No Kings

Started: 2025-06-30 21:09:25

Submitted: 2025-07-01 21:32:05

Visibility: World-readable

Protesting the president who wants to be king

After months of hearing about the abuses and overreach of the Trump administration, and a couple of weeks of protests specifically against ICE in Los Angeles and San Francisco, I joined the No Kings protest march in San Francisco, as counter-programming to the president's big military parade for his birthday (and, on paper, in honor of the US Army's anniversary).

Before heading to the protest I wasn't really sure what to expect. I'd read about protesters in Los Angeles facing off with ICE and getting tear-gassed by LAPD. The president had nationalized the California National Guard, over the objection of the governor, and sent troops onto the streets of Los Angeles. Combat Marines were deployed to federal buildings scattered randomly around LA. The rules of engagement seemed intended to create chaos and set up a Kent State scenario, if not set off a shooting war. But if the administration intends to start a war I know which side I want to be on, and I was going to be in the streets in opposition.

I read EFF's guide to attending protests to get myself and my electronics ready. On Saturday morning the 14th of June I drove over the mountain and caught Caltrain north to San Francisco. As the train headed north people boarded who looked like they might be attending the protest. Some carried hand-drawn signs on paperboard and cardboard. At Milbrae most of the train got off and transferred across the platform to BART. More people boarded with obvious snarky signs as the train stopped in the suburban stations on the way to the city. On our way out of Milbrae the train stopped by SFO and picked up recently-arrived airport passengers; this supplied a handful of people carrying suitcases from the airport surveying the rest of us wondering precisely what they had gotten themselves into.

Just about the entire train got off at 16th Street/Mission and proceeded up the stairs to the concourse, where we waited to make it through the fare gates. This was more people than I had ever seen in the station at one time: the crowd stopped me close to the top of the first escalator. I could see the fare gates but scores of people stood between me and the gates. It looked like the entire paid area of the concourse was full of people waiting to get out, but that was probably trick of perspective. The fare gates moved slowly, unable to keep up with the crowds of people. BART is installing new fare gates with large Plexiglas doors to physically prevent people from evading their fare. The Clipper card readers now seem especially slow; both BART and MUNI now have signs asking passengers to tap and hold their cards for four to five seconds before the gate recognizes the card and lets us through. Every single person leaving the station had to tap in and wait, and some had trouble with their cards (either due to insufficient fare, or because they had neglected to hold their cards long enough), and that pushed them out of the line and unsure what to do.

(I recall reading about the London Underground's human factors team demanding fare-gate responses to card taps in the hundreds of milliseconds, an order of magnitude faster than Clipper now perform.)

We waited for the fare gates in a collective state of quiet anticipation, unsure what we were going to experience with a hint of concern. Someone tried to lead the crowd in the chant "Chingra la migra" ("fuck ICE") but the crowd wasn't into it.

At length I reached the fare gates and tapped my way through to the other side. I followed the crowd up the escalators to ground level, then flowed up 16th Street several blocks to Dolores, then turned south to Dolores Park. The crowd grew as we approached the park. I saw a couple of cops on motorcycles on Dolores ahead of the planned route of the march, some of the few cops I saw all day. I followed the crowd into Dolores Park, past a pair of tents screen-printing protest signs in real time, with long lines of people waiting to get signs made for them.

The invite said "gather at 11:30". It was 11:30 when I arrived, and Dolores Park was full of people, mostly sitting and standing on the grass and sidewalks carrying a wide variety of protest signs. Superficially it looked like a sunny summer weekend day in the park, except for the density of protest signs and the quiet determination on people's faces. Only the playground looked normal, with kids clambering around the play equipment, and a couple of kids trying to have birthday parties on the picnic tables in front of the playground surrounded by the staging area for a protest march. Some of the kids in the park had come prepared for the protest: one toddler had a sign that read, "He throws more tantrums than me".

I walked around the park trying to get a feeling for the event. I stood on the hillside in the lower section of the park, looking out over the city skyline in the distance above the protesters, when someone walked through the crowd giving out tiny 4" American flags that they had carefully removed from the little flagpole and replaced up-side-down, as a distress signal. I accepted the flag I was offered and carried it with me for the rest of the day. I am not sure how to relate to American national symbols now that these symbols have been enthusiastically adopted and wielded by people whose views I find repugnant.

