he’s asking our allies to help us, and when you threaten somebody, they are not going to turn around and help you out.”
rlapointe@gannett.com
419-332-2674
This article originally appeared on Fremont News-Messenger: Cold Lake Erie winds couldn’t stop No Kings protesting
Reporting by Roger LaPointe, Port Clinton News Herald / Fremont News-Messenger
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