Beckley’s ‘one woman’ No Kings Day protest draws national attention

By Matthew Young, RealWV

BECKLEY, W.Va. – Some 12 million people have participated in “No Kings” demonstrations across the United States thus far in 2025. With approximately five-million participants in June, and an estimated seven-million more last Saturday, the events have shown consistent growth in both size and scope. 

October saw more than 2,700 events held across all 50 states, with over 100,000 people joining the protest in New York City alone. In Lewisburg, West Virginia, approximately 800 people turned out for the combination rally and food drive, while the Capital City of Charleston drew somewhere between 500 and 1,000 protestors. Huntington and Parkesburg saw large crowds as well, as did Morgantown and protester Kendra Sullivan’s home city of Clarksburg. 

However, it was not in Clarksburg where Sullivan sang songs and held high her “Big Lebowski-themed” signs of protest – it was in Beckley, in the middle of deeply-conservative Raleigh County. And on Saturday in Beckley, despite being one of seven-million across the country to stand united in protest against the policies and actions of the Trump Administration, Sullivan stood alone. 

“I wasn’t going to not participate in No Kings Day because there wasn’t a protest in Beckley,”  Sullivan said while speaking with RealWV on Thursday. “The more that I thought about it, it just seemed like the right thing to do because, if anything, I knew that people would see me on the road, and, for me, it’s personally important that I make it known that what is happening with the federal government isn’t okay.”

“The dismantling of our democracy is not okay,” Sullivan added. “I feel it’s important to be on record, and it’s important to show your face to your friends and neighbors, and say, ‘Hey, I don’t like this.’”

Sullivan, who spent the weekend watching her family’s dog in Beckley, had originally planned to attend a rally in one of Beckley’s neighboring cities.

“On Saturday morning, I woke up and realized that driving seemed unnecessary,” Sullivan explained. “My family lives right off of a main road in Beckley, so I just needed to walk up about three houses, and I’d have pretty great visibility.”

Sullivan had limited time on Saturday due to her dogsitting-commitment. Her sense of civic responsibility, as well as her frugal management of the hours available to her, lead to her engaging in the very notable one-woman protest. 

“I was just holding my sign, and singing and dancing,” Sullivan said. “I grew up on that street. Even though I don’t live there, it’s a place I know well.”

While Sullivan is glad she made the decision to stay in Beckley on Saturday, she believes she will most likely return to Clarksburg for the next No Kings Day events.

“I feel it’s best to be with my town,” Sullivan said. “But the message is that if you don’t have that, you should go out and do it anyway.”

“So many people from all over the country – it’s been overwhelming – have reached out to me,” Sullivan continued. “They’ve said that basically they feel alone. They feel like they’re a little blue dot in a big red sea. Maybe the people who physically saw me on Saturday – maybe there were other people who felt less alone because of it.”

Despite the positive reception her one woman protest has garnered since word of it spread across the country earlier in the week, Sullivan said that she was initially intimidated in the early moments on Saturday. 

“I will tell you that it felt lonely,” Sullivan recalled. “I feel like I’m a fairly confident person, but dancing and singing to myself while holding my Big Lebowski sign in Beckley on a Saturday will test anybody.”

“I felt alone on Saturday, and all of this contact from all over the country has made me feel less alone,” Sullivan noted. 

Sullivan’s homemade signs – one stating “This aggression will not stand, man,” and the other stating “ICE? Let’s get ICE off OUR streets and into our beverages, man” – were inspired by Jeff Bridges’ famous character, “The Dude,” from 1998’s ‘The Big Lebowski.” 

“I don’t think people got them fully,” Sullivan said of her signs, before adding with a laugh, “It was the wrong crowd.”

One such person who did not share Sullivan’s opinions – or apparent appreciation of The Big Lebowski – was a resident of the street on which she staged her protest. His disapproval of her protest resulted in Sullivan’s first of two interactions with the local police. 

“A few minutes into it, a police officer pulled into the restaurant next to where I was standing,” Sullivan explained. “It was one of those moments when you’re like, ‘Oh, he’s here for me.’”

“I asked if I’d done something wrong, and he immediately said absolutely not,” Sullivan added. “He explained that they’d had a complaint about a protestor, and they had to follow up on it.”

Shortly after arriving on the corner, Sullivan said, an elderly resident of the street displayed a Trump flag behind where she was standing. 

“He continued to putz around in his yard, kind of watching me from behind,” Sullivan said. “At some point during that time, he had evidently called the police. So the police talked to him, they talked to me, it was fine, and they left.”

“Shortly after that, a car pulls into the driveway,” Sullivan continued. “This big, young man gets out of the car and goes to talk to the older man. Then he comes to talk to me – to try and bait me, I think – and he just kept continuing to be antagonizing.”

“At one point this kid walked across the street, and said something like ‘Smile real pretty so I can get your picture,’” Sullivan added. “Then I told him that I was going to call the police, and he made some joke about having the police called on him for a lot less.”

After this interaction, Sullivan said the young man retreated into the house. However, she still contacted the police and requested them to return.

“It hadn’t even occurred to me, really, that somebody would do that – that he got mad that I was protesting,” Sullivan noted. “Then go as far as not only call the cops, but then try to confront me. When I called 911, they were asking if he had a weapon, and I didn’t know. They were standing behind me, trying to intimidate me.”

In total, Sullivan spent about two hours protesting on Saturday, before returning to her family’s home. And despite the negative interactions with the residents of the street, Sullivan said the experience was mostly positive. 

To summarize the reasoning behind her one woman protest – and the larger nationwide No Kings Day movement as a whole – Sullivan said, “Donald Trump is dismantling our democracy, one norm at a time.”

“Chiefly, ICE is going around masked, and basically arresting people without cause, and taking them to far off places,” Sullivan continued. “Those are real issues. There seems to be very little oversight over the entire Executive Branch right now, and that’s extremely concerning for me.”

“To me, at this point, it’s not even a party issue,” Sullivan added. “I don’t want to live under an authoritarian or an autocratic government. I like democracy, and I want to keep democracy around.”