San Antonio's No Kings 2.0 protest scheduled for this Saturday could break records ... again

Head Organizer of 50501 SATX Alex Vehla poses with a sign linking Republicans to blocking the release of the Epstein files. Credit: Instagram / Alex Vehla

San Antonio will join more than 2,500 locations worldwide in holding another No Kings protest on Saturday, Oct. 18 — a demonstration against President Donald Trump expected to draw millions of participants worldwide.

The Alamo City gathering, hosted by the local chapter of decentralized pro-democracy group 50501 in partnership with other organizations, will take place at Travis Park from 4-6 p.m. Saturday with a march scheduled for 5 p.m.

“This is a chance for everyone to unite under one cause and show the power of our voice,” Alex Svehla, head organizer of San Antonio’s 50501 chapter, said in an emailed statement.

“Oct. 18 is going to be the largest peaceful protest in American history,” Indivisible — another of the core groups organizing the event — posted in the caption of a Sept. 23 Facebook video. “This is the land of the free and the home of the brave — but if we want to be free, then we’ve got to be brave.”

Though estimates vary for the size of the prior No Kings protest, held June 14 to counter the military parade held in honor of Trump’s birthday, attendance estimates land somewhere between 3 million and 6 million people.

“In June, we did what many claimed was impossible: peacefully mobilized millions of people to take to the streets and declare with one voice: America has No Kings,” the national 50501 group said on its official website.

The decentralized organization said Trump’s efforts to take monarch-like control have only escalated since its June demonstration to “drown out” the military parade he ordered up for his birthday.

“Now, President Trump has doubled down. His administration is sending masked agents into our streets, terrorizing our communities,” the 50501’s website continued. “They are targeting immigrant families, profiling, arresting and detaining people without warrants. Threatening to overtake elections. […] The president thinks his rule is absolute. But in America, we don’t have kings and we won’t back down against chaos, corruption, and cruelty.”

The government shutdown is adding increased urgency to the upcoming demonstration, according to some participating organizations. One of these is the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which is urging its 800,000 members to participate.

“The protest movement has taken on new urgency with the government shutdown that began Oct. 1,” AFGE stated on Oct. 6. “Shutting down the government is another authoritarian power grab by this administration, which has threatened to lay off mass numbers of furloughed federal workers as part of an ongoing quest to gut federal programs and services the administration finds objectionable.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, slammed the protest on Fox News Friday, calling it a “Hate America Rally.”

“It’s all the pro-Hamas wing and the antifa people, they’re all coming out,” said Johnson, a Trump ally.

However, the movement gained a notable ally in Hollywood actor Robert DeNiro. In a Thursday video shared by Indivisible, De Niro called on Americans to take part in the upcoming No Kings Day, referring to the American Revolution as the “original No Kings.”

“We’ve had two and a half centuries of democracy since then, often challenging, sometimes messy, always essential,” DeNiro said. “And we fought in two world wars to preserve it. Now we have a would-be king who wants to take it away, King Donald I. Fuck that!”

The groups participating in San Antonio’s demonstration include Bexar County Democrats, San Antonio Alliance Local 67, Northeast Bexar Democrats, SATX Workers Assembly, Tejanas for Democracy, Veterans for Democracy, Indivisible, Radical Registrars, League of Women Voters and the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

“Since the second Trump presidency began we have seen unprecedented and unconstitutional attacks on free speech, inhumane and unjust removal of our peaceful hard-working immigrant community, our economy collapse under unreasonable tariffs and federal workers unfairly losing their jobs across the United States,” San Antonio 50501 said in an emailed release. “We the People need to show this is not what America stands for — we believe in democracy, freedom and the Constitution.”

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San Antonio’s No Kings 2.0 protest scheduled for this Saturday could break records … again

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