Oliver Hayes contributed reporting to this story
As Elizabeth Carmichael-Davis looked around at thousands of people from the Flint area lined up around Linden Road in Flint Township, unified over the same cause at a No Kings Rally on October 18, only one word came to mind.
“I’m just proud of everybody,” she said. “We all worked really hard on this. It isn’t the first and it won’t be the last and we’re out here to stay until the country gets better.”
There were No Kings rallies nationwide and globally today, organized to protest several of Donald Trump’s policies. But more specifically, ‘No Kings’ references the efforts his administration has made to circumvent Constitutional checks and balances through Congress and the courts on unilateral presidential power. Locally, the Flint Township event had attendees with signs with a variety of messages, ranging from veterans upset about cuts to veteran services to people upset with the administration’s aggressive and often violent and clumsy immigration policies, to people standing up for abortion rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, voting access, and other civil rights issues.
Multiple local organizations planned and hosted Flint’s No Kings rally. Carmichael-Davis, a Fenton resident, is a part of Indivisible GLOW (Genesee, Livingston, Oakland Warriors). People interested in getting more involved with the local chapter can email IndivisibleGLOW@gmail.com. Indivisible is a national progressive organization with local chapters in thousands of areas around the country. Indivisible chapters organized previous No Kings rallies on June 14, with millions nationwide participating.
[UPDATE added on October 19, 2025: Lauri Elbing, co-chair of Indivisible GLOW, said that the final estimate of attendees at the peak of the event was 10,300 people and 4,155 people around 45 minutes before it ended.
“Keep in mind that these are moments in time estimates,” she said. “The real turnout is higher because people were coming and going over a four hour period.”
They use “Jacob’s Method” to estimate crowd size. Indivisible estimates that more than 7 million people participated at more than 2,700 No Kings events nationwide and internationally.
“Everyone (who) participated made history on Saturday,” Elbing said. “It was the single largest day of protest in modern U.S. history.”]
Other local organizations supporting the Flint event were Black Lives Matter-Flint, the Genesee County Bridge Brigade, Flint Alliance for Immigrant Rights (F.A.I.R.), Genesee Resist Indivisible Team (G.R.I.T.), and Git-R-Done Troublemakers.
“We are making a presence that we’re opposed to what’s going on with the administration,” Carmichael-Davis said. “We don’t approve of the consolidation of power in an authoritarian manner. We don’t want a king.”
DeWaun Robinson, president of Black Lives Matter-Flint, was among the speakers at the event.
“What we say is, the power is with the people,” Robinson told the crowd. “It’s always gonna be that. We are standing up today showing this unified look, standing together, not satisfied with the direction of America right now.”
The diversity of the crowd, combined with the alignment in their opposition to the Trump administration, had organizers feeling hopeful. People ranging in age from kids to seniors, representing municipalities from around the county showed support. Many passersby shared support by honking and waving.
“It (the rally) makes people who feel maybe a little alone and isolated in their communities know that there’s a whole lot of us out here and it is a great thing to come together and make a stronger community,” Carmichael-Davis said.
Other speakers at the event included Regina Laurie from F.A.I.R., Charlie Hirst from the Michigan Education Justice Coalition, County Commissioner Dale Weighill, and former Congressman Dan Kildee. State Sen. John Cherry and Congresswoman Kristen McDonald Rivet were also among the invited speakers.
Petition gatherers were on-site to collect signatures for a ranked choice voting ballot measure and volunteers also collected non-perishable food and personal hygiene products to donate to local organizations.
“We have to really put forth the effort to lift up those who feel like they’ve been minimized,” Robinson told the crowd, saying that things he sees on the news make him hurt and dissatisfied. “But let that hurt and anger turn into action. You gotta do something with that energy, and that’s what we’re doing today.”
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