Were you one of the several hundred Lincoln County folks who stood on the Sheepscot River bridge on Saturday morning? Did you join other national anti-Trump White House protesters who tried to voice opposition to its policies and actions, especially Mr. Trump’s Iran war and the bully-boy tactics by ICE agents?

It was not the first time Wiscasset has bitterly opposed the actions of a president, but unless you are a history buff, like the one and only Phil Di Vece, you probably didn’t know that. More on that later.

Saturday was a county-wide protest organized by the local chapter of the No Kings/Indivisible anti-Trump White House group. While it was an overt political protest, I was surprised that it didn’t turn into a local Democratic Party festival featuring the two major candidates seeking to replace Republican Susan Collins in the U.S. Senate and one or more of the eight candidates running for governor. Although I drove back and forth over the bridge and through the town for the best part of an hour, I didn’t spy any “Vote for” political placards.

Now, that doesn’t mean there were no snarky homemade signs, but the mostly grown-up crowd, the ones who always vote, seemed to avoid profane and NSFW slogans. Samples of the mostly homemade placards carried messages like: “Criminals and clowns wear masks,” or “It all ends when enough of us say no,” and “No, No, No, No.” Sprinkled through the placards were a few blue and yellow Ukrainian flags.

Despite the president’s machine-gun-like stream of comments coming from the White House focusing on Venezuela and Greenland, tariffs on this and that, and the failure of NATO to do anything at all, the top protester complaints centered on opposition to the Iran war and the ICE agents.

There was no mention, that I could see, referencing a move to put the president’s name on our currency, the Kennedy Center, a couple of airports, and his attempts to rewrite the history of the 2020 presidential election. However, a few signs referenced the Epstein files and the White House’s reluctance to reveal them.

Pam Wylie, an organizer of the local protest rally, described the event as cold but good. She acknowledged that fewer folks joined the protest than at earlier events held on Oct. 18 and June 14. She estimated about 800 attended the Wiscasset protest, while 700 joined a companion event in Damariscotta. While Sheriff Todd Brackett assigned a few deputies to keep an eye out for potential trouble from counter demonstrators, Wylie said she heard no reports of any incidents.

In recent years, Wiscasset officials and residents have worked to overcome the huge loss of municipal income stemming from the closure of the Maine Yankee nuclear power plant. However, the town’s current fiscal troubles, including the possible fallout from the Iran war, can compare to the economic troubles foisted on Wiscasset by none other than Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

It was 1807. Jefferson thought he could stop the British navy from kidnapping American sailors by placing an embargo on the vast amount of trade goods we sold the Brits. At the time, Wiscasset merchants enjoyed an export boom fueled by sales of timber and other products to England, Canada and the Caribbean islands. That all came to an end with Mr. Jefferson’s embargo, which was continued by his successor, Mr. Madison. Local residents protested to state and federal officials, and when that tactic failed, they turned to smuggling in an attempt to evade the embargo and avoid American customs enforcement officials. 

The whole situation devolved into the War of 1812, which triggered a vast coastal economic depression that saw some Wiscasset merchants go broke, and forced local towns to set up municipal food banks to combat starvation. This led to a series of attacks by British warships in places like Boothbay and on the Sheepscot River.

Today, unlike our forefathers, local residents at odds with presidential policies are mounting a very public protest to influence the next election cycle. That is exactly the point of Saturday’s No Kings protest. It was a very public rebuke of the administration’s policies, not an event to promote one candidate or political party.

In fact, at the end of the event, I saw one guy handing out flyers to the departing protesters. Was it a volunteer plugging one of the two Democratic senate candidates, Gov. Janet Mills or Graham Platner? Was it a supporter of one of the eight Democratic candidates for governor? I asked the guy to come over to my car and give me one of his flyers.

“Sure, mister,” he said. “I’m just handing out menus, hoping to get these folks to stop at our local market to get something to eat.”