HUNDREDS OF GRANDPARENTS and elders crowded an intersection in Oakland during Saturday’s “No Kings” Oakland Elders Rally. A few miles to the west, pedestrian bridges over Interstate 80 were filled with protesters waving to the drivers who honked their horns in a constant chorus of support.

They were just some of the thousands of No Kings Day protests happening nationwide and abroad in opposition to President Donald Trump’s methods and policies. The protests were timed to counter Trump’s military parade in Washington, D.C., to celebrate the 250th Anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Army. It was also the president’s birthday.

Wheelchairs filled the sidewalk outside the Merrill Gardens Senior Living facility, across from the Wendy’s on Broadway and Coronado Avenue in Oakland. Signs opposing cuts to Medicaid were displayed alongside dazzling artistic placards created in craft therapy class. Mostly in their 70s and 80s, rally-goers joined family members and waved at drivers, as drivers waved back and shouted, “No Kings!”

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Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.