About 200 people gathered in Gaisman Park in Memphis’s Berclair neighborhood Saturday afternoon for a No Kings rally. They carried signs criticizing President Donald Trump and encouraging Memphians to “love your neighbor” and vote.
Next door, voters filed in and out of the Gaisman Park Community Center, one of Memphis’ early voting locations.
The “Party to the Polls” rally was organized by Indivisible Memphis and featured live music and tables of T-shirts and literature explaining voting rights and ballot amendments.
The crowd was dotted with attendees wearing shirts supporting Democratic candidates appearing on Memphis ballots. One young man walked through the crowd holding a sign for Republican John Gillespie. Another man held a sign encouraging votes for independent gubernatorial candidate David Hatley.
Millie Patterson came from Cordova with her “Resist” T-shirt and a hand-drawn sign depicting a crossed-out President Donald Trump wearing a crown and the words, “no faux-king way.”
She’s said she was 76 “and proud of it.” She didn’t become politically active until Trump took office. Now, Patterson said she wants to be a “thorn in Trump’s side.”
Though his term still has two more years, “I don’t want to make it easy,” she said. “To me, it’s important to show up and don’t let things go by without protest.” Trump is what the nation ordered when they voted him into office, and now the country must face the results, Patterson said. “This is how I’m facing it.”
Democratic state House District 97 candidate Jesse Huseth stopped by the park to visit. The 2026 election marks his second time campaigning against Republican incumbent Gillespie for the seat. Democrats poured tens of thousands of dollars into Huseth’s campaign this year in hopes of flipping the seat; despite electing a Republican state representative, the district went to then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
Huseth said he learned from his first campaign that “you can be totally honest about yourself without being authentic.” This time around, he said, he’s presenting himself just as he is, and he’s seen a positive response. “What voters want is to vote for someone they see themselves in,” Huseth said.
He dove deeper into the state budget this year, looking for opportunities to change priorities to benefit Memphians under economic strain. He’s campaigning on things like eliminating the state grocery tax and making Pre-K more accessible.
Democratic Memphis State Rep. Justin Pearson is campaigning to represent Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District. The district formerly encompassed Shelby County and had been a Democratic stronghold, but the majority-Republican general assembly redrew the district lines in May after the U.S. Supreme Court weakened protections for minority voting power. Shelby County is now divided among three far-flung districts, each drawn to lean Republican.
Pearson spent about an hour at Saturday’s rally, shaking hands and speaking with attendees. As he posed for a picture, one woman turned to another onlooker and said she had planned to vote for Pearson, but she no longer lives in District 9. Now, she’ll be represented alongside residents of rural Northwest Tennessee and wealthy Williamson County in Middle Tennessee in the 5th district.
“The truth is, when we don’t vote, the people who go vote are making decisions for us and for our community, and they may not have our best interests at heart,” Pearson said. “This is our time to talk about the future we want to live in, and our vote is how we do that.”
Longtime activist Joe Calhoun attended the rally with a sign depicting himself marching for civil rights in 1968. Calhoun is now 78, and still marching.
He keeps showing up, he said, because, “there’s always been a reason to fight.”
Calhoun has worked with Pearson for many years and supports hhis campaign, but he can no longer vote for him under the new district lines. He lamented the Supreme Court’s April decision, which he described as a repeal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
“These are things that we fought for, and now we’re going backwards. And it’s one thing to fight for things to happen, but then when it is taken away — the young people don’t understand that yet until it affects them,” he said.
Calhoun said adding more barriers to voting — like restricting or eliminating mail-in ballots, or requiring documents that may be difficult for some people to obtain — impedes on people’s right to vote.
“Anytime you stop people from voting, you’re impeding the progress of the people … you’re chipping away at democracy, and that’s what I have to stand up for: democracy,” Calhoun said.
Most of the attendees at Saturday’s event were middle-aged or older. Calhoun said he wants young people to make their voices heard.
He has four grandchildren, all in their teens or 20s.
“Anything that I do is so that they have a better life than I do, and access to the things that will allow them to make the choices of what they want to do with the rest of their life,” he said. “They need to be able to make those choices based on opportunity. Opportunity is the biggest thing that we always have to fight for.”
