Stillwater protesters march under one message: Show up
On Saturday morning, Tori Grey did what she has done since 2017: She showed up.
Grey, a Stillwater community organizer, arrived at Strickland Park with a sign, a plan and a group chat full of neighbors willing to follow her lead.
By the time the march ended at Block 34, the “No Kings” protest in Stillwater had drawn a crowd of costumed demonstrators, faith leaders, local officials and first-time protesters who found out about the event in places ranging from Facebook to a Pokémon Go group chat.
“When you see people taking a stand, it changes our internal risk assessment,” Grey said. “It changes whether or not we are going to take a risk, standing up, or maybe protecting someone who’s being threatened.”
Good Trouble Stilly organized Saturday’s march, the third iteration of the nationwide No Kings Day in Stillwater. Martha Averett and fellow organizer Bonnie Hammond co-founded the local chapter as part of the national Red Wine and Blue network, a grassroots organization of women who share concerns about threats to democratic institutions. The name nods to the late Georgia Congressman John Lewis, whose call to “make good trouble” became a rallying cry for a generation of civil rights advocates.
Averett said she and Hammond drew inspiration from Heather Cox Richardson, a historian whose daily newsletter “Letters from an American” has become a touchstone for politically engaged Americans. After watching Richardson speak with Red Wine and Blue network leaders, the two Stillwater women consulted with organizers in Tulsa, learned the organizational requirements and launched their chapter. They coordinated with organizations, including 50501 and the American Civil Liberties Union. The two earlier Stillwater protests had connected with larger demonstrations in Tulsa and Oklahoma City, but Saturday marked the first time organizers concentrated their energy on mobilizing local residents.
“This is the first time there’s been a really concentrated organization and planning to get local people aware of the fact that they, too, have a voice,” Averett said. “And that they can stand up.”
Saturday’s event reflected months of work. Organizers held sign-making parties in the weeks beforehand. Participants received printed programs detailing the march route. Speakers included local faith ministers and State Representative Trish Ranson. Attendees wore frog and dinosaur costumes, a tradition Averett said began in Portland, Oregon, as a way to inject humor and approachability into demonstrations.
Averett said the crowd spanned a wide range of ages, with many people making the physical effort to attend despite challenges.
“There were lots of people who probably would have preferred to stay home but who made the effort to get out and walk and be seen,” she said. “There were a lot of very clever signs. People greeted each other. Do you know this person? Do you know that person? You get to make connections with people in Stillwater that you may never have met.”
She also noted a shift in how passing drivers responded. In earlier protests, hostile reactions from passing cars were common. Saturday felt different.
“In the past, maybe the last two years, we would have a significant number of people coming by and giving us the finger,” Averett said. “I didn’t see anybody do that this time.”
For Grey, logistics come down to instinct and a 40-50 person group chat she built person by person. When she goes out, whether to a planned march or a solo afternoon at a busy intersection, she sends a message: I’ll be at this corner at this time. Come if you can.
Sometimes she plans a week ahead. Other times she sends the message an hour before she leaves. On a recent morning, Grey stood at the corner of Washington Street and Sixth Street, a stretch of road near Oklahoma State University’s campus, specifically to be visible to students passing between classes.
“I don’t plan on myself to do it rigidly,” Grey said. “That’s the point.”
Grey studies resistance history to sharpen her approach, drawing on the work of scholar Timothy Snyder, who writes about how social conditioning pushes people to obey the unwritten rules of whatever space they enter and how that conditioning can help authoritarian systems take hold.
“As humans, we are conditioned to walk into a space and immediately take in thousands of pieces of information about how to obey in that space,” Grey said. “That’s why we talk about disobeying. That means fighting that human urge to just comply with the pressure around you.”
She said her signs tend toward direct, plainspoken statements for that reason.
“A sign that says this is what is happening is usually what I go for,” Grey said. “It breaks through that hyper-normalization.”
James Dixon, a disabled combat veteran who grew up as a dark-skinned, foreign-born kid in Oklahoma, said last year’s No Kings demonstration in Stillwater was his first in-person protest. For years, he had taken his anti-fascist positions online, arguing, posting and debating. He even brought AI into the effort at one point, using it to help frame arguments in Facebook threads. None of it seemed to make a dent.
