Throughout Tucson and its surrounding areas, thousands took to the streets in protest of the Trump administration on March 28.
Protesters gathered in a lengthy chain down Oracle Road, at River Road and Via Entrada, Speedway Boulevard and Country Club Road and a central rally at Reid Park. Other demonstrations took place in Green Valley, Marana, Oro Valley, Rita Ranch, Sahuarita, Tucson Estates and Vail.
“He’s a criminal,” Beryl Wolfe, an attendee at the Reid Park protest, said. “I can’t believe that Republicans can’t get together and get him out the way they did with Nixon.”
Wolfe had taken part in demonstrations since the days of anti-Vietnam War protests and explained that she hopes the large demonstrations put more pressure on Republicans to take a stand against President Donald Trump.
“He’s totally different,” Wolfe said. “He’s much, much worse. I think he’s either more senile or the Christian right has gotten to him.”
At Reid Park, local candidates and politicians including Rep. Adelita Grijalva addressed the crowd at the park’s amphitheater.
Across the nation, an estimated 8 million took part across more than 3,330 demonstrations on March 28, according to No Kings organizers. Earlier No Kings demonstrations took place on June 14 and Oct. 18 of last year, gathering estimated crowds of 5 million and 7 million, respectively. The flagship protest took place in Minneapolis, featuring Bruce Springsteen as the headlining act.
According to a March 23 Reuters/Ipsos poll, Trump’s approval rating has sunk to 38%, which is four percentage points higher than when he left office in 2021. Some of the top concerns among protesters were the involvement in the Iran war effort and recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity, including the killing of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.
After three large-scale demonstrations with increasing turnouts, No Kings organizers and democratic leaders are considering their next steps.
“I think by now, we all know that a single day of protest doesn’t change everything overnight, whether it’s policy or culture or anything,” Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, a No Kings organizer, said in a digital conference on March 31. “We know that, but that’s not what this mass-mobilization was for.”
According to Henderson, the protests serve three purposes: showing how many people are opposed to the Trump administration, transforming people’s individual discontent into a group demonstration effort and demonstrating the social cost for organizations that comply with the Trump administration.
“The question here isn’t, ‘Does a protest change everything?’” Henderson said. “It’s, ‘Can you build a sustained anti-authoritarian campaign without mass demonstration?’ And I think we can unequivocally say the answer is no. We can’t skip it.”
In hopes to build off of the momentum of the demonstrations, organizers urged people to move beyond protesting and become involved with their local community. With a new wave of demonstrations planned for May Day, they recommended organizing to host local demonstrations and take part in economic protests.
“I know everyone loves a simple action, but the moment that we are in is going to call for us to stretch,” Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of Indivisible, said. “It calls for us to meet our neighbors. It calls for us to show up and get in real life relationships with the people in our community who are building to invest in each other. At its heart, No Kings is about reasserting that in the face of authoritarianism, corruption and cruelty, the people have the power. That is how we keep going. That is how we build.”
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