'No Tyrants' protest in Prague draws crowd opposing Trump's policies

Chanting “Show me what democracy looks like, this is what democracy looks like,” a small but vocal group of Americans and Czechs gathered Saturday in Prague’s Jan Palach Square as part of the global No Kings demonstrations against the Trump administration.

Participants climbed the steps of the capital’s Rudolfinum concert hall to deliver speeches, recite poetry and sing, denouncing what they described as widespread violations of the U.S. Constitution.

Julia Bryan, chair of Democrats Abroad Czech Republic, read from the Constitution, while longtime Prague resident Geoff Klimko invoked the Velvet Revolution and urged participants to jangle their keys, a symbol of resistance from the 1989 protests that ended communist rule in the former Czechoslovakia.

The Prague rally was one of thousands of events worldwide organized by No Kings, a network of progressive groups opposing what they call the increasingly authoritarian behavior of the U.S. government.

Nearly 7 million demonstrators in small towns and major cities across the United States took part in No Kings protests opposing President Donald Trump’s policies, according to organizers.

Saturday’s event marked the third mass mobilization since Trump reclaimed the White House and one of the largest single-day nationwide demonstrations in U.S. history, surpassing the more than 5 million participants reported at the first No Kings protests in June.

Organizers said they expected millions more to participate globally across more than 2,600 events. The overriding theme of the marches was the accusation that Trump is behaving more like a monarch than an elected official.

In his remarks, Klimko joked that he had begun telling people he was from Austria instead of the United States but added that Prague was a fitting location for the day’s rally.

“This is a city that has shown generations of Czechs how to face power without fear,” he said. “These streets still reverberate with the memories of the Velvet Revolution, the jangling of keys and the stubborn insistence on truth.”

The event concluded with a speech by civil rights activist and UCLA senior lecturer Paul Von Blum, who also attended the June No Kings protest in Los Angeles.

Drawing a parallel to Europe’s past, Von Blum recalled the Gestapo’s roundup of Jews in Berlin, including members of his own family. “We have no institutional guardrails,” he warned.

As in previous rallies, protesters carried humorous and symbolic signs reading “No Faux-ing Way,” “American Idiot” and “Gran-tifa,” held by an elderly couple. Others waved a Donald Trump toilet brush, and a costumed frog made an appearance, a nod to U.S. officials’ labeling of costumed protesters in Portland as “terrorists.”

The demonstration came as the incoming Czech government faces its own political turbulence. The populist Motoristé party, led by Filip Turek, has drawn criticism after Turek was accused of posting and later deleting racist, sexist and misogynistic content on social media.

Asked about the Czech political climate, Von Blum, a visiting professor of English and American Studies at Masaryk University in Brno, called the Motoristé party “dangerous.”