West Michigan Clergy Action was asked to recruit clergy to lead the No Kings 2 March at Rosa Parks Circle in Grand Rapids, MI. 24 local clergy responded. Here is article from MLive: https://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/2025/10/clergy-leads-thousands-in-no-kings-march-through-downtown-grand-rapids.html
GRAND RAPIDS, MI — Thousands of Grand Rapids protestors who marched through downtown streets on Saturday were led by a coalition of two dozen West Michigan clergy members, who held hands up to stop oncoming traffic and at one point knelt in the street to pray. The mile-and-a-half march capped off two different Grand Rapids rallies, part of a third round of “No Kings” demonstrations held Saturday, Oct. 18 against Trump and his administration’s policies. They were part of a day of nationwide protests, with around 100 locations in Michigan and over a dozen held in West Michigan.
Prior to taking her position at the front of the march, Rev. Greta Jo Seidohl, a Unitarian Universalist with the All Souls Community Church of West Michigan, spoke with MLive about organizing clergy members under the name “West Michigan Clergy Action.” “We can’t let those who would tell us that we are not beloved, steal our religious language,” she said. “I believe in a God that loves me and loves my neighbor and loves my trans neighbor and my Black neighbor and my immigrant neighbor.
“That is important for us to declare loudly and proudly, and not let them steal our God, not let them steal our faith, not let them steal our language and not let them steal our country,” Seidohl said.
She said the several dozen West Michigan clergy members wanted to lead the rally to “use our positions and our voices and our bodies to stand in solidarity with our neighbors, and to do for the least of these what we would do for our own beloved.”
Seidohl was joined during the march by a wide variety of attendees. Some protestors held American flags and signs that read “power back to the people” and “No ICE – just like my whiskey.” Others wore inflatable animal suits and colonial three-cornered hats. Retired teachers and college students were joined by young families with children in tow. Attendees who spoke with MLive said it was also a range of issues that brought them together, from immigration arrests and federal funding cuts to what they felt were examples of rights at risk.
https://youtu.be/IJ3PzEHfDyQ
Many who arrived downtown first attended a community festival in Northeast Grand Rapids’ Riverside Park from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
After 1, they flooded into downtown’s Rosa Parks Circle, packing onto sidewalks to listen to several speakers and lining Monroe Avenue.
Thor DePew, a 54-year-old from Wyoming who wore bald eagle onesie pajamas and held up an American flag along Monroe Avenue, said he showed up to remind Michiganders that “you’re not alone.”
“We’re standing for those who are too afraid to be here,” he said, adding that thinking about his kids and their future was also a motivator.
Ahead of the nationwide No Kings protest, some Republicans affiliated with Trump, like Speaker Mike Johnson, slammed the scheduled protests. Johnson nicknamed the event scheduled in D.C. as the “hate America rally.”
There did not appear to be counter protestors in downtown Grand Rapids, though at least one group organized a counter protest and voter registration event held in Bay City, WNEM TV5 reported.
Other No Kings events held on Saturday included in Kalamazoo, Muskegon, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Bay City, Lansing and Detroit. Tabby Dawson, an organizer with the Progressive Student Union at Grand Valley State University (GVSU), spoke before hundreds in Rosa Parks Circle about the importance of protesting.
“We protest to show the few that we are the many,” Dawson said. “We protest to build community.”Dawson, along with members of several Grand Rapids immigration advocacy groups, spoke for about an hour – mainly about Trump administration immigration policies. Dawson said some students are advocating for sanctuary campus status for GVSU.
The rally wrapped up around 2 p.m., and protestors flooded onto Monroe Avenue NW, marching north towards Michigan Street and circling back on Ottawa Avenue NW. They wound through the city, stopping traffic along West Fulton Street before returning to Rosa Parks Circle.
Early in the march, photos captured and shared with MLive/The Grand Rapids Press showed several protestors struck by a vehicle attempting to enter a parking garage near Calder Plaza.
Later in the march, while on Ottawa Avenue, Pastor Ricardo Angarita knelt among clergy members in the middle of the road to pray.
In addition to attendees with speakers and bull-horn chants – “this is what democracy looks like” – the hour-long march was punctuated with near constant car horns.
The same could be said about the community festival held earlier in the day at Riverside Park, where several hundred attendees held signs along Monroe Avenue, listened to live music and made signs at several booths.
Patty Neva and her daughter Rachel Neva attended the event put on by Indivisible GR.
Patty, 81, a retired teacher, said she’d been protesting since the Democratic Convention in Chicago on Aug. 28, 1968, when police clashed with anti-war protestors marching along the city’s own Michigan Avenue.
“I was living in Marquette at that time,” she said, “and drove all the way down to Chicago just to protest the presence of police there at a Democratic event happening. Then the police came in and it was not good.”
She and other protestors slept on the floor of a nearby church, returning the next day “to protest again.”
“It’s just a shame that we still have to be here after all those years,” she said.
Patty and her daughter Rachel, 51, a communications professional and writer, both said seeing their community members in northeast Grand Rapids show up brings hope.
“Democracy is a participatory process,” Rachel said. “It’s not set in stone. And if we don’t keep showing up to things like this and being in touch with our legislators, that can disappear. We’ve already seen some things erode, freedoms erode that we thought were set in stone. So it is important to show up and be here and let everybody know it’s not set in stone.”
Christina Scholten, 21, a GVSU social work major, said she attended the festival because she’s sick of feeling “like I don’t have any power.”
She pointed to immigration enforcement activity in Chicago, along with federal funding cuts, as among the issues that called her to protest.
As she knelt in the grass to color in signs with two others, she said the Grand Rapids event marks her first protest.
“I love seeing all the different ages,” Scholten said. “I didn’t really know what to expect, but I’m happy to see kids, and I’m happy to see people from the elderly population. It’s very heartwarming.”