No Kings
Kam and I went to the No Kings protest in San José today.
At first it was a little unclear what the structure of the protest was—I didn’t see/hear anyone speaking to the crowd. But shortly after we arrived, the crowd started moving, and we went along. It turned into a march through the streets, covering a route maybe sixish blocks long that ended back at the park where it started. (There were protest monitors and street barriers set up along the way; it was clear that the route was predetermined, I just hadn’t known what it was.)
I missed an opportunity early on to stand on some high steps and look over the crowd, so I never had a clear sense of how many people there were. Someone on Bluesky estimates 12,000. A news video said two or three hundred, which was so blatantly wrong that I didn’t bother watching the rest of it. (But possibly they were referring to a different protest or a different day.)
It appeared to be enough people to fill the whole street for several blocks, but I’m not certain of that.
Lots of signs, lots of chants. A couple of brown kids wearing lovely brightly colored dresses, doing a dance to music. Some people drumming as we walked, others blowing soap bubbles. Cars honked horns as they drove past. Warm sunlight. Lots of flags, including lots of US flags (a few upside-down, most right-side-up) and some Mexican flags and some rainbow and trans flags (some worn as capes)—it took me a while to remember that it’s Flag Day. The only police I saw were standing at intersections where car traffic was blocked off; they weren’t interacting with the crowd at all. My sense of the crowd’s overall mood was somewhere in the anger-and-determination range, with a tinge of festive celebration (but all of those things may have been just in my head, dunno).
Some signs:
- No kings except drag kings
- No faux-king way
- “Don’t make me repeat myself” —History
- [A drawing of the Mexican eagle killing the “Don’t tread on me” snake.]
- Come on, people, now, smile on your (re-)sister, everybody get together and impeach the motherfucker right now
- Born from dreams that crossed borders
- ICE melts under resistance