No Kings Day in Jacksonville, Florida, June 14, 2025
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“We Shall Overcome” and “No Kings, Since 1776” and “Stand Up for the Constitution” and “History Has Its Eye On You”
“It is your constitutional right to peacefully protest,” the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said in a public statement after the arrest of Zachary Degross, a 26 year old who threatened to murder protesters. “What you do not have the right to do,” the statement continued, “is threaten others.”
“Look[,] as [a] Jacksonville resident,” Degross had posted on Facebook, “of [sic] I see any large gatherings to protest ice [sic] I’m going to grab my buddies [sic] tow truck and plow through every ignant [sic], un-american [sic] swine I see protestong [sic] the deportation of ILLEGAL immigrants, since you believe in them so much why don’t you go with” [sic]
That was on Wednesday, June 11th, three days before the “No Kings Day” protests planned for Jacksonville and 2,000 other cities and towns across every single state in the U.S. on Saturday, June 14th. The title refers to President Donald Trump having referred to himself as a “king” and a “dictator.”
“Hey Dementia Don! Stop Violating Our Constitution!” and “No Kings No Tyrants Yes Constitution” and “Fight Fight Fight for Freedom from a Felon (Convicted)”
The website nokings.org states specifically, “A core principle behind all No Kings events is a commitment to nonviolent action.” It’s the same nonviolent tradition as that Civil Disobedience espoused by Henry David Thoreau, Mohandis Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. “We expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values and to act lawfully at these events. Weapons of any kind, including those legally permitted, should not be brought to events.”
Nevertheless, the same Wednesday Zachary Degross sic’d all over, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said, “If you drive off and you hit one of these people,” meaning protestors, “that’s their fault for impinging on you.” Purposefully mischaracterizing the protests, he said, “You don’t have to sit there and just be a sitting duck and let the mob grab you out of your car and drag you through the streets.”
DeSantis knew he was mischaracterizing these protesters. DeSantis knew he was lying. Part of his modus operandi is playing dumb. Somewhere at Yale or Harvard, he learned about Thoreau and A. Philip Randolph and Cesar Chavez. (Otherwise he wouldn’t have tried to legislate against their being taught in Florida.)
“No Kings in Duuuuuval” and “Resist Fascists” and “Long Time Patriot, First Time Protestor”
Degross, who’d previously been arrested for “aggravated assault” and “assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill,” uses his social media pages to post pictures of cars and assault rifles and videos of people being called racial slurs. “Just a man next to a truck,” he writes beside a picture of himself with no shirt and holes cut in a pair of jeans for his testicles to show through.
On Thursday, June 12th, Sheriff Wayne Ivey of Brevard County, Florida held a news conference during which he said, “We will kill you graveyard dead.” Despite the fact that protests premised in nonviolence almost always stay that way – and despite the fact that on January 20, 2025, Trump pardoned more than 1500 Trump supporters who, on January 6, 2021, broke into the U.S. Capitol building and attempted to disrupt the counting of electoral votes that formalized the election of Joe Biden – Ivey said anti-Trump protesters who “spit on” police officers would be “going to the hospital and then jail.”
Presumably, Ivey is smart enough to know he’s mischaracterizing anti-Trump protesters. Presumably, he’s smart enough to know the words coming out of his mouth are untrue. If that’s not too much presumption, then the question becomes what motivates him not to care about honesty and integrity, and what other morals does that motivation sacrifice?
“If you spit on us,” he said, “you’re going to the hospital and then jail. If you hit one of us, you’re going to the hospital and jail and most likely get bitten by one of our big, beautiful dogs that we have here. If you throw a brick, a firebomb, or point a gun at one of our deputies, we will be notifying your family where to collect your remains at because we will kill you graveyard dead.” Perhaps he hasn’t actually read Thoreau.
Nobody bought bricks to the protests. Nobody brought firebombs. The physicians, the lawyers, the educators I know — they did not bring guns. Lots of protesters thanked police officers. I said “thank you” to a group of police officers on bikes at one perimeter and one of them said, "Glad to be here." It felt astonishingly respectful. Another friend told other officers “thank you” and one of them said, “My pleasure.” Today was not January 6, 2021. Today is No Kings Day, 2025.
Glad you all had a kumbaya day -- as it should be. Folks advocating violence or committing violence fall into two categories: the crazies and the provocateurs. The crazies are the hotheads and nihilists, mostly younger males, who enjoy a set-to, unwisely anticipating they'll not be permanently harmed by it. The provocateurs, as we learned back in the day, are the Judases who work for the authorities and will encourage others to break the law while keeping their skirts (mostly) clean.
Glad also to learn that some of the JSO want to play by the rules, an important practice to encourage as due process is being shunted aside by MAGA leaders with their quotas and officials like Wayne "Noriega" Ivey, who bluster while flanked by dozens of armed cops. Being in public safety is not for me -- I don't run towards gunfire. Nonetheless, law and order works both ways, or it should -- but the JSO and the Sheriff are not under much citizen compulsion today, unfortunately.
The JSO has a recent track record. The first example is the blocking of the entrance ramp to the Mathews Bridge, which concluded with the JSO clearing the area without resorting to violence or mass arrests. I credit good JSO supervision. The second is the conclusion of the summertime BLM march in which a few renegades broke off and did some physical damage to property. This seems to have set the JSO off as later, when the rally was over and the crowd was dispersing from the court house, JSO officers made an announcement and then immediately moved in and began arresting folks. Bad supervision here.
Thanks to a hostile weekend hostile, most of the arrested had to spend the weekend in jail before getting bail. Ultimately COJ had to settle a law suit for $100K brought by those arrested -- admitting no guilt and the penalty being paid for by taxpayers, not coming from the JSO budget. Which is not accountability.
All praise to those who showed up yesterday, and to the hotheads who stayed home. I wager old man Trump (now 79 and having trouble staying awake in public) won't last but two years into his term before he is pushed aside by yon lean and hungry Vance, leveraging the 25th Amendment.
Or, perhaps Congress changes hands in 2026, and Trump gets impeached for the third time and FINALLY gets convicted. I can dream.
Thank you for keeping us woke, just in case we doze off.