“It kind of took a toll,” Dixon said. “I quit arguing with them. But seeing the things that they say, this level of cruelty, it still affects me emotionally.”
The streets were new territory, but Dixon said the experience changed something. He brought his dog to Saturday’s march and wore one of the anti-fascist T-shirts he makes, including one that reads “Nazis are the bad guys.” The act of showing up, he said, does something online activism cannot
“It was nice to be surrounded physically by people that were like-minded,” Dixon said. “It was good to feel less alone.”
Not every encounter was welcoming. After one protest, Dixon said, a stranger in a car followed him and Grey into a parking lot and screamed at them. That made him more alert, but it did not make him stop.
“I kind of keep my head on a swivel,” Dixon said. “But the support, people rolling down their windows and saying, ‘Hey, we really want to thank you for what you’re doing,’ that makes it worth it. Because I think everybody feels like they’re alone in this.”
Dixon served in the Army infantry and said he joined partly out of curiosity rather than ideology.
“I wanted to see firsthand what the machine looked like from the inside,” he said. “I don’t really have a problem protesting against what the country is doing now because it’s not the same country and it’s not the same military.”
He said he believes the loudest voices today signal a turning point rather than a permanent shift, describing the phenomenon as an extinction burst, a term for when a toxic ideology grows loudest right before it fades.
“I’m choosing to remain hopelessly optimistic,” Dixon said. “And I’m looking forward to what’s on the other side of it.”
Alex, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym due to safety concerns, said they almost missed Saturday’s march as an OSU student attending their first protest. A message in a Pokémon Go group chat, not a news alert or a political flyer, tipped them off. A fellow player mentioned attending last year’s Stillwater No Kings march, and Alex filed it away. When planning for this year’s event started circulating on social media, they made sure to attend.
Alex grew up in Tulsa and chose OSU partly because the campus made an active effort to support minority groups. Living in Stillwater as a transgender student, they said, sometimes feels isolating.
“It’s really hard to find people that don’t immediately hate your existence,” Alex said. “Every single person that you see might be voting for legislation that could severely hurt you. When you don’t realize how many other people are like-minded, it starts to feel like you’re just surrounded.”
Grey’s pop-up protest group on Facebook gave Alex a way in. They had seen Grey protesting near a friend’s workplace one afternoon, stopped to hand her a sealed water bottle and struck up a conversation.
“She was super nice, given I don’t know her very well, and very passionate about what she was doing,” Alex said.
The march surprised them. The informational format, with speakers from government and advocacy backgrounds, gave Alex entry points into issues they had not yet researched.
“It gave me branching-off points to go do more research and figure out the best way I can help,” they said.
Terry Low, the Stillwater Police Department’s public information officer, said the department approaches protests with a straightforward priority; protect constitutional rights while maintaining community safety. Stillwater police have no specific protocols for demonstrations. Officers handle staffing decisions case by case, and patrol routes shift based on need. The department learns about planned demonstrations through special event requests that organizers file with the city and through social media monitoring.
“We provide coverage for the whole community, but we also want to ensure everyone’s safety at protests and can assist if needed,” Low said.
Dixon said he noticed patrol cars pass by during past protests but does not feel threatened.
“I feel like maybe they’re more interested in hopefully protecting us,” he said.
When people ask Grey why she stays in a state where her views put her at odds with many of her neighbors, she does not hesitate.
“I feel entitled to be here to see Indigenous people apologized to for real, and Black people given reparations for real,” Grey said. “I want to be a part of creating safety for them. And I don’t need to leave.”
She also pushes back on the idea that there is one right way to resist.
“It takes all of it,” Grey said. “None of it’s wrong, as long as you’re not endangering people’s lives. Someone makes bracelets, someone goes to the street, someone writes a letter. All of it counts.”
Averett reached for her father’s words when she described what finally pushed her to act.
“He told me: stand up and be counted,” she said. “We cannot watch what’s happening. We have to stand. Our presence in groups of people, especially in small towns in red states, is vital to making a positive, lasting change.”
Dixon put it plainly.
“I think everybody feels like they’re alone in this,” he said. “That’s exactly why we have to keep showing up.”
