More than 140,000 protesters gathered in cities across the Bay Area as part of the nationwide “No Kings” protests that brought young and old alike into the streets to in a “nationwide day of defiance” set to coincide with President Donald Trump’s $45 million military parade in Washington, D.C., according to a Bay Area News Group survey of local organizers.
Across the country, an estimated 5 million protesters took part in more than 2,000 protests, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, a co-sponsor of the nationwide protest. In the Bay Area, more than 50 protests were planned stretching south from Gilroy north to Santa Rosa.
“Everyone’s been showing up and being clear that they care,” said 50501 San Jose organizer James Kuszmaul. “It’s not just any one spot. It’s not just one central organizer or anything getting everyone out there. It’s grassroots movements. It’s everyone from different walks of life and all sorts of different geographies, caring and showing up.”
50501 is a national group that organized some of the protests, along with the organization Indivisible and others.
The “No Kings” protest was one in a series of several nationwide protests pushing back against the Trump administration in recent months. Nationwide “Hands Off” rallies in early April drew thousands of protesters in the Bay Area. Two weeks later, a smaller “No Kings” protest again brought Bay Area protesters out.
On Saturday, many protesters carried signs lambasting Trump, with attendees saying they took issue with his immigration crackdown, military parade and democratic rollbacks.
Preliminary estimates of the crowd for San Francisco’s “No Kings” protest sit at about 100,000 people, said Liliana Soroceanu from Indivisible San Francisco.
In San Jose, the crowd was estimated to be made up of more than 12,000 people, said Kuszmaul. In Oakland, the protest saw about 10,000 protesters — double the amount who attended the “Hands Off” protest in April, said Indivisible East Bay organizer Nancy Latham.
“We were thrilled at the turnout,” Kuszmaul said of the San Jose protest. “It was certainly more than we had expected.”
In Walnut Creek, organizers estimated that between 6,000 and 7,000 people attended the protest, said Kathryn Durham-Hammer, founder of Indivisible ReSisters Contra Costa. Organizers of the Palo Alto protest were estimating that between 7,000 and 10,000 people attended the event.
An exact head count was impossible, said Cindi Sears, a member of the Indivisible Portola Valley Council. Organizers came to their estimates through a variety of methods, including clickers, apps, photography and drone footage.
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Photos: No Kings demonstrations throughout the Bay Area
“I was blown away by the turnout, especially the diversity of the crowd,” Sears said. “All ages were in attendance. Many, many young families came.”
Even smaller cities had sizeable turnouts. Organizers estimated that a protest in Hayward drew about 1,000 participants and “possibly a lot more,” said Ben Ogilvie, an organizer with Eden Area Indivisible. In Dublin, organizers estimated that between 3,000 and 5,000 protestors showed up — many of whom were standing “pretty much shoulder to shoulder” up and down Dublin Boulevard, said Kyoko Takayama, an organizer with Indivisble Tri-Valley. That protest featured a human chain that was more than a mile long, according to a press release.
“It’s indicative of how passionate people are about fighting the abuses of the Trump administration,” Kuszmaul said. “The fact that this is the current peak of a series of protests that have been going on for several months now suggest to me that this isn’t a temporary thing. This is not going to fo away all of a sudden.”
