Hundreds of students, educators, and community members across the Santa Barbara area walked out of schools and workplaces on Tuesday to participate in the “Free America Walk Out,” a nationwide protest against President Donald Trump’s administration.
The demonstrations, held on January 20, 2026, were timed to mark one year since the beginning of Trump’s second term. Local events included a large gathering at the Santa Barbara County Courthouse and a student-led march in Goleta.
In downtown Santa Barbara, local chapters of the Women’s March and Indivisible Santa Barbara organized a rally at the Sunken Gardens. In a statement, organizers called on the community to take a stand against what they described as a “fascist threat.”
“One year into Trump’s second regime, we face an escalating fascist threat: raids on our communities, troops occupying our cities, attacks on immigrants, families torn apart, mass surveillance, and terror used to keep us silent,” the statement read. “It is time for our communities to escalate as well… In the face of fascism, we will be ungovernable.”
Participants were encouraged to bring signs and march to State Street to share stories and voice their dissent. The protest also called for economic action, urging people to refrain from spending money and to be mindful of their digital footprint on social media.
The local action was part of a coordinated national movement. The “Free America Walk Out” website states that the goal is to “withhold our labor, our participation, and our consent” in response to what it calls an “escalating fascist threat.”
In Goleta, students from Dos Pueblos High School participated by marching from their campus to nearby Girsh Park, holding signs and waving flags. The demonstration was conducted with the cooperation of school officials, as administrators joined the students on their march while police officers helped guide traffic to ensure the safety of the participants.
Organizers of the walkouts stressed that the events were intended as a peaceful show of civic engagement aimed at bringing political concerns into the public eye, rather than simply being a disruption.
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About 130,000 people without legal immigration status reside in Minnesota, as opposed to 2.1 million in Texas and 1.6 million in Florida.
Trump supporters want a violent gestapo on the streets. They want big government to supress the constitution. Trump supporters are anti-American. MAGA uses the same tactics as ISIS.
Resist fascism!
Same people calling education “indoctrination,” are the same ones who believe anything that proven liars, child rapists and murderous fascists tell them to believe.
If you support this, you are trash. Trash that will soon be dumped. We’re done.
There’s nothing more dangerous to society than older rich liberal unemployed “do gooders” and SB is full of them. This is pathetic.
It is great when pro fascists use their real names to publicly announce their perpetual butt hurt victimhood.
Is that an insult of some sort? All I can say is nothing is as bad as it would have been under your laughing hyena or demented grandpa!! Traitor
You wrap your kid in an American flag, but you are no patriot.
DA really does come across as an aggressively bigoted, senile fool.
DAN ALDRICH – you should look up the word “traitor.” There’s a photo of you supporting Jan 6, protecting child rapists only because they’re billionaires, and applauding violence against those you disagree with at the hands of a tyrannical and authoritarian criminal regime. You stand for everything America stands against.
Is Westmont aware of your rottenness and cruelty? Maybe they should be.
_you’re_ a traitor. your comments wreak of fascism and dictatorship. you also don’t seem to know squat about our constitution….you’re in the wrong country. bye bye…
You say words, but none of them form a coherent argument. But they are persuasive in way: they convince people of what you are.
It’s wild that he’d use his own name on Edhat to support a known csam predator, given the oddly similar things that come up when you do a cursory google search for his name and this town.
Note that this guy: https://www.independent.com/2025/08/20/santa-barbara-city-employee-arrested-on-drug-gun-and-child-pornography-charges/ is not Dan … I think they are brothers.
This is Dan, on the left: https://www.westmont.edu/westmont-news/aldrich-sigler-join-westmont-foundation
Wait so the guy who is raging and screaming about some old hippies waving around signs being the most dangerous thing in the USA is doing that while his brother is being arrested as a pedophile with added drugs and gun charges?
HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHHH
That is the most MAGA thing ever.
The funniest part is how brazenly he comments here as if no one has Google or can read his name. Is that just stones or outright stupidity? Thinking the latter, as no one who supports an authoritarian regime and is scared of the elderly has any cajones.
Westmont and Sagent will be notified.
Dude has 2 daughters and blindly supports a rapist who has openly and often bragged about sexually assaulting women and watching teen girls get undressed in the changing room of his beauty pageants? Dad of the year right there…. 🤮
DAN – how many rich old liberals kill people on the streets? How many rich old liberals take money away from starving children around the world while making healthcare unaffordable for Americans? How many rich old liberals protect child rapists from justice?
You live in a world of fear, lies and cruelty and you seem to relish in your blatant lack of critical thinking skills and knowledge of history.
Why?
