A protestor holding a sign that reads "I <3 Democracy" at the Auburn No Kings protest on March 28, 2026, on Toomer's Corner in Auburn, Alabama. The protest, part of nearly two dozen "No Kings" protests around the state drew about 700 people. (Anna Barrett/Alabama Reflector)
Thousands of Alabamians Saturday joined nearly two dozen “No Kings” protests around the state, demonstrating against President Donald Trump and his administration’s policies.
The protests drew thousands of people in Birmingham and Montgomery and hundreds more at demonstrations in smaller towns and cities, similar to No Kings protests that took place last October. Nationwide, more than 3,000 protests were scheduled, all expected to draw millions of people.
Those who attended the demonstrations in Alabama Saturday cited numerous issues with the administration, including cuts to social service programs to attacks on immigrants to Trump’s anti-democratic methods. Here are reports from four protests held Saturday.
Auburn: Large crowd, conflicts over space
Bob Sesek knows that protesting the Trump administration is a small, and likely ineffective, act in Alabama. But he went to Toomer’s Corner in Auburn Saturday with about 700 people doing just that Saturday morning.
“I feel like we’re at a point where if we don’t stand up, there will be no more chance to stand up. I really believe that,” Sesek said. “I know we’re in Alabama, and Alabama’s not going to flip, or switch, or do anything like that, but the rest of the county needs to see that even people in Alabama are fed up and know that this is wrong.”
Protestors were met with honks by passing cars, some friendly with people holding signs out the window or sunroof, others heckling with boos. Kristin Hinnant, an organizer and member of the steering committee of Indivisible Auburn-Opelika, said she takes every honk as supportive.
“It’s just an opportunity for like-minded people to get together and feel some solidarity and show a little joyful resistance,” Hinnant said. “To try to turn that pervasive feeling of hopelessness into something that looks like hope.”
Hinnant said that despite the protest being on public property, they had some issues with Auburn University’s campus security. She said the university’s Office of Campus Security told them they could not stand on the campus green space and drew a line with chalk on the sidewalk giving protestors about three-fourths of the sidewalk, the shoulder of the road and the entrance to the campus to stand.
Hinnant said before the protest started campus security tried to kick them out, and she had to call the Auburn Police Department to clear things up.
“We got a captain from the police department on the phone, put them on speakerphone, and he told them to leave us alone,” Hinnant said. “They’re making sure that no one steps on the grass, and if anyone does a couple of them are literally chasing people down.”
Officers at the protest declined to comment. A message seeking comment from the office’s public information officer was left Saturday afternoon.
Supreme Court precedent has allowed protests on campus green space as long as it does not disrupt classes, according to Middle Tennessee State University’s Free Speech Center. A 2019 Alabama law also requires public universities to adopt a policy on free expression and prohibits universities from creating “free speech zones” to limit engagement from the campus community.
“The outdoor areas of a campus of a public institution of higher education shall be deemed to be a forum for members of the campus community, and the institution shall not create free speech zones or other designated outdoor areas of the campus in order to limit or prohibit protected expressive activities,” the law states.
Saturday’s protest was Opelika resident Alex Messing’s third No Kings protest. He said has voted for Republicans in the past, but never for Trump.
“I think about a long time ago about that old meme where it was George Bush saying ‘Miss me yet?’ And I thought back then, ‘Never in a million years,’” Messing said. “Here I am missing Bush. That’s not to say he’s a great guy, but just a return to a little bit of normal politics in this county and not this idea that we need to bow our heads to a cult personality leader.”
Debra Beil, an Auburn resident and independent voter, held a sign that read “It’s OK to change your mind” in hopes of spreading the message that people do not have to follow a policy or politician blindly just because they voted for them.
“I’m not a member of the Democratic Party, and I don’t join because I want the freedom to be able to look at the issues of each candidate in each instance,” Beil said.
Sesek said he is also an independent and does not like the straight ticket voting system the state uses, which allows voters to choose a party’s entire slate of candidates with a single ballot mark.
“You should have to know who you’re picking, and for me, I choose the people that I think best represent all Americans,” he said. “At this point, we’ve got one side that doesn’t even have a policy. It’s whatever that guy says.”
