Still, several thousand people thought "fuck it we ball" just like I did, so we all went out and froze our asses off.

Yesterday the setup crowd an hour before the event even started-- the people putting up tents and water stations and tables for organizations-- was bigger than that original protest crowd. And nobody was thinking we'd get shot. My, how far we've come!

As always, we bridge trolls focused on making things fun for everyone. Sure, we had our protest signs and flags up...

Because anyone can come, you also get people dressed in black bloc *with* bright pink hi vis vests, because the black bloc doesn't make them stand out enough in a giant crowd of people in regular clothes. 🤦🏼‍♀️😂 I love that these people are out protesting, but ye gods. At least we trolls are cringe on purpose and we have fun doing it.

I didn't see as many inflatable costumes as the last No Kings because it's hot in those things. Some of the people who tried to wear them wound up having...

...to take them off before they passed out. Lots of people brought their dogs but they mostly kept to the shade, especially people with northern breeds.

I talked to a woman who initially asked me about my taco costume, and we got to talking about what we were doing. She's Black so she had good reason to hold back last year, but she said it got too depressing to not be involved. She was doing work with the League of Women Voters to increase voter registration and felt okay coming to No Kings.

And that illustrates one reason the march numbers represent a gross undercount of the movement's strength. Lots of people who have valid reason not to protest all the time are still doing essential work in the movement behind the scenes. Voter registration, mutual aid, distributing whistle kits-- these are all at least as important as the protests.

I said it was my 94th protest, partly because I'm all in on defending democracy and partly because being so heavily involved has saved my mental...

...health.

There were several marches and people coming and going all the time, another reason 8 or 9 million is a massive undercount. Aerial photography is great but it's only a snapshot in time, not a roll call of everyone who attended. I didn't stay the entire time because I had another event to get to! And I know of a lot of people who had multiple activities planned in one day. People who aren't involved in the movement don't really understand it, which makes it alarming that...

...so many people trust these useless, out of touch "pundits" to tell them what's going on-- when the pundits can be bothered to do anything but sneer. (You especially know what I mean if you saw the scapegrace NYT. Those people are not just out of touch, it's deliberate.)

The bridge trolls marched as a unit with the sound system blaring our protest playlist-- everything from Bella Ciao to Short Dick Man-- and we went all through downtown without incident. It was warm, but not...

...enough to bother me as the southerner. Some of my colleagues needed to rest in the shade at times and I reflected that after being the wimp about the cold all winter, now it's my time to shine! The trolls were all understanding that I don't handle snow well, and I certainly wasn't giving them any guff for having trouble with the heat.

One guy I was marching next to said he'd never seen such a happy taco. I laughed and told him it made me happy to see so many new people turn out!

He said it was his first protest in a long time but some friends talked him into it. I said that's exactly the kind of thing that puts a smile on my face.

Well, that and the dogs and kids. I'm not putting the kids on the internet, of course-- I don't put anyone's image up here without consent, let alone children's pics, but dogs don't seem to care.

Here are some of the Dogs for Democracy as I promised you:

We LOVE our car cheerleaders who drive around honking for us and showing their homemade signs out the window. Lots of older people, immigrants, people of color, and people with disabilities protest by car caravan they absolutely count-- they just aren't in the totals.

Those numbers also don't reflect the many people who engage in online rallies due to disability or membership of a targeted group. Online rallies are real rallies and it's ableist to say otherwise. Those people are involved...

...in all kinds of other essential work; they are not just spectators because they can't go physically march on No Kings Day. Their efforts too will help bring Trump down.

After all that, I was exhausted. Not that it was so physically demanding, but just the excitement of it all. Everybody felt that way because we poured so much energy into the protests. It's a huge relief to see record numbers with very few arrests nationwide, but we were all beat afterwards.

In the evening yesterday I didn't even have the energy or patience for cropping photos or seeing tone deaf takes on the internet so I cuddled cats. But we'll all be right back out there next week, probably with a bunch of new people alongside us after all this.

And we clearly sent a message, because I looked at Trump's Truth Social account afterwards and the messages I saw were clearly not written by him. 😂 They took his phone away to avoid another "diarrhea plane" incident.

Onwards!