No Kings III

Started: 2026-04-23 19:22:18

Submitted: 2026-04-23 20:44:17

Visibility: World-readable

The third No Kings protest; this time marching in Santa Cruz

For the third No Kings protest, I stayed in Santa Cruz for a cozy loop around downtown.

The march met at the San Lorenzo Park at 10:00 on the morning of Saturday, March 28. I ended up parking on a side street off Branciforte Ave (behind Whole Foods), after looping through downtown and deciding the best place to park was in a neighborhood side street. I walked down the hill down Soquel Ave, past a road closure at Ocean Street, and found the end of the crowd on Dakota Ave. By the time I got there the park was full and I couldn't make it very far down the street. The street was packed with people, many of them carrying signs with a variety of clever slogans. There some speeches in the park that I couldn't hear very well, and some attempt at chanting and singing; and then the protest started marching down Dakota Ave and turned on Soquel Ave heading downtown.

I ended up near the front of the march because I had recently come in from the beginning of the route; it was a last-in, first-out arrangement. We crossed the San Lorenzo River on Soquel Ave, then turned south on Front Street, west on Cathcart Street, and north on Pacific Ave. (I don't know what quirk led to our jog down Front and Cathcart. Given how many people were in the march it might have lengthened the route just enough that we didn't loop back on ourselves at the park.)

In the No Kings protest march on Pacific Ave

We marched down Pacific Ave for the length of the downtown core, between shops and restaurants, crowded by trees hanging over the road, with people standing on the sidewalks cheering us on, until we reached Water Street. (Counting blocks on Pacific Ave is an exercise in futility because the downtown grid splits in half at Pacific; to the west there are a few blocks of a regular grid but to the east most the blocks are larger and most of the streets connect to arterials crossing the river. The irregular grid makes it hard to cross downtown without skirting it to the north or south.) On Water we turned east, heading back over the river; I was close enough to the front of the group to see a single police motorcycle ahead of the march clearing the way.

Police escort ahead of the No Kings protest march on Water Street

On the bridge crossing the river the road widened up so I could get a better view of the crowd behind me.

No Kings march crosses the Water Street bridge

While crossing the bridge I looked down the river and saw the march continuing on the Soquel Ave bridge, 500 meters away in a straight line, further on the route we had traveled.

Looking down the San Lorenzo River to the No Kings protest march

We turned off Water Street onto the path along the side of the river, behind the county office building. In the park the march broke up; people left, or spread out on the grass to hang out, or to promote their own adjacent causes. (I got one flier from a group trying to unseat my local congressional representative; though since California uses a jungle primary, the threat to primary a representative from the party base is much less salient than elsewhere.)

No Kings march enters the San Lorenzo Park

I walked back across the river to watch the march, still in progress down Pacific Ave.

No Kings protest on Pacific Ave in Santa Cruz

After watching the march for a while I looped back to my car and headed home, after taking part in my local protest against the wannabe dictator trying to rule the country by decree, 250 years after my country's predecessors declared independence from a different king.