Pittsburgh saw thousands of people take to the streets on Saturday as part of a No Kings day of action, the third such event in a nationwide resistance movement against what organizers and participants deem an increasingly authoritarian government.
Indivisible Pittsburgh, a branch of the larger Indivisible group that organized the first “day of defiance” last June, organized the Pittsburgh demonstration in partnership with several other community groups, including 1Hood Power, Casa San José and Indivisible: Black Neighborhoods United, according to the group’s social media.
SLIDESHOW: No Kings rally attendees started at the City-County Building and marched down Grant Street to Mellon Square through downtown Pittsburgh on March 28. Mayor Corey O’Connor said the crowd estimates were 15,000 to 20,000 people. (Photos by Stephanie Strasburg/Pittsburgh’s Public Source)
About a dozen other No Kings rallies were scheduled to take place in towns across the region, including McCandless, Penn Hills, Sewickley, Mt. Lebanon and points beyond including Clarion and Zelienople. Indivisible claimed numbers in the thousands locally. Pittsburgh Mayor Corey O’Connor, a Democrat, estimated the Downtown crowd at 15,000 to 20,000.
In front of the City-County Building, Downtown, hundreds were in place well before noon with signs displaying messages from “Hands off Social Security” to “Stop Trump Save Democracy” to calls for living wages. Some expressed themselves with whistles like the ones that have been used in Minneapolis and elsewhere to warn immigrants of the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Republican President Donald Trump’s administration dismissed the nationwide protests as the product of “leftist funding networks” with little real public support. “The only people who care about these Trump Derangement Therapy Sessions are the reporters who are paid to cover them,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement.
Through mid-afternoon Saturday, reports suggested that the events — numbered at more than 3,000 nationwide — were largely peaceful, with a few reported instances of arguments with counterprotesters.
Wide range of concerns expressed
The Downtown event began with around 90 minutes of speeches before the crowd began moving through the Golden Triangle. The march, like the rally, was peaceful, featuring changes like “Hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go.”
The central message was “no to authoritarianism in all of its forms,” said Ghadah Makoshi, a community organizer with the American Civil Liberties Union, who added that other themes include the need to invest in health care and support gender-affirming care. “We understand that democracy takes all of us. … There’s not just some magic wand.”
Rayven Greer, a trans woman and U.S. Navy veteran, said the nation was on a “slippery slope, where our fundamental rights are being treated as suggestions.” She cited the seizure of a firearm from Minneapolis nurse Alex Pretti before he was fatally shot by Customs and Border Protection agents, and reports of ICE entry into private homes without judicial warrants.
The Department of Homeland Security has said ICE agents can enter homes with administrative warrants — not signed by a judge — if entry is “reasonable.”
Speakers and attendees raised a wide variety of concerns with the direction of the federal government.
Immigration enforcement
Matthew Jordan, a lead organizer with Casa San José, which advocates for the local Latino community, focused on the interaction between federal ICE and local law enforcement, which has become a flashpoint in numerous communities. That cooperation is sometimes formalized in so-called 287(g) agreements which deputize local police to address immigration issues.
“ICE does not need a 287(g) to cooperate with police,” Jordan said. “Sometimes all it takes is a phone call.” He urged community action to protect people like two men, 18 and 20 years old, who he said were recently going to work in Coraopolis when they were stopped by police for a traffic violation and then turned over to ICE. “The consequences of inaction are not abstract,” he said.
Daniel Ceisler, the sheriff of Bucks County who crossed the state to attend the Downtown event, told the crowd that his predecessor had a 287(g) pact with ICE — which he suggested was a factor in his landslide victory. He said he terminated the agreement.
Social services and health care
Mercedes Webb, an animal boarding facility worker who attended the Downtown rally, said she was appalled at aggressive ICE tactics and worried about basic social services. “I have a grandmother on Social Security and she’s scared that it could be ripped away any minute.”
Trump has said he will preserve Social Security amid heightened concern about the program’s solvency in the medium term.
Similarly, engineer Gwen DiPietro said she’d seen health insurance costs rise for family members with Affordable Care Act plans. “That’s become much more expensive, much more difficult,” she said, adding that she has worked for federal agencies and knows many people affected by government layoffs.
“When America catches a cold, Black and brown people catch the flu,” said Nyota Robinson of Black Neighborhoods United, a year-old group focused on civil liberties in minority communities. Healthcare disparities disproportionately affect Black and brown people, women and those with disabilities, she said.
No Kings approaching one-year mark
The first No Kings day of action took place on June 14, to counter a military procession and celebration of President Donald Trump’s birthday in the nation’s capital.
By that point in his second presidency, Trump had ordered an end to birthright citizenship, moved to curtail gender-affirming care for young people and paused federal foreign aid. He’d also made public suggestions that the U.S. should acquire the Gaza Strip and Greenland.
At that time, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents also started their surge of detentions of people of varying legal statuses. Pittsburgh was no exception: Last June, communities within a 50-mile radius of downtown Pittsburgh saw at least 118 people arrested by federal immigration agents, up from just 29 the year before, according to data compiled by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by Pittsburgh’s Public Source.
Now, immigration enforcement has escalated both nationally and locally. Over the course of three weeks in January, ICE or Customs and Border Protection agents in Minneapolis fatally shot two people, Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Within that same span of time, Pittsburgh-based agents arrested and detained Oakmont resident Jose Flores, followed shortly by the detention of Springdale Borough resident Randy Cordova Flores, which spurred protests.
The series of events triggered legislative responses by Pittsburgh-area lawmakers, who recently limited cooperation with the federal agency on the county level. Pittsburgh City Council is considering similar legislation.
Concern about affordability has become more prominent with increases in prices for food, energy and other consumer goods. The Trump-ordered U.S. bombing of Iran without, so far, approval by Congress, has also been controversial.
“When No Kings started, we were all sort of imagining how bad things could be and how bad things could get under this administration,” said Dana Kellerman, co-director of Indivisible Pittsburgh. “And now we actually know.”
Nationally, organizers said they logged 3,100 rally sites in every state and some other countries, and aimed for 9 million participants.
Maureen O’Toole, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, called the events “Hate America Rallies.”
Steve Capri, a Pittsburgh-area member of Socialist Alternative, said his organization is calling for further action, including a general strike, modeled after actions in Minneapolis, on May 1.
Some attendees were focused on November’s general election, in which control of Harrisburg is up in the air and the partisan tilt of the U.S. House could hinge on voting in purple districts in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.
“If people don’t vote in this upcoming election,” said local actor and director Linda Haston, “we’re gonna be sunk.”
Mia Hollie is the economic development and housing reporter for Pittsburgh’s Public Source. She can be reached at mia@publicsource.org.
Stephanie Strasburg is a photojournalist with Pittsburgh’s Public Source who can be reached at stephanie@publicsource.org, on Instagram @stephaniestrasburgor on Twitter @stephstrasburg.
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