On the Ground at NYC’s No Kings Protest

Eye-level view of the iconic skyline of Los Angeles

By the time I reached Columbus Circle on March 28, the march had already begun moving along the edge of Central Park.

A line of demonstrators advanced down the cobblestone path beneath bare winter trees, framed by Midtown towers rising through the branches. At the front, marchers carried large organizational banners for the New York Immigration Coalition and the NYCLU, the blue NYCLU lettering stretched wide across the crowd. Several people near the front wore black “Fight Fascism” sweatshirts. Others moved alongside them in neon safety vests, guiding the march forward.

Behind them, handmade signs rose above the crowd: “No Kings in This Country,” “Hands Off,” and other anti-Trump and anti-ICE messages, bobbing between umbrellas, winter hats, and flags.

Thousands of demonstrators had gathered in Manhattan for the third round of nationwide “No Kings” protests against President Donald Trump and his administration’s immigration enforcement agenda. Organizers said more than 3,200 actions were planned across all 50 states and internationally, framing the day as one of the largest coordinated nonviolent protest actions in American history.

In New York, the protest began around Columbus Circle and Central Park South before moving south through Midtown. The crowd marched down Seventh Avenue and Broadway, passing through Times Square toward 34th Street as traffic was shut down along parts of the route.

On the ground, the protest felt dense, cold, and visually chaotic in the way only a Midtown march can. The crowd moved through the hard geometry of Times Square, where protest signs competed with LED billboards, storefront lights, police barricades, and the constant tourist machinery of the city.

In footage from Times Square, marchers packed the street in front of the Hard Rock Cafe marquee, where a glowing “Party Hour” sign hung above them while massive orange-red billboards flashed overhead. Protesters held signs in the air as the crowd slowly pushed forward beneath the screens.

One person stood out in the middle of the crowd wearing large monarch butterfly-style wings, arms stretched wide beneath the Times Square lights. Around them, demonstrators in winter coats and hats continued moving through the street, holding signs and filming on their phones. The image felt almost absurdly New York: a protest against authoritarianism and deportation policy passing beneath corporate billboards, Broadway signage, and a costumed figure with bright wings cutting through the gray winter crowd.

The march drew a wide mix of people: civil liberties groups, immigrant rights organizations, students, older activists, labor-aligned groups, families, and people who seemed to have joined from the sidewalks as the demonstration grew. Some carried printed placards. Others held cardboard signs made by hand. The strongest visual thread was the overlap between anti-ICE politics and broader anti-authoritarian anger: “No Kings,” “Fight Fascism,” “Hands Off,” and immigrant-rights messages all moving through the same crowd.

The sound moved in waves: chants, drums, whistles, police instructions, and the low mechanical noise of Midtown traffic being redirected around the march. Tourists stopped to record. People watched from the sidewalks. The protest temporarily transformed one of the most commercial spaces in the country into a moving corridor of political refusal.

The demonstration was also part of a broader national response to federal immigration policy, ICE operations, and the administration’s push to expand deportation enforcement. In New York, that anger was carried through the city by a crowd that looked both organized and spontaneous, with institutional banners at the front and raw handmade signs scattered throughout the march.

Despite the size of the demonstration, police later said the protests across the five boroughs remained peaceful, with no protest-related arrests. By around 6 p.m., the NYPD said the crowds had dispersed and traffic closures had been lifted.

What struck me most watching the march move through Manhattan was how many layers of anger were compressed into one route. It was not just about one policy, one election, or one agency. It was about ICE, billionaires, war, policing, immigrants, authoritarianism, and the feeling that the country was being dragged somewhere people did not consent to go.

By the time the march reached Times Square, the crowd had become part of the city’s spectacle and a rupture in it. Under the billboards, beside the barricades, between the tourists and traffic, thousands of people kept moving south with signs over their heads, refusing the idea that any president gets to rule like a king.