No Kings Day March
Madison, Wisconsin – Saturday, June 14, 2025
Wow, looks like my last post here was way back in March. I guess I took an unplanned little break.
Today I’m sharing a bunch of photos from the “No Kings Day” protest that took place here in Madison last Saturday. It was a good turnout. The police said around 15,000 people showed up, but that seems a little low to me. It felt like a lot more, especially when you count all the folks who didn’t walk the route from Library Mall up to the Capitol, and instead set up camp along the sidelines to cheer on the marchers from the shade.
These shots are a bit like my usual street photography, but they lean more into photojournalism.
If I were an official photojournalist, I probably could’ve gotten a better vantage point for photographing the speakers up at the Capitol. But I’m not—so I didn’t. Honestly, I didn’t even know there were going to be speakers. If I had, I would've planned ahead and gotten up there a little earlier, maybe found a spot on the front side of the podium.
One of the speakers was John Nichols, the National Affairs correspondent for The Nation and associate editor of our local paper, The Capital Times. He introduced Bernie Sanders, who spoke to the crowd over the phone while John held his smartphone up to the mic. At first, people got really excited, myself included, because the way John introduced him made it sound like Bernie might actually be there in person. Especially confusing for those of us who don’t hear so well anymore.
Another speaker did show up in person: U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock from Georgia. I’m not sure what brought him to Madison instead of Atlanta, but it was good of him to come out and show support.
This shot is actually a pretty heavy crop. For the sake of portability, I had a lightweight 35mm lens on my camera and left the big telephoto lenses, like my heavy 300mm, at home. All things considered, it doesn’t look too bad, even with the cropping. My position, though? That definitely could’ve been better.
But hey, that’s one of the perks of using a high-resolution camera like my Canon EOS R5 - you’ve got some room to crop and still end up with a decent image.