More than 7,000 people braved the rain yesterday at Fort Worth’s third No Kings protest, this one in General Worth Square downtown. Thousands of No Kings protests happened nationwide to oppose fascism, both within the current White House administration as well as locally.
Speakers included Jacqualyne Johnson, the mother of Anthony Johnson Jr., a 31-year-old Marine veteran who died in Tarrant County Jail during a routine shakedown of his cell on April 21, 2024, when a jailer kneeled on his back after pepper-spraying him. Anthony told jailers that he could not breathe twice while foaming at the mouth before he died.
Jacqualyn told the crowd, “Tarrant County has already spent over 600,000 dollars — and counting — of my taxpayer money and yours to defend the jailers involved in my son’s death, and we haven’t even been to trial. I’m not only a victim. I’m a taxpayer paying for the people who murdered my son.”
Another speaker was Amanda Arizola. The COO and co-founder of CoAct, a social design studio based on community-driven solutions who helped guide JPS Health Network during the pandemic, spoke about the cycle of jail deaths: People enter the building, their health declines, they end up in JPS, and they don’t survive.
Arizola said, “When someone moves from the county jail to a county hospital and does not survive, that is not two separate failures. That’s one system failing in two places, and we owe this community better.”
Since 2017, the year Bill Waybourn was elected sheriff, more than 70 people have died while in custody. Many suffered from untreated mental illnesses and were turned away from the system only to die in jail from medical neglect.
Unlike previous local No Kings protests, this one featured Latino and Indigenous dance troupes, showing that Fort Worth should be a community that welcomes nonwhite culture in the face of increasing systemic bigotry.
In the crowd, large signs showing those arrested during the Prairieland ICE Detention Center protests could be seen throughout most of the rally.
While local issues were paramount, speakers and marchers also addressed national ones, including accountability for those involved in the Epstein files, an end to unconstitutional ICE activity, and an overhaul of the economic system that allows billionaires to hoard resources and escape legal responsibility.
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
Photo by Stephen Cervantes
This was amazing. I went to No Kings Southlake and wanted to go to No Kings Fort Worth, but was worried about the parking and crowds. You captured it in a way I haven’t seen. Great job! Thank You!
Morality Matters Please Vote Courageously
In every era, nations face a defining question about character. Ours is this: What poses the greater danger to American democracy — the deeply flawed leader, or the citizens and officials who knowingly excuse him?
The country has spent years confronting a public figure whose record includes bullying, habitual falsehoods, infidelity, allegations of sexual misconduct, racially charged rhetoric, and a pattern of self enrichment. He has even extended pardons to individuals involved in violence against the government itself. These facts are widely reported and easily verifiable. Reasonable people can debate their political implications, but they cannot pretend the record does not exist.
Yet the more troubling phenomenon is not the conduct of one man. It is the response of those who look at this full ledger of behavior and say, in effect, “Yeah, but still.”
History teaches that democracies rarely fall because of a single individual. They falter when enough people decide that character is optional, that truth is negotiable, and that power is more valuable than principle. A leader can model destructive behavior, but it is the chorus of enablers — in Congress, at the round table in the White House, in the media, and in the electorate — who transform private vice into public danger.
These enablers normalize what should never be normalized. They recast cruelty as strength, dishonesty as strategy, and the erosion of democratic norms as mere political gamesmanship. Their shrug is not passive; it is participatory. It signals that the moral floor can always sink a little lower.
The question before us is not simply about one man’s failings. It is about our collective willingness to excuse them. When a society begins to accept the unacceptable, it is not the transgressor who defines its future — it is the bystander who chooses to look away.
The stakes are larger than any election cycle. They reach into the national character itself. What we tolerate, we teach. What we excuse, we endorse. And what we normalize, we eventually become.
So which is worse for the country — the man who breaks the rules, or the many who cheer while he does it? Or the bystanders who will not raise their voices against this Aberration in America. The answer will shape not only our politics, but our moral identity as a nation.
The answer will echo long after we are gone.
It will shape the country our children inherit,
and the moral story they will tell about us. Please Vote Courageously