This is a developing story. Our reporters will cover some of the marches and rallies today, and we’ll be continually updating this post with news and photos. Check back for updates.
Hundreds of protesters gathered in El Sobrante, El Cerrito and across the Bay Area and nation as part of Saturday’s No Kings Trump protests.
The local protests were peaceful, as organizers had planned, saying they wanted it to be a “day of defiance” against creeping authoritarianism exerted by Donald Trump and a complacent Republican-controlled Congress.
In west Contra Costa County, rally locations included San Pablo, Hercules and El Sobrante, as well as El Cerrito. Several people there described the turnout as larger than they expected.
“I expected it to be big, but not this big. It’s surprising, it’s energizing, it’s empowering,” said Richmond City Council member Soheila Bana, who attended the El Sobrante event.
Barbara Birch of El Cerrito showed up to her community’s protest with her Strawberry Creek Quaker group, 40 strong.
“Quakers have a long history of being nonviolent resistors,” Birch told Richmondside. “When you have a megalomaniac in charge, you can’t predict what’s going to happen.”
About 600 people were there, lined up on both sides of San Pablo Avenue as a guitarist strummed “This Land is Your Land.”
The protests — about 2,000 were planned in all 50 states — coincided with a military parade in the nation’s capital. Historians say a peacetime military parade is highly unusual, even on this Flag Day, which marks the Army’s 250th anniversary. The parade of tanks and troops also coincides with Trump’s birthday, and critics have compared it to a Soviet or North Korean-style spectacle befitting autocrats.
Longtime Richmond residents organize El Sobrante protest
The protests were organized by a coalition of more than 200 groups, including Indivisible, the American Civil Liberties Union and 50501.
Longtime Richmond residents Nancy Burke and Judy Weatherly, leaders of west Contra Costa County’s Indivisible chapter, told Richmondside they’ve been activists their entire lives and began organizing in 2015, during Trump’s first term.
“What we do know as older people that have been through some of this, is we know how serious this is, Weatherly said. “This is not ‘play games’ anymore. This is really life and death for so many people at risk.”
They described the El Sobrante protest as a combination No Kings/Kick Out the Clowns women’s march. An estimated 600 people were in attendance — the largest turnout they’ve had yet, said Sue Boudreau of west Contra Costa County Indivisible. Passing cars giving honks, and one man waved an American flag from his car window.
“This is unincorporated Contra Costa County. So it doesn’t really have a town center and therefore it suffers from a lack of community,” Boudreau said. “But damn it, we are doing something about that.”
In Oakland, protesters gathered at Wilma Chan Park and then marched to Frank Ogawa Plaza for a rally.
In Berkeley, protesters gathered at the I-80 overpass. Rallies were also planned in Albany, Alameda, San Leandro, Hayward, and many other Bay Area locations, according to the organizers.
On BART, groups of protesters began boarding trains Saturday morning with political signs, American flags, and wearing hats and sunscreen, many of them headed to the Bay Area’s biggest rallies, in Oakland and San Francisco.
At Oakland’s rally U.S. Rep. Lateefah Simon, who succeeded longtime representative Barbara Lee, said, “We’re all afraid. And I think we have to be very, very clear that we are witnessing the reality of the rise of totalitarianism in this country,” Simon said. “This is not hyperbole…Violence against elected officials, the FBI being used to weaponize regular folks, children are sleeping under their beds. The fact that there is a durable movement here should give us some comfort because this is our democracy to win back. We are losing it. But we’re developing a movement that is going to see us through.”
Azucena Rasilla and Darwin BondGraham contributed to this report.
