Protest Saturday 4/11, 10 am, upper State St.
May Day nationwide walkout, 2 PM, details TBA

No Kings 3 Instructions to Participants

We’re looking forward to having you with us at the NO KINGS 3 Rally and March here in Santa Barbara!

The event will take place on Saturday March 28 at 11 am in Alameda Park, 1400 Santa Barbara Street, Santa Barbara, CA.

The schedule for the event is:

    11:00 am:  Gather at Alameda Park (at Micheltorena and Anacapa Streets) for music and getting to know our community partners at tables spread out around the park.
    12:30 pm:  Rally program begins with speakers featuring elected officials, local activist organizations, and student leaders
    1:30 pm:   March to De La Guerra Plaza begins. Bring your chants, drums, and cowbells, and get ready to make some noise! 

NOTE:  If you signed up on the Mobilize site, you may receive a reminder email that says our event starts at 2pm.  That is East Coast time.  Come at 11am California time!

Commitment to Nonviolence
A core principle behind all of the Indivisible Santa Barbara NO KINGS events is a commitment to nonviolence and no civil disobedience. We expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any confrontation with those who disagree with our values, and to act lawfully at these events. Please see the section below describing how we put this commitment into practice.

Theme and Purpose of This Event
NO KINGS 3.0 is a national day of nonviolent action and mass mobilization in response to the increasing authoritarian excesses and corruption of the Trump administration. People of good will all over our country will be getting loud to protest ICE raids, the war in Iran, the rising cost of living, and the decimation of healthcare, science, and environmental protections.  Alongside leaders from across the pro-democracy and pro-worker movement, we will demonstrate nonviolent people power that outpaces any authoritarian agenda. In America, we don’t have kings!

Parking 
There is street parking available between Alameda Park and De La Guerra Plaza, with city parking garages on every block along Anacapa Street.

Accessibility and Bathrooms
Because we are assembling at a public park, there are multiple places for access to the event by wheelchairs and strollers. We will also be providing hundreds of chairs for those who are unable to stand for long periods of time.  An accessible porta-potty will be available on site, and there is a permanent accessible bathroom in the park across Santa Barbara Street.

What to Bring
Bring water and perhaps a snack — and wear a hat and sunscreen!

If you can, please also bring a protest sign — we encourage you to get creative! For inspiration, here are some sites with slogans or photos of signs:

    CLICK HERE for downloadable posters from Indivisible

What NOT to Bring
Please do not bring anything illegal to the action. Leave anything that could be considered to be a weapon at home. Weapons of any kind, including those legally permitted should not be brought to our events. 

We encourage you to take and post photos and videos across your social platforms (and tag #indivisiblesb so we can find and share them). But do not fly your own drone at this event.  We have hired a professional drone photographer and they can’t do their job if there are other drones flying in the vicinity.

Do not plan to bring anything to sell at the event without permission.

Security Considerations
It is important to note that no event can be made completely secure because we are out in public, where we could be dealing with people who may not share our values. But there are standard ways that organizers prepare for an action that we want to share with you:

Monitors
We will be deploying dozens of monitors in bright yellow vests as peacekeepers at our event.  They have all been trained by Indivisible Santa Barbara in nonviolence and de-escalation techniques.  During the rally, they are available to manage incidents to keep them from worsening.  During the march, they are there to keep activists moving in the streets so pedestrians can walk freely on the sidewalks.  They will also help folks disperse after the march reaches its end at De La Guerra Plaza.

Please follow all instructions from our monitors—they are there for the safety of all of us.

Commitment to Nonviolence
We’re going to say it again. A core principle behind all of our ISB events is a strict and unwavering commitment to nonviolence.  

This obviously means that we don’t physically attack the folks that we disagree with.  But it also means that we take care in the ways we speak and behave with others, so that we don’t use harsh language or tone of voice.  When dealing with a tense situation, we are always looking for a way to de-escalate, to turn down the anger.

If for some reason you are not in a place where you can commit to nonviolence, we’d like to ask that you don’t join us on Saturday — there will be plenty of opportunities in the future to protest with us when you’re in a better place.

IF AN INCIDENT OCCURS
The best way to handle confrontation from people we don’t know is to ignore them. That’s because they are usually looking to get into it with someone, and we can’t give them that opening.  This can be difficult because our first instinct is often to say something dismissive or to yell back — but that only escalates the situation, which places all of us at risk.  

If at any point during the event you feel unsafe, do not stay—please leave and help others to leave, too.

General Principles for De-escalating Situations:

In the unlikely event that someone acts aggressively towards us, here are some ways you can handle the situation:

    * If an incident starts, have someone alert one of the monitors in a yellow vest to the situation, who will be stationed all around Alameda Park during the rally, along Anacapa Street during the march, and in De La Guerra Plaza.
    * Always act from a place of de-escalation and non-engagement with folks you don’t know.
    * As much as you can, ignore anyone who is hassling us.  
    * Don’t make eye contact with the difficult person.  Don’t try to reason with them or tell them to go away.  Do not touch them, ever.  (Don’t ever touch a law enforcement officer, either.)
    * Encourage others who are being targeted to not engage and to ignore the difficult person.
    * If a fellow activist is behaving unstably or yelling at those in opposition, remind them that this is a nonviolent demonstration and that it’s best to ignore people on the other side. Consider calmly suggesting that you two talk just a bit away from the event, where you can listen and empathize (and remove them from the event).
    * If someone is acting in a threatening manner or has escalated to physical engagement, step back, pull out your phone, call 911 and report an escalating situation at the demonstration.  (The SB police have asked us to do this.)  
    * You or a fellow activist may want to record an escalating incident on your phone from a safe distance, but make sure someone also alerts the monitors in the yellow vests about the situation.
    * If appropriate, move all activists who are near an escalating incident back a few feet.  If the difficult person harasses people physically, encourage everyone to walk away together as a group.  (Leaving as individuals is riskier.)
    * If anyone has been injured, attend to their medical needs as best you can and help them leave.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end — we appreciate your dedication to preparedness! 

We also want to close by thanking members of our community who have already made generous donations in support of this event.  If you want to make a contribution in any amount to help us defray the costs of No Kings 3, you can donate here. 

Looking forward to seeing you at the event on Saturday as we say NO KINGS!