It was a glorious day in San Francisco, sunny but with a cool breeze, and at least 50,000 people, maybe closer to 100,000, were in the streets. Crowd sizes are tricky, but I’ve covered a lot of large events, and this was one of the biggest.
The atmosphere was festive, with lots of great signs and colorful costumes, but the message was clear: Trump has got to go.
The same message rang out across the country, in what some are calling the largest one-day demonstration in the history of the United States. The working rule is that no oligarch can survive 3.5 percent of the population in the streets; in the US, that would be just short of 12 million people, and the number that participated in the No Kings rallies was getting pretty close.
By definition, the organizers didn’t focus on one issue; there’s so much to protest, and so many parts to an anti-Trump movement. But Sen. Bernie Sanders, speaking in Minneapolis, summarized what we are facing:
This moment is not just about one man’s greed, one man’s corruption or one man’s contempt for our Constitution. This is about a handful of the wealthiest people on Earth, who, in their insatiable greed, have taken over our economy, have taken over our political system, have taken over our media in order to enrich themselves at the expense of the working families of our country.
Never before in American history have so few had so much wealth and power.
Never before in American history has there been such extreme levels of income and wealth inequality, with the top 1 percent now owning more wealth than the bottom 93 percent.
Never before in American history have we seen the super-rich expand their wealth so rapidly. Last year alone, after receiving the largest tax break in history, 938 billionaires in America became $1.5 trillion richer. Trump, himself, became over a billion dollars richer. …
Today, March 28, 2026, millions of Americans are out on the streets demanding freedom, democracy and justice. But we must make certain: Today is not the end of our struggle. It is just the beginning.
That’s the issue for all of us: Is this just the beginning—and where do we go from here?
It’s going to be a long process to repair the damage of the Trump Era, but—for better or for worse—it starts this fall. I don’t see a revolution happening in the streets in the US; that’s never been a part of this nation’s history. What could happen is a massive loss for Trump’s party in the November mid-terms.
I’m not here to endorse or support the positions of the current leadership of the Democratic Party, which has, for the most part, been late and weak in its opposition to Trump. Democratic leaders refused to listen to what Sanders has been saying and refused to allow his wing of the party to have any real influence, and that’s why Trump won, twice. The Democratic Party of Hillary Clinton, (yes) Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris was the party of Wall Street, which left those candidates open to the charge that they were the party of the elites. A lot of smart people have made a good argument that Harris lost in part because the party leadership failed to stand up against the genocide in Gaza.
But if the people in the streets want to stop Trump, Step One has to happen at the polls in November, and that’s where it gets difficult. Many of the people marching in the streets are not thrilled with Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and Sen. Chuck Shumer, and I don’t blame them. If the message is: Vote for some awful, weak, Wall Street Democrats because we have to trust them to save democracy, I’m not sure it works.
We’re looking at a two-part deal here: The tens of millions of people in the streets need to go to the polls in the fall, even if they are voting for imperfect candidates—and the Democratic Party needs to recognize that the marchers were not demanding moderate, incremental collusion with the billionaires, who have, much to their embarrassment, sided with Trump.
If they want to slow the Trump agenda, the activists and organizers have to move this from the streets to the polls—but the Democrats also have to give them a reason to believe.
Sup. Alan Wong was never going to have an easy job. After Lurie named him to the D4 seat, he had to support the mayor’s (Rich) Family Zoning Plan, which isn’t popular in the district. So now he’s trying to show some Nimby bona fides, I guess, by messing with two affordable housing projects, one for low-income seniors.
SF Yimby, which had endorsed him after he supported the Lurie upzoning, and is now going after him, and might withdraw its endorsement. Not that there’s much of a choice for that group; none of the other major candidates support the upzoning.
The senior housing project on the Great Highway, Wong told Mission Local, might (gasp) house formerly homeless people, which some of the neighbors don’t like. The whole point of affordable housing is to keep people who can’t afford market rate housing off the streets. And these are seniors; the idea that they might bring crime to the area is just silly.
So now Wong has unhappy conservative voters who didn’t like his position on the (Rich) Family Zoning Plan, and unhappy progressive voters who don’t like his opposition to affordable senior housing, and unhappy Yimbys who were his big supporters.
And he has to face all of those voters in three months.
The supes and most city commissions are on spring break this week, so there’s not a lot happening at City Hall.
I am not going to join the speculation about Sup. Jackie Fielder, her health, or her political future. I am just going to say: She’s my supervisor, and she’s done a great job; she’s also a good person, and I hope she gets better—on her own schedule. As an elected official, she can take all the time she needs to heal, and her district will be behind her.
