The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
Groups on opposite ends of the political spectrum will share the same space on October 18, and both are promising the coexistence will be peaceful.
Franklin Township Indivisible, Somerset County Indivisible, and other groups are planning to participate in the nationwide No Kings series of rallies by holding one from noon to 2 p.m. at the Franklin Township Cultural Arts Gazebo on DeMott Lane.
The rallies are meant to protest President Donald Trump and the “increasingly authoritarian actions of the federal government,” according to a press release from Somerset County Indivisible.
A group of Trump supporters is also expected to appear at the rally. A Facebook event called “Maga Kings Day Peaceful Counter Protest Against the 50501 No Kings Day Protesters” has been created by a Hillsborough resident and several others.
The Gazebo has previously been the venue for the first No Kings Day of Resistance, a rally supporting LGBTQ rights, and a vigil in remembrance of the late Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
Michael Steinbruck, the principal organizer and facilitator of the event for Franklin Township Indivisible, said the two sides are expected to peacefully coexist. Steinbruck said the Franklin group originally planned the event, and then was approached by Somerset County Indivisible and other groups to join in.
“We don’t duel,” he said in a message. “We appreciate anyone’s right to counter protest and some of us have engaged in counter protest events ourselves.”
“We are not be looking to engage with or antagonize the counter protesters,” he wrote. “We do appreciate what appears to be our mutual belief in the 1st Amendment and respect their right to organize. When Trump’s policies increasingly hurt their families, we will want them to remember the protest skills that the regime will be eager to suppress. Ultimately we are all victims of fascism and the perpetual lies of this administration.”
“The Franklin PD have protocols to manage the events peacefully and make sure people have space to hold there events and do not interfere with each other,” he wrote. “We trust their professionalism and commitment to serve and protect our community.”
Steinbruck said the group will focus on “addressing the very serious issues at hand, including unaffordable healthcare, the invasion of our peaceful cities, the terrorizing of children and families with illegal immigration and other racist policies and practices, the dismantling of our federal agencies that oversee and fund education and disability services.”
Pamela Brause, a spokeswoman for the Somerset County Indivisible rally, said that the presence of the counter-protesters will not make them change their plans.
“We will hold our No Kings protest as planned,” she wrote. “As always, with any Indivisible event, participants commit to nonviolence and lawful conduct. We will peacefully exercise our constitutional rights. We will not engage anyone who attempts to disrupt or cause trouble in any way.”
According to the press release, “the focus of the action is to challenge the attack on democracy with the administration attacking free speech, filing baseless charges against their opposition, limiting due process rights and sending the military and national guard to cities over their objection.”
“While it is expected that many of the larger cities may see turnouts that exceed 100,000, Somerset County Indivisible, like many of the other local organizations participating in the event, are stressing the importance of community-based demonstrations,” the release said. “Indivisible and the Visibility Brigades are grass roots organizations founded on encouraging broad participation by all citizens. While the media tends to focus on the larger protests, it is the smaller protests that allow maximum participation from all community members.”
“Not only does it permit the elderly, the disabled and those parenting small children to attend the action, it demonstrates to the community that there is opposition to the administration and that community members can easily support the resistance and join their rallies,” according to the release. “This encourages participants who can’t or prefer not to march to bring their signs and lawn chairs and listen to the speakers and musicians that will perform at the rally.”
“In addition to the No Kings theme it is expected that the participants will bring colorful banners and homemade signs protesting the hallmarks of this regime which includes attacks on immigrants, the use of the military against citizens, challenges to the media and free speech, the dangerous foreign policy which attacks allies like Ukraine and indiscriminately attacks boats off Venezuela, assaults on the LGBTQ community and policies which limit access to health care,” according to the release.
Hillsborough resident Terry Beck, one of the organizers of the Maga King rally, said in messages that their rally is being held because “we would like to brainstorm to find out why the No Kings and the 50501 movements are so hung up on calling President Trump a king.”
“For the past seven years that I’ve run Trump rallies in Bedminster, I find that over the years if we ever had the opposing political party approach us we would try our hardest to pick their brains for logic and find ourselves educating them on some things that they might not have known, after all, knowledge is power,” she wrote in the message.
“We don’t know what they’re basing their logic on and you know, of course we can agree to disagree, but with all the great things happening with evidence that is out there, President Trump has already created, done and achieved, there should be no reason for anyone to call anyone any names,” she wrote.
She said they chose Franklin because many of the attendees of the Bedminster rallies live in Somerset and Middlesex counties.
“I have been heavily involved with this stuff for years and I just feel that now the time has come where we have to ‘really’ educate others in a nice professional, respectful way and pick their brains to find out why they feel what they feel,” Beck wrote. “We can respectfully agree to disagree, but not to call others names … doing that just proves the mentality that these people have, the immature behavior from this high school mentality is not respected by others.”
In part of her post announcing the Maga Kings rally, Beck urged her followers to “swing by, educate them, pick their small bird brains, make them feel useless and give them something to cry about.”
She said what she meant by that was “to highlight how people are not understanding the whole picture and to make them feel stupid and also to make them feel like what they say is useless to the point where they’re not gonna feel too good about their own logic once they find out the real truth.”
“I don’t know how else to educate people on this level, picking their brains, making them feel like idiots just to get their attention and make them cry when they find out how uninformed, uneducated, and how abnormal their comments and thoughts are,” she wrote.
Franklin Township Police Department spokesman Capt. Vincent Wilson said in an email that the FTPD is aware of the counter-protest.
“We have coordinated safety measures to ensure the protection of everyone attending, as well as residents and businesses in the area,” he wrote. “Our officers will be present to maintain order and ensure a peaceful environment while safeguarding the rights and safety of everyone involved.”
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