Around noon a truck loaded with speakers and covered in banners appeared on Dolores Street below the park. I was too far away to hear what it was saying but it seemed to be rallying the crowd to prepare for the march down Dolores towards Civic Center. The crowd began to flow down the hillside into the street, and I followed. I made it as far as the street right in front of the park, near a drum circle that was probably on the sidewalk on the other side of the street, just out of view behind the crowd; and then we were stuck there for half an hour waiting for the crowd ahead of us to move.

The picture above shows some of the many flags I saw in the march, including a yellow "Don't tread on me" flag; and, barely visible, a variant of the California flag setting the grizzly bear and star on a yellow background with the text "Don't tread on me". I saw another sign that depicted the state's grizzly bear with the text "don't poke the bear." (It turned out to be surprisingly hard to get good pictures of flags flying in the parade. I could see what the flags were depicting because I saw the flags in real time, waving in the breeze, and I could piece together the parts of the flag. But as soon as I tried to photograph the flag I had to take a static image and it never turned out the same way I intended. I saw what looked like a Welsh flag in the march, but I couldn't get a good picture of it, nor could I figure out what they were trying to portray with the flag.)

After listening to the drum circle for half an hour the crowd began moving, slowly, down Dolores past the park. My view of the march was restricted by being in the middle of the march; I could see people stretching for blocks ahead of me and behind me, as the rest of the park emptied out onto the street. Most of the cross streets were blocked only by organizers in high-visibility jackets standing and facing any cars that happened to be be waiting. (Given the size of the march, they would have been waiting for a long time.) Some cross streets had cops blocking the street a block away from the march, far enough for cars to route around.

As I marched I took notes on the wide variety of signs around me, including:

• "If not gestapo then why gestapo-shaped?"
• "No kings but yaaas queen!"
• "I am not a paid protestor I hate Trump for free"
• "They're eating the checks they're eating the balances"
• "Opposing kings since 1776"
• "I prefer my ICE crushed"
• "Are we great yet? 'Cause I just feel embarrassed"
• "You can't spell 'hatred' without 'red hat'"
• "Historians against history repeating itself"
• "These are the only kingdoms I support" with pictures of the kingdoms of life in biology

As we approached Market Street there was a Tesla parked (at a white curb, the only car I'd seen on the whole route) on the street with a sign on the windshield depicting Elon Musk's Nazi salute with the text "Stop the madness! Fire Musk Boycott Tesla".

We reached Market Street and turned to head towards Civic Center. The pink triangle placed on Twin Peaks for pride month was visible in the distance, framed between the buildings and the palm trees lining the street.

In the opposite direction I could see all the way to the base of Market Street where the Ferry Building's clocktower nestled in the gap between the high-rise office towers on each side of the street.

Market Street gave the march space to spread out; then we turned onto Van Ness, compressed into the northbound lanes between the center median and the sidewalk, and jogged onto Grove to reach the finish at Civic Center Plaza. The crowd slowed down as we approached the plaza. As we grew closer it wasn't entirely clear where we should go. There was a podium with speakers on the street in front of City Hall (probably the truck I had seen in front of Dolores Park) that seemed like a focal point for the crowd spread out on the lawn. I made my way through the crowd and found a place to stand, not quite close enough to actually hear anything from the podium but close enough to hear the crowd's cheers in response.

I hung out in Civic Center Plaza for a half-hour after I arrived, mostly watching the crowd and reading their protest signs. I saw a Rebel Alliance flag make its way through the crowd, but I wasn't able to get a good picture of it. I did see a Federation flag, flying up-side-down (presumably as a distress signal), on the same flagpole as a US flag (also up-side-down). The US flag was given precedence at the top of the flagpole, which I suppose is correct for the world we live in, but in the future where the Federation flag exists it would presumably have precedence over the flags for Earth and the New North American Administrative Region (or whatever local government represents the continent, the home of Starfleet Academy, in the future).

The whole protest march, as far as I saw, was totally peaceful and completely calm, even subdued, though the crowd occasionally broke into chants. (It probably helped that SFPD kept its distance, and ICE was nowhere to be seen.) There were some families with young kids, but most of the people I saw were adults. I don't know how much (if anything) we accomplished with more people than I could count (thousands? tens of thousands?) marching through the streets of San Francisco, but at least I can say I was there and I took part in a protest against the regime.

I took more pictures at the No Kings march in San Francisco at Photos on 2025-06-14.