Organizers of Alameda’s “No Kings” rally delivered on a promise to provide a “family-friendly, action-oriented” event Saturday as police kept watch from a respectful distance.
Local political groups spent the morning recruiting new members and raising awareness about current events at a staging area in Chochenyo Park before marching to City Hall at noon for a 1 p.m. rally.
“The purpose of ‘No Kings’ is to flex your political muscle,” said organizer Shalom Bruhn of Indivisible Alameda. “When you go to the gym and you’re pumping iron, you’re building muscle, right? We’re building the political muscle of our community to respond when we’re confronted with presidential overreach or a tyrannical government.”
The rally featured speeches from Alameda Mayor Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft, former Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, and Vietnam veteran Paul Hauser, who focused on putting Democrats in charge of Congress in November, protecting immigrants, and stopping the war in Iran.
Ashcraft thanked Alameda residents for turning out “in huge numbers” to cast votes at election time, and plugged a volunteer organization, “States Win,” as a way to help change the course of national politics beyond our state borders.
“Today, we are rejecting the administration’s attempts to rule through repression and demonstrating that power in America belongs to the people, not to those who rule through fear,” Ashcraft said. “The power belongs to the people, but protesting alone will not change the course of our nation’s politics. Only elections can do that. After all, that’s how we got to where we are today.”
Hauser, whose autobiography about his service as a U.S. Air Force weapons controller during the Vietnam War is available at the Alameda Free Library, came close to tearing up as he recalled the death toll among “some of our finest young men and women.”
He emphasized, “Wars are easy to start and nearly impossible to finish on your terms. We learned that in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, and now face the prospect of learning it again at a very great cost.”
Although Trump is not on the ballot this fall, “voters like you and I can elect a Congress that acts as a strong check on executive power, and a Democratic House could reinitiate impeachment proceedings,” Hauser concluded. “So, let’s make the upcoming election the largest voter turnout in the history of our nation.”
Video from City Hall on March 28, 2026, by Maurice Ramirez.
Chochenyo Park
Much of the fun to be had at Alameda’s “No Kings” events takes place before the rally at a staging area in Chochenyo Park. Hundreds of residents passed through the park on Saturday morning to make signs and buttons, sing songs, and learn how to get more involved in politics.
Volunteer Dan Wood said he was attending his third “No Kings” event at Chochenyo Park and had already made or prepped 200 buttons by 11 a.m.
As Wood helped make a button for San Francisco resident Richard Lagunte’s goddaughter, Cisa, Lagunte said he “figured this would be a safe, welcoming spot. …We need to get out of the mess in Iran now and get the want-to-be dictator out of office,” Lagunte added. “I’m hoping for normalcy.”
Maddi Von Engel said “No Kings” events are nothing new for her 5-year-old daughter, Sonja, and 8-year-old son, Simon, and that “the threat to democracy—especially the war” motivated their appearance at the latest event.
The Alameda Democratic Club set up a table in the park to “let people know that we exist, and that membership is really important,” said Stephanie Arnett, who serves on the group’s board of directors. “Especially now, when everyone is so frustrated and angry and we’re all doom scrolling—everyone’s looking for a way to get involved, and the local Democratic Club is a great way to start.”
With California’s June 2 primary election looming, the club will host candidate forums on April 8 and May 13 at the Veterans Memorial Building, 2203 Central Avenue.
“We will not include the governors, but we’ll include a number of other offices that will be up for election,” Arnett said. The public is invited to the forums, where club members will discuss and vote on endorsements.
Alameda resident Adam Sand passed out “whistle packs” with 3-D printed whistles and “Know Your Rights” cards for use during Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sweeps.
“Chicago, New York, Minneapolis—they are using this a lot,” said Sand, a volunteer with the local chapter of Whistlemania. “And should we have a surge? I guarantee you we’re going to be passing out a lot more.”
While a surge of ICE agents to Coast Guard Island Alameda in October eventually fizzled out, Sand said there are worries that the Trump administration will convert a former low-security federal prison in Dublin into an immigration detention center.
The Dublin City Council is on record as opposing such a move, and on April 7 the Alameda County Board of Supervisors will vote on a resolution opposing conversion of the former prison into an ICE detention center.
“We need to keep it out of their hands as long as we possibly can, because that is basically the thing that’s keeping ICE at bay right now,” Sand said.
Other groups “tabling” at the park included All Rise Alameda, which formed after the 2017 Women’s March on Washington, and the Coalition of Concerned Medical Professionals, whose volunteers help people who lack affordable health care.
“We are standing on the shoulders of amazing groups that are already very well established, and we’re working with those groups, providing an umbrella for all of the sort of disparate things that they’re working on,” Bruhn said.
Bruhn asked two pairs of paid signature gatherers to move their tables south of the gazebo, to avoid creating the impression that their efforts were endorsed by “No Kings” organizers.
One pair, whose table bore a sign promising registered voters that they could sign “all California petitions” in less than three minutes, decided to pack up and leave.
The other pair of signature gatherers looked glum as their table was largely ignored by the crowd at Chochenyo Park. But they did manage to collect at least three signatures for an initiative that would head off California’s proposed billionaire tax.
The petition for the competing “protect retirement and life savings” initiative stated that it was backed by Building a Better California, a super PAC funded by Google co-founder Sergey Brin, among others.
“Unless I know who’s backing that kind of stuff, I can’t allow it,” Bruhn said. “It will diminish the value of all of this if we’ve got somebody who’s backed by a billionaire gathering signatures.”
City Hall
As missiles and drones continued to rain down from the sky in the Middle East, the “No Kings” protestors marched to Alameda City Hall, where they got some protection from three strategically parked street sweepers and a dump truck.
The four weighty trucks were positioned around the points of the compass at the intersection of Santa Clara Avenue and Oak Street during the rally, as obstacles for any errant vehicles.
As the rally kicked off, two Alameda Police Department officers were also keeping an eye out for signs of trouble through binoculars from the fifth floor of the nearby Civic Center Parking Structure.
“It’s something I started last year,” Alameda Chief of Police Nishant Joshi said of the safety precautions, as he stood at the top of the stairs of City Hall after the event. “It’s not that we’ve received any threats, it’s just that we’re aware of what’s going on in other parts of the country.”
More than 3,100 “No Kings” events around the country attracted more than 8 million participants, organizers told the Associated Press. Although most went off without a hitch, there were arrests in Los Angeles, Denver and Portland after official “No Kings” events concluded. In Dallas, police said counter protestors led by far-right figures Stuart Rhodes and Enrique Tarrio clashed with “No Kings” demonstrators, causing “major” disruptions, FOX 4 News reported.
Matt Carter is a contributing writer for the Alameda Post. Contact him via [email protected]. His writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/matt-carter.
