Charlotte's second No Kings Day demonstration drew thousands to First Ward Park on Saturday, where speakers said President Donald Trump and Republicans were leading the country down an authoritarian path.
The demonstration was part a national day of protests against the Trump Administration set against the backdrop of a government shutdown, and a new effort by North Carolina Republican lawmakers to redraw the state's congressional lines ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Protests also took place Saturday in Concord, Cornelius, Gaston County, Denver, Monroe, Waxhaw and Rock Hill, South Carolina. Organizers with the national Indivisible organization said more than 3,000 demonstrations were planned around the U.S.
CMPD Capt. Christian Wagner said the Charlotte protest remained peaceful and police made no arrests. Officers logged three medical emergencies that Wagner described as "minor," including a heat-related emergency and an elderly person who fell.
Fear, anger toward immigration enforcement
In remarks to the crowd, speakers focused on the administration's efforts to deport hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, and called the government's methods cruel and inhumane.
Sharon Dove, an immigration attorney based in Gastonia, said her undocumented clients were "terrified" to leave their homes, attend church or send their children to school.
"An asylum client called me a few weeks back asking what will happen if the immigration court denies her asylum application," Dove said. "I had to tell her that she and her two-year-old daughter will be detained and deported."
Cameron Pruitt of the Human Rights Campaign said "unaccountable ICE agents" were "abducting" people in immigrant-heavy areas of Charlotte like Central Avenue and Albemarle Road.
"They have gone into school pickup lines and taken parents away from their children," he said. "They are staying in church parking lots to stage their tyranny and terror."
Erasmo Perez-Villa, whose family moved to the U.S. from Mexico when he was a child, said ICE agents have shown up to businesses where his friends and acquaintances work.
"It's heartbreaking, because these people are here working and they're not doing anything wrong" he said. Even if agents have a legal right to arrest and detain people, he said, "the way that they're doing it is just not the most humane way to do it."
GOP redistricting draws ire
Protesters also directed anger toward Republicans lawmakers in Raleigh, who announced plans this week to redraw the state's congressional lines and flip a Democratic district into Republican control.
If approved by the Republican-controlled General Assembly, the new map would give Republicans the advantage in 11 of the state's Congressional districts. Democrats would have an advantage in three.
Karen Nicholson, a Charlotte resident, said she was opposed to gerrymandering by both Democrats and Republicans, and said GOP lawmakers were taking things too far.
"If we're a purple state, how come is it so red?" she said. "I think the Republicans have lost the meaning of 'fair.'"
Others said they wanted political leaders to turn down the temperature of political discourse, and worried about the future.
"I'm scared of where our country is headed,
said Tessa Giersch, 17, who attended the protest with classmates. "There's a lot of trends that I'm not in support of, and I think it's important that as young people we express our voices, because we are the future of this country."
Local organizers of Saturday's protest in Charlotte included Indivisible CLT, the Poor People's Campaign, Common Cause North Carolina, the Human Rights Campaign, Carolina Migrant Network, Healthcare Justice NC, Democracy NC and the Center for Common Ground.
