Huge turnout for ‘Peoples Rights’ parade

Hundreds of cars drove through downtown Coeur d’Alene on Saturday morning in a flag-waving, horn-honking, liberty-loving procession, as the Peoples Rights parade rolled down Northwest Boulevard and Sherman Avenue.

In a response to the COVID-related mass cancellations of events throughout the area — including the Chamber of Commerce’s annual Fourth of July parade and festivities — local activist Casey Whalen corralled, by some estimates, more than 800 vehicles at the WinCo parking lot on the corner of Ramsey and Appleway, where the parade of trucks and cars and motorcycles eased down Northwest toward a sometimes sparse, sometimes healthy crowd of onlookers who came to enjoy the makeshift Independence Day event.

“We were here at 10, and it lasted until about 10:15, and then we left,” Gretchen Winde of Hayden said on the sidewalk in front of the Museum of North Idaho at the end of Northwest Boulvevard. “And then we went up Government Way, and (we saw) a lot more people coming, so we turned around and came back.”

“I was pretty surprised,” said Luke Torretta of Coeur d’Alene, who had parked his family’s camping chairs on the sidewalk in front of Independence Point. “With everything getting canceled — fireworks, the parade — I came out here with my dad, who was pretty much stuck at home. He was like, ‘If they’re not going to have a parade, I’m going to sit here and at least watch traffic, because I come here every year. I come here at this day and this time and watch the parade.’ So it was cool to see everybody come down. I thought there would be a few cars. I thought it would be about 15 minutes, and that’s it, but it’s still going.”

The two-hour parade featured cars with chalk-markered expressions of liberty written on windows, trucks decorated with red, white and blue tinsel, and horns blaring honks of support as they passed. Concerns by many locals about an abundance of weapons on display at the event were assuaged, as only a handful of vehicles sported armed residents.

“(We’re here) for freedom,” said Coeur d’Alene’s Terry Alling as he eased his truck along the parade route with his family. The Navy veteran who served on the USS Saratoga during Desert Storm smiled as he added, “We’re celebrating everything.”

There was no shortage of flags, either: Whether waved by paraders in the backs of trucks, wedged in the seat creases of motorbikes, or held proudly out of passenger windows, most vehicles boasted American flags as symbols of patriotism and unity.

“Our country hasn’t had a — I don’t know if you’d call it a persecution — but a hard time that I lived through (and) my parents have,” Winde said. “So just standing up and waving brings tears to my eyes, to see everybody excited to be Americans. We hear in the press all the time how awful America is. So it’s neat to see all these people.”

Not all the symbols were unifying. A few flags flying for support of President Trump’s re-election waved in the light breeze. More than a few Confederate flags were on display, either on flagpoles or mounted onto vehicles. Passengers held the occasional sign as they passed by, pleading for onlookers to visit websites that promote conspiracy theories.

“A lot of people feel like they’re having their freedoms taken away from this or that,” Torretta said. “Just to see people come down here and say, ‘I’m still going to come down here and express my freedom in a non-violent way, in a patriotic way,’ it’s really cool that everybody’s on the same page with that. People here have a lot of different viewpoints, whether they vote for Trump or vote for Biden or neither of them, they still recognize this day’s important for everyone.”