[Updated] The Reverend Tim Rich will stand on the steps of Pasadena City Hall on Saturday and ask several thousand people to do something he freely admits he cannot always do himself: love the people whose actions and beliefs they find repugnant.
“Let me be fully candid, that’s not a balancing act that I always walk very successfully,” Rich, the priest in charge at All Saints Church in Pasadena, said in an interview on Friday.
That candor — a faith leader heading into a charged political moment while openly wrestling with his own capacity for grace — captures some of the tension running through the No Kings 3.0 march, the third and expectedly largest anti-Trump demonstration that will move down Colorado Boulevard since the movement began in June 2025.
The first No Kings march, held on June 14, 2025, coincided with President Trump’s 79th birthday and a Flag Day military parade.
Today’s march, organized locally by San Gabriel Foothills Indivisible and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), is part of a nationwide mobilization of more than 3,000 simultaneous protests. National organizers have suggested the combined actions could mark the largest single day of protest in American history.
The Pasadena event runs from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., beginning at the Pasadena City College (PCC) Reflecting Pool and proceeding west along Colorado Boulevard to a rally at Pasadena City Hall at 100 North Garfield Avenue.
Speakers scheduled to address the crowd include U.S. Rep. Judy Chu, State Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, Mayor Victor Gordo, Dr. Carolyn Beyer of the Los Angeles LGBT Center, and Rich. Community members will also speak, including Abel R. Blair, who will talk about hope and how to stay positive, and Gloria Gomez Marshall, who will speak about the Eaton fire and rebuilding efforts. High school students from the Pasadena Unified School District will share their stories as well.
A concurrent rally was also planned for 10:30 a.m. in Altadena at the burned Altadena Community Church, 943 E. Altadena Drive.
But what has changed since the first No Kings march is not only the size — organizers estimated 4,000 to 5,000 people attended in June 2025, and expected 7,000 for the second event in October — but the scope of what the marchers are protesting.
The original demonstrations focused squarely on immigration enforcement. Rich cited “the treatment of our immigrant neighbors as they were kidnapped off the streets by ICE agents wearing masks” and “the increasingly hostile laws … towards our LGBTQ siblings” as the concerns that “emerge out of our faith” and are “central to the long history of All Saints Church.”
The grievances have since expanded.
The organizers’ published fact sheet frames Saturday’s march as a protest not only against ongoing immigration operations but also against what it describes as “the U.S. military’s month-long war in Iran.” Rich, for his part, described the current moment as one in which “not only are we dealing with some domestic horrors, but now some global horrors that certainly are unfolding without due process without clear considerations.”
He could not offer a specific attendance estimate for Saturday but said the trajectory is clear.
“With each success of march, the crowds have grown larger and larger,” he said. “At the last March, we had several thousand present.”
It is Rich’s philosophy of resistance — what he repeatedly called “the balancing act” — that sets the emotional tone for what organizers hope will be a disciplined, nonviolent event.
“The balancing act is to resist the acts that are so repugnant without labeling individuals as deplorable, without othering those individuals,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on in the minds of an ICE agent or others who are engaging in some of these acts. We need to do it in a way that is grounded in grace, not in a way that’s grounded in demonizing someone else.”
He called it “a challenge for all of us, whether we be people of a particular face or simply citizens of a community to focus less on the individual and more on the practices and the laws and the impact of what people are doing.”
Rich extended the principle of nonviolence beyond the physical. “We can do violence to one’s soul by rejecting their right to exist,” he said. That understanding, he argued, is what “differentiates the guiding principles and the practices of those who will be marching tomorrow from others who seem to be engaging in unjust acts.”
The march will be led by the National Day Laborers Organizing Network’s (NDLON) music truck, carrying Los Jornaleros del Norte. A new group called Singing Resistance will also lead protesters in song along the parade route. Betsy Hanger, a leader of Singing Resistance, said, “We are not a choir” and “it’s not a performance, come be a part of it!”
San Gabriel Foothills Indivisible, the all-volunteer local chapter of the national Indivisible network co-led by Maddie Briggs and Patrick R. Briggs, said it maintains direct contact with the police department and City Hall to coordinate logistics.
“Our positive relationships with City Hall and Pasadena PD help us tremendously; they made all the difference on No Kings I,” Patrick R. Briggs, a lead organizer, said in an earlier interview with Pasadena Now.
The organizers deploy trained safety monitors at the events and conduct pre-event online trainings with volunteers, according to the group’s published materials. Weapons of any kind are strictly prohibited.
The City of Pasadena has affirmed residents’ First Amendment rights to peaceful protest while warning that anyone committing crimes during the demonstrations would face prosecution. City spokesperson Lisa Derderian said in June 2025, in connection with the first No Kings march, that police would monitor the gatherings and directed the public to call 626-744-4241 or 911 in the event of an emergency. The city has not issued an updated public statement specific to Saturday’s event.
Derderian said early Saturday that police will provide rolling street blockages as crowds move along Colorado Boulevard today.
For residents unable to attend, Rich described the specific, personal advice he gives to members of his congregation. He told a financial advisor to “donate your time to nonprofits who are trying to organize the financial matters of immigrants.” He told another person to “volunteer to go grocery shopping for individuals who are afraid to leave their home.”
Rich said he would “never tell a parishioner how to vote” but tells them: “Make sure you do vote and don’t check your face and your beliefs at the curtain before you close that curtain behind you.”
He said he hopes the march “hits notes that are inspiring and encouraging and really calls the best out of one another.”
“Love can be every bit a resisting force and every bit something that gives us hope as much as sort of the force of brutality and fear and terror,” he said.
IF YOU GO
No Kings 3.0 March and Rally
When: Saturday, March 28, 2026, 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Gather at 11 a.m.; march steps off at 11:15 a.m.; rally with speakers at 12:30 p.m.
March start: Pasadena City College Reflecting Pool, 1570 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91106
Rally: Pasadena City Hall, 100 North Garfield Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91101
Altadena rally: 10:30 a.m. at the burned Altadena Community Church, 943 E. Altadena Dr., Altadena, CA 91001
All Saints Church gathering: 11:30 a.m. on the church green, followed by a group walk to City Hall. For those unable to do the full march.
Parking: PCC Lot 3 or Garage 4. Parking near City Hall expected to be highly limited.
Organizer: San Gabriel Foothills Indivisible — sangabrielfoothillsindivisible
Speakers: Rep. Judy Chu, State Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, Mayor Victor Gordo, Dr. Carolyn Beyer (Los Angeles LGBT Center), Rev. Tim Rich (All Saints Church), Abel R. Blair, Gloria Gomez Marshall, Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD) high school students.
Music: Los Jornaleros del Norte (NDLON music truck), The Nextdoors, DJ Richie C, Singing Resistance.
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