It was a lovely day for a protest until the cops decided to riot.
Millions took to the streets on Saturday for No Kings Day, nationwide protests in cities big and small, timed to provide counter-programming for Donald Trump’s own military parade in Washington D.C.—an embarrassing spectacle that coincided with the president’s 79th birthday. Los Angeles, the second largest city in the country, had its own No Kings protest downtown that saw tens of thousands turn out. And it was incredible to witness firsthand how police can escalate a situation.
I’ve been to half a dozen protests in Southern California since Trump took office in January, none of which saw the police laying a finger on protesters. I saw hundreds march in downtown San Diego back in February to protest against the destruction of the federal government by Trump and his buddy Elon Musk; I’ve attended Tesla Takedown protests near one of the EV company’s retail stores where the main point of focus was on Musk, his Nazi-style salutes, and his illegal power grab; and I’ve seen hundreds of people lining the streets in Oceanside, not far from the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base, where veterans carried signs denouncing DOGE’s cuts.
The protest in Los Angeles this past Saturday had many of the same signs and sentiments that I’d seen at previous protests of the second Trump era, with a handful of important distinctions, even before you get to the violence committed by police. For starters, this was a protest heavily centered around the idea that ICE needs to stop terrorizing the community by breaking up families and arresting people who haven’t committed any crime. Other protests have been focused on Musk and Trump’s cuts to science funding and other vital services. But ICE is obviously front of mind in Los Angeles now, as federal agents continue to snatch people off the streets.
Then there’s the military presence. Roughly 4,000 members of the National Guard and 700 Marines are in Los Angeles, another well-publicized act that’s currently being litigated since Trump isn’t supposed to send troops into an American city without the presence of an insurrection. There’s a hearing on Tuesday to see if Trump gets to keep his troops in the city. It’ll be interesting to see whatever rationalization the U.S. Supreme Court eventually cooks up to let Trump keep doing whatever he likes.
But the thing that really made Saturday’s protest so unique, at least compared to all of the other protests I’ve attended during Trump’s second term, was the sense of community. And it feels like that’s perhaps the part of all this that’s not getting proper attention, as the photos of riot police and teargas make the front pages.
The first time I saw someone standing among the protesters on Saturday with a rolling cart of packaged snacks and water, I assumed it was just an anomaly. They were handing them out for free, after all, and there aren’t that many decent and altruistic people in the world. But by the third time I saw it, and confirmed the people didn’t know each other, it was clear something bigger was going on. These people really had spontaneously decided to show up and provide things for free—drinks, food, sunscreen, band-aids, masks—expecting nothing in return.
I talked with Hilaree Caldwell, who was happily standing in front of her cart with snacks and water Saturday afternoon, holding some sunscreen in one hand and a sign that read, “Authority should derive from consent of the governed, not from threat of force.” I asked her why she came out.
“My two friends up there, a few of us just got together and put together little wagons of food and decided to come out and help,” Caldwell said, turning to someone as we chatted, encouraging them to grab anything they wanted. Caldwell told me she’d been to protests before, but this was the first one where she and her friends decided they should bring some things to hand out.
“The sunscreen is a hit. The water obviously was the first thing to go, and the sunscreen is gonna probably be the next thing to go,” Caldwell said. “So yeah, we even have band-aids and pain reliever patches. It’s like, how’s your lower back right now? We have a pain patch for that.”
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