– Anna Barrett
Birmingham: Songs, chants, invocations of Alabama’s past
John Heine displayed a sign showing people who are aligned with President Donald Trump.
The caption read: The Worst of the Worst.
“This is mostly his cabinet,” the Birmingham Southside resident said. “We’ve (also) got Tommy Tuberville and Katie Britt, who are our senators. They’re as bad as they (cabinet members) are because they vote for everything that Trump says. They do it all.
“It’s hideous. It’s hideous,” Heine said of the allegiance of Britt and Tuberville to Trump. “He’s not a president. He’s a king, and they’re in his court. It’s hideous.”
Heine was in a crowd estimated to be as many as 7,000 at a noon No Kings rallies at Birmingham’s Railroad Park. A second rally was set for 5 p.m. at Five Points South.
The park event featured remixed songs like “Gonna Cast My Vote For Justice” – sung to “Down By The Riverside” – and a recast Negro spiritual, “I Woke Up This Morning With My Mind Stayed on Justice.”
Carl Tonitis, 77, carried a sign that read that played off of a popular University of Alabama cheer: Rammer Jammer, Yellowhammer. Put The Felon In The Slammer.
The Riverchase resident said he has felt so much frustration from current events that he wanted to do something.
“This is the least I could do, show up at the protest,” he said. “I was hoping to have a march in Washington. Since I’m retired, I could march, but it might be too far to walk. Well, let’s take a scooter.”
Speeches were followed by a march around the park.
“We will not tolerate a monarchy,” exclaimed Bill Britt, publisher of Alabama Political Reporter, a news site. “We will not tolerate an emperor. Today in 2026, we say, ‘no’ to an elected king in Washington, D.C.”
Britt cited the Women’s Suffrage Movement, the men and women who walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and the men, women and children who faced down the dogs and the water hoses of Bull Connor in the streets of Birmingham.
“They said, ‘This is our country. We are taking it back and we are perfecting the American experience,’” Britt said. “What are you doing today? What you and I are standing for today is the perfection of our country and taking back it as its rightful owners.”
Other speakers invoked Alabama’s past. Luis Eduardo Robledo, a community organizer for Migra Watch, a community defense project designed to inform and defend people from the attacks and kidnappings perpetrated by federal authorities, led the crowd in a chant. “Abolish, ICE! Abolish, ICE! Abolish, ICE!”
“DHS and ICE are the most funded police forces in the history of humanity,” he said. “If we do not stop their growth, the false king will use them to rule us with an iron fist. No kings.”
Robledo said today’s situation in Alabama mirrors the past.
“Black, brown, indigenous families have faced separation throughout our history, whether through genocide, slavery, Jim Crow or mass incarceration,” he said. “Do not forget, never forget that the government made up laws to capture freed people after the Civil War. ICE kidnappings are in that tradition. No kings.”
– Solomon Crenshaw Jr.
Jacksonville: ‘Nobody could ever take the right to protest from us’
About 200 people gathered Saturday morning on the Jacksonville Public Square for the city’s No Kings protest.
People of all ages from across Calhoun County attended, making their concerns under President Donald Trump heard. Protestors held signs and flags lining the outside of the square. Many wore shirts with different slogans while some wrapped American flags around themselves as they held signs and shouted at cars driving by.
Jacksonville police remained present, riding around the area on scooters and putting up barricades on the road, making sure cars didn’t get too close to protesters. Some cars drove repeatedly around the square, displaying Trump flags and American flags on their exteriors.
Jimmy Stirling, organizer of Calhoun County’s 50501 Movement, which hosted the protest, invited candidates running in the state’s primary elections to speak to the crowd.
“We as a group will not be voting for anybody with the letter R behind their name come November,” he said. “This is a coalition. We have got to make change come November, and it’s gonna take all of us, whether we’re Democrats, independents, whatever party or no party. “
Protesters in the crowd cheered and hollered as the candidates shared the changes they wanted to make. Pam Howard, a Democratic candidate for Alabama House District 40, told the crowd that she didn’t want to run “an ideological campaign.”
