Pâtisserie Coralie is an elegant French coffee shop and bakery in downtown Evanston. It’s at the corner of Davis St. and Chicago Ave. with white-washed brick on the outside and a ritzy gold-white interior. They sell les macarons et les croissants et les sandwiches. Their logo is in cursive; their name and tagline are in French. They feature a drawing of the Eiffel Tower on their merchandise. On Saturday, June 14, 2025, two girls walk east on Davis past the shop away from the “No Kings” Rally held in Fountain Square.
“Oh my god, Cora-lie smells so good,” says one of the girls. She pronounces it, saying lie as in liar. “Cora-lie, Coralie.” Tomato, tomahto. I speak French – so maybe I’m just being elitist – but it bothers me. I swear that I don’t swallow my “r’s” when I say “croissant.”
An old man trips, stumbling over a curb on the sidewalk by an alley. A younger woman with him helps maintain his balance.
“Woah”
“Seriously…”
“They’re not at eye level.”
“…if you’re not looking, you’re taking…”
“Youuu are gonna hurt yourself,” interjects a third person.
“…a dive right over.”
They continue their walk, passing more shops, bakeries, coffee shops, and pâtisseries. “Life just is hard, obviously,” says someone shuffling away from the protest earlier in the morning. Indeed.
In Fountain Square, around a thousand people circle the Veterans Memorial Wall, a big blue wall with the names of those from the city who have died in service—a dog barks. There’s a general din, a mumbling, people talking in the background, five minutes before the scheduled start time. I write down a few notes, clocking that more people will filter in later.
“Sleepin’ on democracy.”
People gather with their signs, asking one another for pictures and complimenting each other. It’s insufferably polite.
“Love your signs!”
“Good sign!”
“Can I take your picture?”
Someone’s in a king outfit with a purple robe, crown, and scepter, carrying the red “no” symbol. I stare as they walk by. I don’t mean to, but I can’t help it. It’s a striking mode. A mylar balloon of Trump as a baby in a diaper floats above the crowd. One sign has red bold lettering in all caps: “NO KINGS NO NAZIS” with the “NAZIS” part lining up just below “KINGS.”Another sign wants to abolish ICE, and another tells Congress to find its soul.
There’s a cheer as the protest officially commences. A “Make America Normal Again” sign mimics the American flag. Some kids start talking behind me. “I have one little sign,” says one of them.
The kids boo a mention of Trump. They’re about to begin a tirade against him. They’re from Winnetka, the wealthy suburb just north of Evanston. The village didn’t have a ‘No Kings’ rally, so they came to Evanston. Generally, there’s a rivalry between the places, between their respective high schools. One kid is gallish enough to sport a shirt supporting Winnetka’s New Trier Trevians. A common refrain, he probably doesn’t even know what a Trevian is anyway. (We own New Trier, just don’t look at any of the results from the games.) I suppose I don’t know what a Trevian is, either. I think that I must have googled it once and since forgotten.
“The thing…,” starts a kid.
“What?” replies his friend.
“…Donald Trump doesn’t know what it’s like to go to…” His speech trails off but picks back up once he’s confident in his words. “He’s never been to a grocery store; he has all his butlers do it.”
“No, he goes to McDonald’s.”
The kids laugh together. I chuckle a little, begrudgingly.
“Yeah!” says one of them enthusiastically. “Because that’s where he needs to be for the rest of his life!”
“And eats his cold hamburger!”
“That’s where…”
“No, he…”
They digress.
A chant picks up through the crowd, the whole crowd, not just the front few surrounding the podium and petite stage underneath a white tent. Most of us hadn’t been able to hear the earlier speeches. The loudspeakers aren’t very good.
“Impeach Trump!
“Impeach Trump!
“Impeach Trump!
“Impeach Trump!
“Impeach Trump!
“Impeach Trump!
“Impeach Trump!
“Impeach Trump!”
“Can I take a picture of your sign?” someone asks during the chant.
“Yeah.”
“I won’t get you in it I promise… Just the sign, no problem.”
“I love your sign,” adds a third person, complimentarily.
Someone laughs. It sounds like Shane Gillis. It distracts me from profound observation of the absurdity of the oldest, whitest, Evanston-iest protest I had ever been to. The kids break out into song. It’s Hamilton. They’re singing Hamilton. “You’ll Be Back” from Hamilton. Hamilton. One of their moms joins in.
“Da-da-da, dat-da, dat, da-da-da, da-ya-da
Da-da, dat, dat, da-ya”
They’re not bad. It’s a pretty tolerable rendition.
“May I take a picture of your sign?”
“Sure!”
It’s surreal.
Someone’s wearing a red hat in the crowd, but it’s not a MAGA cap. It reads “Make Trump Drumpf Again”. I walk over to her to ask about it. It’s from Last Week Tonight With John Oliver from the first time Trump was elected. Her name’s Kani. Another chant starts.
“No kings! No crowns! No fascist orange clowns!”
“I hope it will reassure other people who see people are motivated and standing up to Trump. I think that’s the most important thing,” says Kani. She’s interrupted by another chant.
“Hey hey! Ho ho! It’s the Gulf of Mexico!”
“Well, I started social security this year,” she resumes. “So, yeah.”
I commiserate and nod my head in passive agreement. “Yeah,” I say.
“The Evanston office is good, and so I pretty much have been getting what I was expecting to get, but I really worry about what’s gonna happen in the future. Eighty years of world order and alliances, and democracies, and what happens? We vote at the UN for Russia, and it’s like living in a nightmare. Someday I hope to wake up in the correct universe.”
Kandi Jamieson painted for 15 hours before the protest. She was charged, emotional, and exhausted.
