Subject: Re: No Kings
I live in a small town in southern California with a low key vibe (but powerful and alert) and attended our protest, which consisted of a few hundred people gathered at the main intersection in town and waving signs and chanting (and seeing old friends and talking about old times).

It was totally peaceful, except for about 20 minutes in a couple of guys went and stood in the road and tried to block traffic and create a stir. These guys were not from around here (the town is small enough and has a lot of long-term residents so they would have been known if they lived here, and nobody knew them and they had a vibe that was entirely out of whack with the rest of the crowd and the town in general).

They were yelled at by the protesters to "Get out of the road", a couple of people tried to forcibly push them out of the road (thankfully those confrontations didn't turn violent) and a couple of old ladies tried to go reason with them (unsuccessfully), and after a couple minutes the cops came, cuffed them and drove them away as the crowd cheered (for the cops). Nevertheless, that could have provided some video that if someone on X or a news organization that isn't committed to depicting accurately what happened wanted to cast the protest as something other than peaceful, they would have what they wanted. I won't speculate on who planted the rabble-rousers, it could have been anyone who wanted to stir things up, but they were definitely NOT supported by the rest of the hundreds of protesters.