On Saturday, 17 October, in Piedmont Park, Atlanta, a “No Kings, Vote Now” rally gathered. It was not a stadium crowd. France 24 counted around 300 people. They walked about a mile to St. Mark’s church. Police held the traffic. A band at the front. Grandmothers and toddlers in strollers at the back. The theme is not a king on a poster. The theme is the 3 November vote. Local groups said so: get out the vote, preferably early, and take the neighbour with you.

Kelsea Bond, 33, Atlanta’s youngest sitting councillor and the first Democratic Socialists of America member on the council, spoke in the park. “We need to build a society that works for the working class, not the billionaires.” The DSA is not a party. Bond ran as an independent in District 2. With a little over two weeks to the midterms, she said she was there for democracy in Georgia: Republicans, in charge for decades in the state, have rolled back voting rights, she said. In the summer they threatened to redraw the maps. In June, Republican legislative leaders rejected a redistricting bid before the midterms, fearing a backlash. Democrats fear the issue returns after 3 November. The Supreme Court, on 29 April, opened mid-cycle redistricting. Georgia did not change maps now. Other states did.

Kimberly Diemert, of 50501 Georgia, said the intent is community: people at a local spot, then to a polling place. FOX 5 Atlanta wrote that more than 40 “No Kings” events were scheduled across Georgia on Saturday. Early voting runs through 30 October. The movement began after Trump, in February 2025, posted an AI image of himself as a monarch on a fake Time cover. The big-city rallies were one thing. This Saturday in Atlanta, organisers cut it into short walks.

ICE was the most repeated target. Daniel, 37, held a sign against the agency. Piper White said she was tired of what is going on in America and that it saddens her to see people rounded up by ICE, immigrants who have been here a long time. Foreign policy came too: a matryoshka with Trump, Putin in the belly. Marilyn, no surname, is against the war in Iran and for Ukraine. Mark Spivey: the war was meant to last two, three, four, six weeks; it is past eight months, “no end in sight,” prices up, inflation up.

At St. Mark’s, organisers asked who wanted to be an election observer. Those who said yes went into a workshop. Trish Murphy, of Necessary Action Georgia: they want a free, fair election where every vote counts. She recalled old claims that elections were not fair — without naming Trump and 2020 — and said they were fair then. This time they want observers, so there is no interference.

Georgia is a state Republicans have held for years, and a city, Atlanta, that votes otherwise. A rally of 300 people does not move the House. It moves, if it moves, someone from the park market to the ballot. That is the stake the organisers named. The rest — the king on the cover, ICE, Iran — is what the signs brought.

Image: EternalAhsoka, Piedmont Park, Atlanta, 1 September 2017, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The photograph shows the park the march left from, not Saturday’s crowd.

Sources consulted: Standing up for democracy: Atlanta No Kings rally — France 24; Multiple 'No Kings' events planned for Saturday in Georgia — FOX 5 Atlanta.