Massive crowds poured onto San Francisco streets on Saturday for the second No Kings march against President Donald Trump. The sweeping demonstration centered on downtown but spread across the city from the Embarcadero, to a mournful procession in Noe Valley, to a human banner on Ocean Beach.
Across from the Ferry Building, where the march kicked off around midday, people held handmade placards that read “Dump Trump,” My grandfather was Antifa,” and “Democracy not Aristo-crazy.”
A wide range of anti-Trump causes and associations were on display, with signs variously decrying the Jan. 6 riots, ICE, Jeffrey Epstein, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, the reversal of Roe v Wade, and ongoing government shutdown.
But, of course, few themes were more prevalent than the threat of the National Guard.
In San Francisco, the protest culminated a frenetic news cycle in which Trump threatened to send federal troops to SF while Marc Benioff — the billionaire CEO of Salesforce — initially endorsed the idea before downplaying what he said and then walking it back entirely.
When Benioff’s name was mentioned at the rally in downtown, boos erupted.
Attendees expressed vigilance against the possibility of federal troops coming to SF and solidarity with comrades already battling that reality in their own cities.
The protest was like a Halloween party, with attendees coming dressed as teddy bears, chickens, parrots, dinosaurs, and Indiana Jones.
John Ston, a 40-year-old software engineer, dressed up as a frog — a symbol of resistance (opens in new tab) since a video went viral showing a federal agent pepper-spraying the air vent of an anti-ICE activist’s frog costume in Portland earlier this year.
Ston said he condemns the deportation of immigrants, calling the Trump administration’s crackdown “illegal and unjust.”
“We frogs oppose it,” Ston said.
Chad Zierenberg, a 55-year-old pest exterminator, came dressed as a unicorn, which he described as “a metaphor for how ridiculous things are right now.”
After joking around with a Vietnam vet and dancing to Buffalo Springfield and a drumming circle, Zierenberg told The Standard that the Trump administration is like “a fat pile of poop.”
“Those that don’t say anything are on the side of the oppressor,” he said.
The sign he held echoed a similar anti-authoritarian sentiment: “Idolizing billionaires is like thinking the stripper really likes you.”
Ken Cozine, a 64-year-old semi-retired contractor, was having trouble moving through the crowd in his inflatable eggplant costume. Cozine said the getup was open to interpretation, but suggested it had something to do with the metaphorical meaning of the eggplant emoji.
“Trump is a dick,” he said.
From the middle of the march, around Market and Third streets, it seemed that the bodies extended out infinitely in both directions. Protestors climbed on top of Muni stations and street poles, where they danced, waved American flags, yelled into megaphones, and took videos for social media.
Some protestors yelled profanities about Trump or expressed their passion through chants of “this is what democracy looks like” and “the people united will never be defeated.”
As marchers turned right on McCallister Street from Market and headed toward Civic Center Plaza, they grabbed popsicles and donkey dogs and flocked to the London plane trees for shade from the 80-degree weather. After walking for nearly two miles, they needed all the energy they could get.
Then, many were jolted out from under the trees toward the rally, where they heard folk-legend Joan Baez was playing. The moment was symbolic of the rally itself: something of a nostalgic recreation of the joy which came from the protest movements of the 60s and 70s.
When she reached the stage, Baez told the crowd they looked beautiful. She encouraged them to keep the fight going through volunteering in the community.
“It may not be possible to turn the tide right now, but we can save the fishes,” she said before singing a couple songs.
Those who made it all the way to the rally had more to say about the billionaires who have capitulated to Trump than Trump himself.
John Varrone, a 74-year-old chief financial officer, said Benioff only supported Trump because “it’s all about money.”
“They’re afraid [Trump] has so much power that he can take things away from them,” added Varrone’s friend, Joe Catulano.
Catulano, a 78-year-old retired attorney, said he is planning to renew his license so that he can help stop the injustices brought on by the second Trump administration, like sending troops to SF, where he says crime is down.
“It’s not a war zone until [Trump] provokes war,” Catulano said.
Some attendees countered what they see as a cultural revolution taking place on the part of Republicans with suggesting a revolution of their own.
“They want 1939 Germany, they’ll get 1789 France,” one sign read.
“Our culture was heading in the right direction,” said Katy Girgus, a 59-year-old marketer, outside the rally. “Now that direction has been changed.”
House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, dressed in yellow — the color of the day — marched with a sign urging a “yes” vote on Prop. 50, a measure that would let lawmakers remap California’s congressional districts to create five more seats favorable to Democrats.
About a dozen miles south in San Bruno, hundreds of people gathered for another local No Kings demonstration at the Tanforan Assembly Memorial (opens in new tab), the site of a former internment camp where Japanese Americans were detained during WWII. The government kept 8,000 detainees at the Tanforan Race Track, where they lived in horse stalls for years. The vast majority were U.C. citizens.
Grace Morizawa, 79, of Berkeley, said her parents met at an internment camp near Yellowstone during the war, and that as the child of Japanese Americans, she feels deeply for immigrants who are similarly reviled and rounded up today.
“We had a group of people who are camp survivors speak today,” she told The Standard, “and you could just hear the passion in their voice when they said they don’t want to see that happen again.”
Millions were expected to attend similar rallies throughout the day across an estimated 2,700 locations in rural and urban areas, with the biggest numbers centered in New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.
Organizers — a coalition of liberal groups, including Indivisible — said that by late afternoon, the events drew a combined 7 million attendees, making it one of the biggest mobilizations in U.S. history.
The marches this weekend build off the momentum of the inaugural “No Kings” protests on June 14, when upward of 2,000 demonstrations drew a combined 5 million people on the same day Trump marked his 79th birthday with a military parade in D.C.
