Anti-Trump protesters mobilized in force across Arlington today (Saturday) as part of nationwide “No Kings Day” demonstrations ahead of the military parade in D.C.

Waving signs, banners and American flags, they cheered from overpasses and chanted outside the Clarendon Metro station. An estimated 5,000 people lined long stretches of Langston Blvd from Rosslyn to Falls Church, in an attempt to form an enormous, 5.2-mile “human chain.”

In Falls Church earlier in the day, they packed five blocks of Broad Street.

Many of the protesters were Arlington residents, while others traveled to the county in order to be close to D.C., where no official “No Kings” events were planned. Concerns ranged from immigration policy to mass federal layoffs to funding for health care, environmental programs and USAID.

“Nobody wants their grandma to lose Medicaid, and so we just feel we need to step up and say something,” Micaela Pond, founder of We of Action Virginia, told ARLnow. “It’s not about being bad sports. It’s about basic human rights in our Constitution being violated.”

Some of the largest crowds were along Langston Blvd. They began gathering just before 4 p.m., waving slogans like “Hate won’t make America great” and “Citizens not subjects,” earning loud honks from some drivers.

County Board member J.D. Spain Sr. was one of several elected officials and candidates who spoke at a press conference near the Key Bridge around 5 p.m. He described the protests as a stand against “authoritarianism.”

“For 26 years since I was in the Marine Corps, I did not serve a king,” Spain said. “I did not sign up to serve a dictator. I signed up to serve the people. I signed up to serve our Constitution of the United States and for the freedoms that define who we are as Americans. We are not going back, people.”

Two candidates for Virginia lieutenant governor, State Sen. Aaron Rouse and attorney Victor Salgado, also spoke in opposition to the military parade and urged protesters to vote in the general election.

“I grew up hearing ‘Virginia is for Lovers,’ my whole entire life, but now we need to make sure the world knows Virginia is for fighters, Virginia is for defenders of democracy,” Rouse said.

“We can’t stand for this nonsense,” Salgado said. “This man is using our military, our service members — people who have sworn to protect the country with their lives — for his ego, so that it can have a parade. This is not the type of stuff that we see in the United States.”

At another demonstration in Clarendon, Fairfax County resident Daniel Sorto told ARLnow that he attended because of the fear that he has seen in Hispanic communities during Trump’s immigration crackdown. Though Sorto is a U.S. citizen, he says he still fears being detained by an administration with a spotty track record on respecting due process rights.

“We need due process, and the fact that we’re not practicing that, which is violating the Constitution — that’s why I’m here,” he said.

Another Fairfax resident, Deanna S., said she decided to come to Arlington because she wanted to be close to D.C. but is afraid to protest there.

“It’s scary going out to D.C., because Trump has shown that he is not afraid to use military force,” she said.

Smaller-scale protests took place in Arlington throughout the day, beginning around 11 a.m. at many overpasses along I-66. Pond led a group hanging large posters on the Potomac Street Pedestrian Bridge, spelling out “No King in 1776.”

The bridge is over a Metro line, and protesters drew blares from passing trains as well as the cars.

“There’s been all this discussion, well, ‘Will there be another election?’ and that’s terrifying,” Pond said. “So we, along with over 2,000 other protests going on concurrently today, are out here to say ‘no kings.'”

Joining the organizer were a pair of high-profile visitors from Southern California: Bill Nye the Science Guy and U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman (D), who represents a district in the Los Angeles area.

Nye and Sherman both spoke against the Trump administration’s slashing of federal diversity, equity and inclusion policies, among other actions.

“I can go on, but no king — no, we don’t want a king,” Nye said. “Bad. King, bad.”

The pair also rebuked Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem following the forced removal and handcuffing of U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) from a news conference in Los Angeles this week.

“Sen. Padilla is my senator,” Nye said. “He has brown skin. He gets pinned down in handcuffs. The Secretary doesn’t say ‘oh, Senator, I’m so sorry, what a misunderstanding.’ It’s terrible. No, she goes in another direction, doubling down.”

Pond, who recently retired from a longtime career in public education, said she founded WofA Virginia, an Indivisible affiliate , the day after Donald Trump was elected in 2016.

“I noticed a lot of my Latino students were absent the day after the Trump election,” she recalled. “I didn’t know what was happening, and they were afraid of ICE automatically, and we knew we had to do something.”

Now facing a second Trump administration, the group — which has since grown from 20 teachers to over 2,000 members — advocates broadly for Democratic policies as well as for federal workers, LGBTQ+ citizens and immigrants.

Arlington resident Karen Christensen, a retired diplomat, said she came out to protest because the Trump administration is reminiscent of her stint at the U.S. Embassy in Romania from 1987-1989.

At the time, the country was under the totalitarian rule of Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu.

“Every day I wake up and there’s something that makes me feel like I’m back in Ceaușescu’s Romania,” Christensen said. “This kind of a celebration — a military parade on the birthday of the leader — makes me feel exactly like I’m in Romania.”

Falls Church protester David Shenk, meanwhile, said his reason for coming out is simple.

“We’re here to show what this community’s values are,” he said.