Santa Barbara’s Political Heavyweights Vow to ‘Stop the Coup’

By the time Congressmember Salud Carbajal and fellow Democrat dignitaries stepped to the microphone for the “Emergency Town Hall” at the Unitarian Society in Santa Barbara Saturday afternoon, the pews in the church’s main hall were packed with hundreds of people, as were the walls along the sanctuary room, the second-floor choir benches, the overflow parish hall, the hallways, and front steps. Outside in the parish courtyard, one of the event’s organizers with Indivisible Santa Barbara apologetically turned away a crowd of a couple hundred more waiting to get in.

All told, more than a thousand people showed up to take part in the rally, which was billed by organizers as a gathering to galvanize the Central Coast’s left-leaning political base to “Stop the Coup” and resist President Donald Trump’s recent onslaught of executive orders and administrative actions.

Along the sidewalks outside the meeting, signs revealed local residents’ mixed emotions of optimistic solidarity and frustration with the prospect of another four years under President Trump. “The U.S. is Not a Monarchy, and Trump is Not a King,” one sign read; “Hey Dems, Polite Politics Do Not Work,” read another.