Dan your comment:”There’s nothing more dangerous to society than older rich liberal unemployed “do gooders” and SB is full of them” is so absurd one might almost think you’re attempting sarcasm, but given your other comments it’s clear that you view the world from a dark pit of ignorance, bigotry and fear. Your comment is a target-rich field for anyone with the stomach to analyze and deconstruct, but I just don’t have it in me and anyways it wouldn’t change a thing in that septic tank of a brain. I will simply denounce it as sick and truly pathetic.
its pathetic that American citizens are exercising their constitutional rights? wow….really man? if that is truly how you feel, please don’t let the door hit you on the way out. go to cuba or russia, they’ll welcome you with that mentality.
Oh for sure, your fears are totally rational. Just the other day a bunch of old rich liberal do gooders swarmed someone on the street, beat the crap out of them and shot them in the back.
What goes around comes around, Dan.
We appreciate stupid garbage clearly identifying itself.
LOL. What’s wrong? Is it that they are older? Is it that they are rich? Is it that they are retired? (I mean rich+unemployed = retired, right?) Or is it that they are liberal? It can’t be that they are “do gooders”, because WWJD and all that. What about older rich retired conservatives who hoard money? Are they ok? What about rich+older+employed do-gooders?
GT, Annon & Sac call you names & try to beat you down if you have an opposing opinion . Who died & crowned them the king of Edhat or SB’s moral authority? I am surprised their comments are not moderated given the hate & bullying they exhibit on a consistent basis
Don’t post false and biased nonsense, and you won’t get moderated.
00Ps – yes, I do HATE racists and bigots. Everyone should. Why do you defend them? Are you one of those child rapist defenders, too?
And what “names?” If a person says racist/bigoted things, I will call them just that.
I know you won’t answer, you and the others never do. Either way, I’m going to ask: Why do you stay silent when MAGAts spew out hate and lies based on objectively bigoted world views? You’ve never once said a single thing here as BASIC, DOO-LIE, TNKY, CHUFF, COAST or the other regular bigots say awful things about people they don’t know?
Why?
Cry.
Typically, trash gets thrown out. Tiniest violin.
Oops, these folks are obsessed with Trump, he lives in their heads. They have nothing to do daily other than whine about it, Ed is left leaning (to say the lease), so do not expect any moderation.
After the ‘protest’ members they attended a ‘scream at the sky event’ to show their opposition – result?
GT, Sac and Anon come here to throw their tantrums, throw out insults, etc. etc. doesn’t mean much, but they think they are doing something, problem is, they simply lost the election and cannot deal with it.
Funny to see GT mentioning Patriotism, he never served a day in his life for this country.
Bring on the insults dweebs, only a few years to go . .. .
Kapoopoo why are you here having a tantrum and throwing out insults? You should use chatGPT to look up the definition of patriotism.
KAPOCUCK – no, I come here to call out liars, bigots and bootlickers. You know, people like you. Those are in no way “insults” (unlike “dweebs”), they are accurate portrayals of what kind of person you are based on the words you type here.
This isn’t about losing an election, this is now about losing our rights and our freedom. The fact that you still can’t comprehend that means that you support it or are too uneducated to think for yourself and look at objective facts. Which is it?
Keep crying about “insults” while you actually insult others though. Just shows that of the 2 types of people I mentioned above, you’re definitely the latter. Betting you won’t even understand what that means LOL!
what rights and freedom have you lost? Certainly not free speech!!
When people who are peacefully protesting are being assaulted and killed for exercising their right to free speech, most people with a functioning brain would think they have lost their rights to free speech.
But when someone is a complete puppet like you, that’s probably asking too much.
It sounds a lot more like tRump is living in KP/JK’s cranium, rent free, and trashing the place.
> he never served a day in his life for this country
You’re thinking of Trump and his entire family.
BTW, TDS now refers not only to Trump Devotion Syndrome but also Trump’s Death Squads.
I mean, let’s release the Epstein files. Protesting IS doing something. Sitting around and just waiting 3 years is pretty darned pointless, when you consider the mess that is happening right now.
Do you support a felon, rapi$t, and pedo? Enquiring minds want to know…
MM – he clearly supports those things. He’s proudly defending Trump over and over here.
At this point in time, Trump supporters can no longer feign ignorance. They are either a) evil and truly support racism, rapists and the protection of child sex traffickers and rapists or b) they are brainwashed (due to poor education/lack of intelligence) and truly believe that Trump is none of these things despite cold, hard facts and mountains of evidence to the contrary.
These same people trash others for protesting against objective authoritarianism while pretending they support democracy despite trying to end it on Jan 6th.
Now THAT is pathetic.
The only people who make such poor me claims are those who are devoid of moral scruples.