Outside of the “No Kings In America! Rally For Democracy” event headlined by U.S. Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, Pittsfielder Ashlyn Moors holds a “No King” sign aloft as hundreds of Democrats file into the Colonial Theatre on South Street.
“So, I'm here for no Kings Day, because we need to get President Trump corrected, we need to get Musk out of there and corrected," Moors told WAMC. "There's just a lot of things that are going on that are outside of the mandate of the American people, which I think we need to go back on- And I'm here to put my body out here to show support, to hold signs and make noise and make sure people know that this is where I want to take America.”
Moors is happy to see Pittsfield host an event directly criticizing Trump, his billionaire ally Elon Musk, and the Republican Party that has coalesced around the nativist, ultra-conservative MAGA movement.
“It’s a whole bunch of things- Our brothers and sisters in Ukraine and Palestine, it's our healthcare, our Medicare, Social Security, all of those things that could vanish any day now," said Moors. "Things seem to go in and out, there's no security, there's no stability, and I think it's causing a lot of distrust, a lot of discomfort in America right now.”
On her Sailor Moon jacket, Moors has a pin to complement her sign.
“This says, ‘silence is not an option,’" she explained to WAMC. "You can you can sit in Congress and be quiet as much as you want, you can sit there and hold signs as much as you want, but you have to make noise. You have to make sure that people hear what you're saying and get it in their head too.”
Across South Street from the long line of Democrats filing into the Colonial is a small contingent of pro-Trump Berkshire residents bearing signs and shirts praising the president, Musk, and conservative issues ranging from a strict gender binary to ending abortion.
“If you want to know who I am, I'm a Coolidge Republican. If you don't know about Calvin Coolidge, then you don't know my stance," said group spokesperson Kathy Mickle. “I'm passionate about the president and being able to save our country, to be able to get our military back up to where it belongs, because we do have enemies who want to hurt us. I'm for supporting women in sports, completely women in sports. I'm passionate about that. To be able to have our children, our daughters work for forever to get somewhere, and then the scholarship goes to a guy who thinks that if he still has his junk, he still can play game and be fine- That's wrong. It's totally wrong. And for them to go into the bathrooms, there's got to be some space, some safe, wonderful space. I'm passionate about that. I am pro-life. This is the most pro-life president in our lifetime.”
While Trump decidedly lost Massachusetts in the 2024 election, his vote share increased in the deep blue commonwealth in his third straight run for the White House.
“It’s maybe a minority, but it’s exciting," Mickle told WAMC. "See this wonderful group of people? This is family. We have become so close and so much. We did stand outs from August until November, and we had huge, huge support, and there's over 5,000 people in Pittsfield voted for Trump, over 1,000 people in Dalton voted for Trump. So, we did move that way. Is Massachusetts lost? I'm afraid so.”
In Berkshire County, almost 20,000 voters backed Trump, 2,000 more than in 2020 and 3,000 more than in 2016. Mickle expects that even her political opponents across the street will eventually turn to the MAGA movement.
“There is huge amounts of support for Donald Trump in Berkshire County that you don't know," Mickle continued. "We had a victory party, we had 100 people there. We had an inauguration party, we had 100 people there. So, it is exciting, and it will grow. There's so many, many, many people who really are looking for the right answers, and eventually they're going to thought process. You know, a tide raises all boats- So, all of those people over there will benefit from this, from the new economy, from being able to pay for gas, to be able to maybe buy a house, interest rates. I mean, there's a thousands things. If you stood here, we could talk all day!”
With the two sides exchanging taunts and volleying chants back and forth across South Street, some attendees choose to more directly engage with their neighbors and political adversaries.
“I noticed the people with the rosaries and the signs saying, I believe in God, you think that makes me an extremist? And I thought it might be a good moment to go over and simply say, I'm also trying to follow Jesus, and my understanding is that that has something to do with welcoming the stranger, the foreigner, the immigrant, the people in desperate circumstances," said Joanna Hoyt. “Clearly, they and I have extremely different ideas about what is happening in the world. They are convinced that the only people being deported are terrible, violent criminals. I've tried to speak to them about the people I know who don't fit that. They don't believe that, and I can't believe what they believe either, but at least I hope that we can remember that all of us are trying as best we can to be decent and to look out for our neighbors. I'm afraid of the harm being done to all sorts of vulnerable groups by this administration- I'm also afraid of what happens when we bunker up enough so we believe that the people on the other side must be evil and intend evil.”
She has on a hand-made shirt that says “love thy neighbor, no exceptions.”
“Because I see so much being said and done these days that implies that there are these good people whom we are defending, these real Americans, these real women, these real- And then there are those other people who are enemies, who are not," Hoyt told WAMC. "And sometimes, among the people who vote as I vote, I do hear some assumption that those Christians, conservatives, uneducated people, bigots, are enemies, not neighbors. I am aware that what I have on my shirt seems simplistic, and God knows I find it hard to do some days and with some people, but I don't see any way out of this that doesn't involve us seeing the humanity and all of the other people around us, recognizing the pain and the goodness in all of us, and trying to find some way to protect that together.”
