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About 300 protesters gathered Saturday at Palo Alto’s Stanford Shopping Center, holding signs rejecting the Trump administration’s domestic and foreign policies before joining a larger “No Kings” protest on the Peninsula. It was one of over 3,000 such demonstrations held nationwide on March 28.
“This is my third time attending the ‘No Kings’ protest,” said Libby Karolczak. “The biggest reason I am here is the environment.”
She said institutions protecting the environment and immigration were being “smashed” by the current administration.
“Everything the administration does is putting us backward,” Karolczak added.
Some onlookers showed support by cheering as protesters passed. No counterprotest was visible.
The crowd marched toward El Camino Real at about 2 p.m., where more protesters joined.
“No Thrones, No Crowns, No Kings!” the crowd chanted as they marched down El Camino Real.
Organizers said demonstrators planned to line El Camino Real from Arastradero Road in Palo Alto to E. Remington Drive in Sunnyvale.
“I haven’t felt this bad about the country in a long time,” said Jesus Hernandez of Millbrae. “I usually don’t feel political, but everything is uneasy.”
Many marchers shared that sentiment, holding signs criticizing a lack of transparency around the Epstein files, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the war in Iran.
“I don’t know what we are doing there,” Hernandez said of the war.
On Friday, Dave Waksberg of Indivisible Palo Alto Plus said that, when including Peninsula protests in San Mateo County, an estimated 10,000 protesters were expected to line El Camino from San Carlos to Sunnyvale. Up the hill from El Camino, a “No Billionaire Kings” protest on Woodside Road in Woodside drew between 150 to 200 people, said Woodside resident Thalia Lubin.
The Palo Alto and Sunnyvale protests were organized by Mountain View Voices for Peace and Justice, along with Together We Will and the Sunnyvale Democratic Club. The groups also organized a “No Kings” march last year.
“What began in 2025 as a single day of defiance has become a sustained national resistance to tyranny, spreading from small towns to city centers and across every community determined to defend democracy,” the group’s website stated.
The irony of a ‘No Kings’ protest being organized by billionaire-funded astroturf groups like Indivisible is hard to ignore. Since Indivisible gets funding from Reid Hoffman—who now ‘deeply regrets’ his past association with Jeffrey Epstein and insists visiting Epstein’s island was a ‘mistake’—the situation is simply too funny to ignore.
Of course, poor Mr. Hoffman is also ’embarrassed’ by many of the political astroturf, disinformation, and false flag operations he has funded (like Project Birmingham) because he was ‘not aware’ of the tactics they used. We are expected to believe this shrewd, savvy, self-made billionaire is really just a well-meaning patriot who happens to be getting very rich while spending lavishly to fight the ‘corrupting influence’ of money in politics.
While it’s great to see so many concerned Americans standing up for our democracy, it is deeply disheartening to see how naively they allow their energy to be harnessed by people like Dave Waksberg and Epstein-class-funded pseudo-liberal astroturf organizations like Indivisible.