Northern Virginia—Over 50 bridges staffed by thousands of volunteers on Saturday for a day-long action upstaged Trump’s birthday parade by raining messages unfit for a king. The Visibility Brigades targeted freeway overpasses in the nation’s capital focused on rejecting his Red Square styled military parade. Tanks, Humvees, and armored vehicles tore up DC streets, with Helicopter flyovers, at a cost to taxpayers of over 45 million dollars.
The actions were carefully planned by We of Action (WofA) and coordinated over several months to reach thousands driving into Washington DC to watch the military display. After months of planning and rehearsals at bridges across Northern Virginia organizers felt they were onto something big which could reach 10s of thousands. Many others joined in by bringing their hand-made signs, flags, their spirit and zeal to support the national ‘No Kings Day’ protests. The action was not anti-Army or anti-Veteran but anti-King.
Other groups and individuals also took part in the multi-bridge action but were not available for comment as of publication. A similar action planned by Rise Up also took place in Maryland. The actions were part of a nationwide resistance campaign which has been growing in size and ferocity as the regime continues rolling out its post-constitutional policies.
Hundreds of passing motorists signified their approval by honking their horns as they passed. At one of the bridges a passing woman stopped to join them after seeing the banner. He young daughter brought a small piece of paper with a hand written note and she joined the banner line.
One of the operational volunteers said that these were unprecedented times which called for a significant and unique response. “This regime does not know how to govern so it tries to dictate,” said Lara C, a person speaking on behalf of the WofA Visibility Brigades. “There’s a little thing called the U.S. Constitution where there are three co-equal branches of government and there are no kings,” she said.
The local actions were a demonstration of the ability of grassroots groups and local citizens to coordinate complex, regionally distributed actions of scale. The organizers brainstormed over a series of in-person and online meetings to build the signage and plan the action. There were no incidents or arrests reported and organizers appraised local city officials of the actions before they occurred.
Although June 14 also falls on the U.S. Army 250th anniversary, there was no mistake that this military display was intended to steal the Army Birthday’s thunder from its Service-members and channel it to one man. He was after-all scheduled to be seated in an observation kiosk while the Army passed in review to honor him. No president has ever done this before on their birthday in the nation’s capital.
Lara C. pointed out that Visibility Brigades has also been showing up on area bridges since May for other significant events such as ICE raids and roundups, Medicaid and SNAP cuts, and Veterans healthcare. The Visibility Brigades had not coordinated as much a mass messaging event as it did today for No Kings Day.
Minnesota Senator Assassination Stirred Safely Concerns But Citizens Showed Up Anyway
The action went off as scheduled despite heightened security concerns over the assassination of one Minnesota State Senator and attempted assassination of another earlier on Saturday. Several bridge captains said they were on heightened alert but aside from the disappearance of banner letters from one of the bridges, there were no reports of incidents at any of the bridges.
Editor note: This story was amended to reflect more accurate Visibility Brigade participatory numbers as well as parade costs.
