On March 28, 2026, thousands of people took to the streets across Massachusetts and the nation for the third No Kings demonstration, demanding an end to the Trump administration’s escalating wars abroad and its assault on democracy at home. Across more than 3,300 events in all 50 states, an estimated eight to nine million people turned out — making it the largest single-day protest in American history. In Boston alone more than 180,000 people packed the Common. Mass. Peace Action (MAPA) organized an antiwar contingent on the Boston Common, circulating petitions, and amplifying the message: No Kings, No War, No ICE.
This third No Kings rally took place during a deepening geopolitical and economic crisis. The Trump administration has launched a massive unprovoked war of aggression against Iran, a war that violates the US Constitution. That war is costing an estimated billion dollars a day, draining resources from healthcare, housing, education, and climate action, while Trump simultaneously proposes a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget. At the same time Trump’s paramilitary forces, in the form of ICE, Customs and Border Patrol, and the Department of Homeland Security, are terrorizing American neighborhoods and trampling on civil rights and liberties. The fact that endless wars abroad fuel authoritarianism at home has never been more apparent.
Across Massachusetts, sister rallies echoed the same demands. At the Cape Ann No Kings event in Gloucester, longtime peace activist Sunny Robinson drew the through-line between wars abroad and the erosion of democracy at home. “We simply will not be able to safeguard our democracy here at home while our government is making war on an ever-increasing number of our neighbors,” she said, naming Cuba, Iran, and Palestine. Quoting Dwight Eisenhower — “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed” — Robinson argued that peace and disarmament are not peripheral concerns but the very precondition for a functioning democracy. She called on attendees to contact their representatives in support of War Powers resolutions targeting the wars in Ukraine, Palestine, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, and the broader Middle East. “Freedom is really only Freedom when it is achieved by and for us all,” she concluded.
At the Boston Common rally, Bahar Sharafi, who is originally from Tehran, delivered some of the day’s most powerful testimony. “It is quite something to see your city carpet-bombed, to see places you love being turned into dust and rubble,” she said. “Every day I wait for a call from my family to let me know that they’re alive.” Sharafi detailed the human toll of the war on Iran — more than 2,000 killed in its first month, hundreds of schools and hospitals destroyed, infrastructure and cultural heritage sites reduced to rubble. She connected the violence overseas to the consolidation of power at home: “The executive power grab, the consolidation of media, and the criminalization of dissent are already here.” Sharafi reminded the crowd that the money spent on the war in its first month alone could have provided free school lunches to nearly 30 million American children. “The war on Iran is not just illegal — it is also immoral. It is the duty of every American to resist.”
Jeff Parente, a third-generation veteran and member of About Face: Veterans Against the War, spoke to the militarism that makes these wars possible — and personal. “Iraq was an illegal war. Afghanistan and Iraq were fought for profit. This war on Iran is even worse,” he said, tracing the current conflict to Congress’s failure to repeal the post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force. Parente also highlighted the administration’s attacks on the VA — eliminating tens of thousands of jobs from an already understaffed agency — while simultaneously launching new wars that will increase demand for veterans’ services. “They don’t care about the military, they don’t care about veterans, they don’t care about you, and they sure as hell don’t care about the Iranian people,” he said. “They only care about their corporate profits.” Parente urged active-duty service members to begin conscientious objector paperwork and to contact the GI Rights Hotline or About Face if they need support.
Across all the day’s events, participants signed MAPA’s petitions calling on Congress to reject new war funding, protect civilians by bringing troops home, support War Powers Resolutions to end illegal wars, and end weapons sales to nations that massacre civilians.
The work continues. We must defeat the administration’s request for $200 billion in supplemental funding for the war on Iran. Demand that your elected representatives vote NO. The Trump Administration is cutting healthcare, housing, and education while asking the American people to foot the bill for bombing Iranian civilians. New War Powers Resolutions to prevent an all out war on Cuba, which has been denied oil shipments for three months and is facing acute shortages of food and medicine, must be supported. Efforts to provide funding for ICE and DHS must be stopped.
So we must all make demands of our representatives. We must all be ready to get back in the streets, and stay in the streets if necessary. Defeating authoritarianism won’t be quick or easy. It will take a movement. So above all – if you haven’t yet – join an antiwar, peace, or justice organization.
by Brian Garvey
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Brian Garvey is the Executive Director of Massachusetts Peace Action.