Saturday afternoon, Jim Sweeney—owner of Sweeney’s Walnut Street Tavern—constructed a sign in the alley behind his bar with duct tape and a staple gun. Earlier in the week, Sweeney invited regulars to meet at the Franklinton bar to prepare their signs and costumes for the October 18 No Kings rally at the Ohio Statehouse.
“This is fucking important,” said Sweeney later, marching across the Rich Street bridge. “My bar is pretty close to Downtown. I figured it’d be a good place for people to rally, work on their signs, get in the right headspace. It’s extremely important that we do this right now.”
While many businesses and institutions have chosen to cooperate with the Trump Administration—or simply avoid political association altogether—Sweeney is unconcerned about openly aligning his bar with the anti-Trump movement…