“Our government should not be telling us how to live. Our government should be creating an environment that gives us the opportunity to live our best lives.”
Jhanya Ball, 24, from Mississippi, came with her husband, Destin Ball, 25, from Hobson City. She said she believes people are watching their rights being stripped from under them. The pair said they fear there could be attacks on protesting and free speech in the future under the Trump administration.
“Nobody could ever take the right to protest away from us. If we can’t use our voices, then there’s literally no point in asking for representation if we can’t even get off our asses and get up and try to gt it,” Jhanya Ball said.
“If it ain’t us out fighting, nobody is,” Destin Ball said.
Sheila Giilbert, chair of the Calhoun County Democrats, said there are numerous things she is unhappy with under the Trump administration, including ICE raids and detentions, cutting health care, withholding the Epstein files, and the Save Act.
“We’ve come here today to express our intensive objections to the wrecking ball that Trump has done. We demand that the government works for us, not the rich and the powerful,” Gilbert said.
Catori Carter, who attended from Lincoln, said she believes “this administration is going too far” and that “the whole system has collapsed.”
“I am upset that we are going to war, not through our own means but through Israel and Netanyahu. He is the one that did the carnage and all the genocide in Gaza, and Joe Biden even funded him,” Carter said. “Trump is just like the cherry on top of the cake. He’s like the epitome of evil.”
– Anna Kate Freeland
Montgomery: ‘A better Alabama is possible’
About 1,000 people gathered on the South Lawn of the Alabama State Capitol on Saturday for Montgomery’s No Kings protest.
The rally featured speakers from civil rights groups that included the ACLU of Alabama and Alabama and Alabama Arise, as well as grass roots organizations like the 50501 Movement and Indivisible that have since sprung been created to oppose the priorities of the Trump administration.
“I don’t know about you all, but I am tired of Alabama being at the bottom of everything good and at the top of everything bad,” said Adam Keller, Worker Power Campaign director. “A better Alabama is possible, but only when we come together and fight for it.”
Initially, the crowd size was estimated at almost 2,000, but organizers who tallied the attendance estimated the gathering to be about slightly more than 1,000. It is the third protest in Montgomery, with each event drawing more people than the previous one.
While the reasons people attended the rally varied, many cited Trump’s immigration policies and the actions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in detaining and deporting large numbers of people.
“Trying to block people from coming here who are from specific countries, it is clearly racist, like countries from the Middle East,” said Priscilla Vansandt, who immigrated from Brazil and attended the event with her spouse Nicholas. “He wants European people to come here, if they are white enough for him. It is also the detention centers. We are going back to the 1940s.”
Trump made immigration enforcement and border security a focal point of his campaign for office and implemented a host of policies aimed at deporting large amounts of people without the proper paperwork to reside in the U.S.
“I came to make my voice heard because what is happening in this country is wrong,” said Lydia Hammond, who traveled from Wetumpka to attend the event. “I grew up learning about Jesus and how Jesus said to love everyone and what is happening is the love of Jesus.”
Others expressed concerns about cuts to social safety net programs that were codified under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump signed last year. The legislation imposed about $186 billion in funding cuts over the next decade, to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program meant to aid people by providing food. It also stipulated work requirements for those who are at least 55 years old and for parents with children who are at least 14 years old.
“I am a dietician and I work with an elderly population and people who are minorities,” said Andrea Carter, who lives in Montgomery. “I want to see that they are well fed and that they are well taken care of. I see a lot of diminishing of our infrastructure for taking care of people.”
The gathering was meant to affirm, create a sense of community and to rally people concerned about how the Trump administration’s policies affect vulnerable populations in the country, from communities of color to the elderly and those who are lower income.
“If our government is purging our right to protest, then they should not get any rest,” said Travis Jackson, a grass roots organizer who spoke at the event.
He also said to attendees that, “If you want liberation, you must cause agitation.”
– Ralph Chapoco
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Author: Anna Barrett, Ralph Chapoco, Solomon Crenshaw Jr., Anna Kate Freeland, Andrea Tinker