“I have a studio, and I stapled this up to a really large eight-by-eight frame. And then I stretched the fabric, and I painted onto it, and it just bleeds into the fabric, and then I painted it on the floor, too. I just slashed it through with paint and…”
“It’s incredible.”
***
Kandi had created a black-and-white work of a young girl in Palestine, tears streaming down her face, looking out to the sky amidst explosions and clouds. She related it to genocide.
“It’s so hard for me to understand how people can be so blind to what is happening right now, how they can justify the slaughter of a whole people just because of religious beliefs or what they’ve been taught and what narratives they have learned. So it’s disappointing to be in a woke community when Palestinian lives don’t matter.”
I think I catch scornful emphasis on the word “woke.”
“You have to question whether or not their activism is really rooted in authenticity. I mean, are we really able to look at ourselves in the mirror? And see our flaws and see our shadow? I had to do a lot of searching for my soul and to admit how I’ve been complicit and how I’ve been oblivious and how I’ve supported and been a bystander for almost my whole life.”
***
Kandi and her crew of volunteers unfurled another banner, a green banner with another crying face. They revealed a blood-stained red one. And unrolled the last one in white with the word “RƎVO⅃UTION.”
The day grows later and hotter as I return to watching the protest. Pat Savage-Williams, the local high school board president, is trying to lead chants after finishing her speech.
“Next one: No hate! No fear! Immigrants are welcome here!”
“No hate! No fear! Immigrants are welcome here!”
“No Nazis! No kings! These are not American things!” says Pat. The crowd picks up the new chant quickly.
“No Nazis! No kings! These are not American things!”
“Hey, hey, whaddaya say, democracy is here to stay…”
“Hey, hey, whaddaya…”
“…hey, hey, united we stand, divided we fall. Is that too much at one time?”
“YES.”
There are shouts of laughter. I feel startlingly pensive.
“We don’t wanna overwhelm you, we gotta save the energy for all the work we’re gonna do today.”
What work, I wonder. A tambourine jingles in the background to keep the beat of each chant. “Bravo, everybody,” says a master of ceremonies at the podium.
“Let’s all wave goodbye to Elon Musk!” a new voice says into the microphone in a singsong, gloating voice. “Na-na-na-na…”
“…na-na-na-na, hey, hey, hey, goodbye,” continues the crowd.
“Good riddance!” says an unidentifiable voice.
Jade Alao and Ragad Eltay, Niles West High School seniors, both deeply involved in politics, begin their own speeches. It’s one of the last ones. They speak of Trump’s self-identification as a patriot, critiquing his misunderstanding of the word.
“We got into politics because we care, because we’re Black women and first generational [sic] immigrants, and we see what this country does to people like us and even more so the people with even fewer protections than us!” They hold for applause and cheering to die down. “But even in so-called progressive circles, there’s pressure to overlook injustice for the sake of comfort. People silence themselves, hurting others, to set differences aside. But that’s so easy to say when your differences don’t get you deported, criminalized, or killed.”
They finish their speech. I return to writing down random notes, silently critiquing the protest’s passivity.
Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss speaks. The response to Biss’s speech is typical. While he speaks, a protester flies a Palestine flag in clear view behind him. He closes his speech with a call and response about winning.
Indivisible Evanston, who had put on the rally, still had planned another song: “This Land Is Your Land” by Woody Guthrie. The guitar starts and stops and starts again. The crowd hears the tune.
“This land is your land, and this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream Waters
This land was made for you and me
As I went walking that ribbon of highway
And I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me
This land is your land, and this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream Waters
This land was made for you and me.”
People are singing along.
“I roamed and rambled, and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
All around me, a voice was a-sounding
This land was made for you and me.”
“I know all the lyrics to every song,” says someone in the crowd.
“This land is your land, and this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream Waters
This land was made for you and me
As I was walking, I saw a sign say
Yes, it said, ‘Private Property’
But on the other side, it didn’t say nothing
That side was made for you and me.”
The lyrics are changed up a little bit.
“This land is your land, and this land is my land
“From California to the New York Island
“From Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream Waters
“This land was made for you and me.”
People clap along, too. Their voices combine and create harmonics, higher-pitched, unsung resonances that result from certain combinations of tones.
“The sun was shining, and I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
And all around me, a voice was chanting
This land was made for you and me
This land is your land, and this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream Waters
This land was made for you and me.”
When the song ends, and even during it, I laugh to myself. Really? This song? Here? Now? I suppose I understand the magic of thousands of people agreeing on a specific cause and singing their support. I start the walk back to my car. The protest’s over.
I see a homeless man, probably in his mid-to-late thirties with a graying beard, black socks, a blue sweatshirt, gray sweatpants, and no shoes, sleeping in one of the alcoves by Coralie, the one outside of a TruFit Wellness Studio. It strikes me.
I write down his clothes, his look, and his sleeping position. I think of the hypocrisy of using a homeless man to prove my point. I’ve never been able to look a homeless person in the eyes when I tell them I’m not going to give them any money or food. I can’t do it. I’m glad that he’s sleeping. I walk past him.
Mack Jones is a University of Illinois journalism student. For the last three years, he served in various capacities for The Evanstonian, including as opinion editor, digital editor, and podcast editor. His critically-acclaimed narrative podcast, The Field of Broken Dreams (available wherever you get your podcasts), dove into the issues surrounding Northwestern University’s Ryan Field stadium renovation from the perspective of the town-gown dynamics which shaped the stadium controversy. When he is not writing, Mack plays tennis and piano. He also volunteers as a referee for AYSO and participates in a scholarly book group.
