On Saturday, June 14, when I’m writing this, a Democratic state legislator has been assassinated in Minnesota by a gunman dressed as a police officer. There’s a multimillion-dollar military parade goosestepping through the streets of Washington, D.C., replete with all the lethal hardware your taxes bought and all the pomp required to pump the self-esteem of the 9-year-old in chief on his birthday. In West L.A., Marines are guarding the federal building, where Sen. Alex Padilla was recently manhandled by the Secret Service, giving the National Guard a break and promising to protect the masked ICE agents raiding workplaces to haul away allegedly criminal immigrants. “No Kings” rallies are taking place in some 2,000 cities and towns all over the country. I’ve just attended the one in Santa Cruz.

By the time I arrived at San Lorenzo Park, a little after 10 a.m., it was packed with wall-to-wall people of all ages, shapes, sizes and colors toting signs declaring independence from and defiance of billionaires, autocrats, dictators, tyrants, despots, Nazis and fascists of all kinds, not to mention the president of the United States. After a few brief speeches from representatives of organizations invited by the organizers, the local branch of the nationwide Indivisible network of groups devoted to nonviolent resistance, the gathered thousands slowly and patiently began to make their way along Dakota Avenue, adjacent to the park, and down the block to Soquel Avenue, then east to Ocean Street and up to the County Building.

I was somewhere in the middle of the crowd, unable to see either end of the immense demonstration, apparently even larger than the Women’s March of 2017, and generally more joyous than angry, with a feeling of happy cooperation as yellow-vested volunteers with Indivisible tried their best to keep people on the sidewalks (on both sides of Soquel), but they were overflowed by the multitudes spilling into the street. Eventually the police showed up to block southbound traffic on Ocean Street, making room for the good-natured protesters to take over that thoroughfare, waving their signs and chanting their cheers (“Hey-hey, ho-ho, Donald Trump has got to go”) worthy of a high school football game.

I’m not a big fan of big crowds. I’m a little claustrophobic — dating back to Altamont in 1969 where I found myself uncomfortably surrounded by about a quarter-million hallucinating hippies — and I’m allergic to the clichés of political rhetoric and the mindlessness of mass behavior. But the atmosphere of this calm yet energetic gathering was peppered with clever truth-to-power wordplay (“No Faux-King Way”) amplified by the honking horns of cars expressing solidarity despite the inconvenience of demonstrators slowing them down.

At the corner of Soquel and Ocean, on the glassed-in second-floor landing of the Best Western hotel, three uniformed Latina housekeepers were holding hand-lettered sheets of paper against the glass to greet the passing protesters with a message I was too far away to read, but the maids were waving and smiling.

There was no rally at the County Building; the march proceeded, on the sidewalk, around the corner, west along Water Street, politely waiting for the “walk” sign at River, and down to the little circular plaza by the post office, at the corner of Front and Pacific. I stood across the street for nearly half an hour watching the stream of marchers make their way downtown, drumming and chanting and dancing and brandishing their signs. By the time you read this, we’ll know how widely our small-town scene was replicated in bigger cities and whether or not provocateurs or hooligans vandalized property or assaulted police, triggering violent crackdowns; but for now I must say I’m encouraged by the scaling-up of peaceful public action since the “Hands Off” rallies of April 5.

As Martha and the Vandellas once sang, “Summer’s here and the time is right for dancing in the street.”

Stephen Kessler’s column appears on Saturdays.