Youngkin booed, liberty cheered on Church Hill

Editor’s note: This piece has been updated to include details and video of State Senator Ghazala Hashmi’s appearance at the protest.

When Lauren Natale first decided to organize a demonstration outside of St. John’s Church to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Patrick Henry’s famous “Liberty or Death” speech and protest the anti-constitutional coup perpetrated on the federal government by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, she figured a good turnout would be “somewhere between two and 50.”

By that metric, the “No Kings in America” protest, held Sunday afternoon in Patrick Henry Park and on the streets surrounding the historic church grounds in Church Hill, was a wild success. Before the action even began, Natale, a former teacher who told me she was in high school the last time she tried her hand at organizing, had handed out all 300 flyers she’d printed up with her riff on the Founding Father’s pre-Revolutionary War oration.

At peak, The Lookout estimates over 500 demonstrators surrounded St. John’s, with the biggest throngs gathering on the 2400 blocks of East Broad Street and East Grace Street.

The air was thick with anti-Trump and anti-Musk picket signs. I spotted at least two upside-down American flags flapping in the spring breeze, and another couple flags of the Commonwealth of Virginia. A Church Hill saxophonist named Danny graced the crowd with improvised melodies between chants like “Where is Congress? / Do your job!” and “Show me what democracy looks like! / This is what democracy looks like!” Perhaps because of the last-minute nature of the protest, the Richmond Police Department had not rerouted traffic off E. Broad St. for the demonstration; passing drivers leaned liberally on their horns, to the delight of the crowd.

Natale was originally convinced to organize the protest when she’d heard that Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, a dogged Trump ally rumored to be preparing a run against Democrat Mark Warner for the latter’s seat in the US Senate in 2026, planned to attend St. John’s official reenactment ceremony. The reenactment, a sold-out event that also drew attendance from longtime documentarian Ken Burns, took place in the historic Episcopal church starting at 1:30pm.

I wasn’t able to get to Patrick Henry Park to see the opening of the protest, so I missed Youngkin’s entrance. (I’m told he received a chorus of boos.) I also missed a rousing speech from State Senator Ghazala Hashmi, delivered from the back of a pickup truck parked on the northern curb of E. Broad St. The Democratic politician has represented districts south of Richmond (first the 10th, now the 15th) since 2020, and is currently campaigning to be Virginia’s next lieutenant governor in a primary field that includes former Richmond mayor Levar Stoney. Hashmi has shown up for the grassroots in this political crisis, and not just yesterday—she was one of just two state-level politicians to attend a rally at the Capitol on Presidents Day. Stoney was absent there, and here.

As the protest wound on, an organizer named Antony (didn’t catch his last name) used a bullhorn to try—several times—to coax Youngkin out of the church to the wrought-iron fence at the northernmost edge of St. John’s property. Organizers had hoped the Republican executive might take the opportunity to face constituents concerned by the Trump administration’s Musk-abetted destruction of federal civil services and attacks on constitutional order.

To that end, nurse Nicole Subryan-Bailey of Matoaca delivered Natale’s revised version of Henry’s speech, laden with patriotic rhetoric and references to specific Trump transgressions, at around 2:30pm, after the latter woman briefly addressed the crowd. “I have never been more proud to be a Richmonder,” Natale said, to cheers.

Youngkin didn’t ultimately face up to the demonstrators. Shortly after Subryan-Bailey’s speech concluded on E. Broad St., the governor exited St. John’s out the back gate on E. Grace St., where a rearguard of ~100 protesters hailed him with boos that could be heard around the block.

Like Natale, Subryan-Bailey, who organizes with the 50501 Movement, wasn’t surprised. “I knew he wasn’t going to show his cowardly ass out here,” she said, proudly wearing a custom-made shirt that read “DON’T BLAME ME. I didn’t vote for the LIMP-DICKED LIAR.”

But if Youngkin had deigned to acknowledge the crowd of his critics, Subryan-Bailey tells The Lookout she would’ve had a simple message for him: “Stand up for your constituents, man.”