The Resistance Rises: Indivisible Santa Barbara Gets Ready for May 1 Rally

May Day Rally Takes Place at Courthouse Steps This Thursday with March to State Street to Follow

Myra Paige rallies the crowd at the Hands Off protest on April 5, 2025, with Keith Carlson. | Credit: Robert Bernstein

Keith Carlson remembers climbing the stairs above McConnell’s Ice Cream to go to a sign-making party not long after he and thousands of other people had gathered for the first Women’s March in 2017. “I got motivated,” said Carlson, who now chairs Indivisible Santa Barbara’s steering committee.

The committee members are spending hours every day texting each other as they organize Thursday’s May Day rally and march. They’re also working on an event before the TRUTH Act hearing at the County Board of Supervisors on May 6 — when Sheriff Bill Brown will report on local law enforcement’s cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement — as well as the regular Saturday protest in front of the Tesla dealership.

Indivisible Santa Barbara’s May Day poster | Credit: Courtesy

“We communicate on Signal a lot during the day,” Carlson said, which set off a wave of Pete Hegseth jokes from his steering committee members, some of whom have known each other for years and all of whom are dedicated to standing up to the current administration.

The first Women’s March and its pink “pussy hats” had called attention to Donald Trump’s sexually predatory ways. What drives a group of retirees and near-retirees to spend hours organizing a “rally for justice, working families, and immigrant rights” today?

Harvard came to mind for Ian Paige, who helps Indivisible S.B. coordinate with myriad groups locally: “I did hear a story that when Harvard was making the decision to fight back, one or more of their advisors talked about, maybe not necessarily Indivisible, but all across the country, all of these people are standing up and fighting. And isn’t it right for Harvard, the oldest educational institution in the United States, to fight back as well?”

“They’re backbone builders,” said Marilynn Brewer, chuckling. “For our representatives, these actions and our support are their backbones. They can say, ‘Look, we’ve got all these constituents calling for this or for that.’”

Brewer is a retired university professor of social psychology who started writing for Indivisible S.B.’s newsletter during Trump’s first term. She’d moved to Australia to be with her daughter’s family, but when they decided to return to the U.S. in 2019, “I knew I was coming into Trump country,” Brewer said. “So the first thing I wanted to do, as soon as I unpacked, was find the best local organization for joining the resistance.” The newsletter circulation has grown to more than 3,500 subscribers.

Indivisible S.B. also reaches people at Bluesky, Instagram, and Facebook through posts by Larry Behrendt. A retired attorney and software engineer, Behrendt had started an Indivisible group in Washington state, before he moved to Santa Barbara. He’s been working to build Indivisibles in Santa Ynez, Lompoc, Santa Maria, Carpinteria, and San Luis Obispo. “We did not know of a single Indivisible group between us and Santa Cruz” when he joined the steering committee this year, Behrendt said. “Now we know close to a dozen.”

The group was largely composed of baby boomers who’d grown up amid cultural clashes and demonstrations on campuses. They felt obliged to revive what they already knew, and to bring in younger members, some of whom will be speaking on Thursday.

“People are desperate for connections,” Myra Paige observed. “They are desperate to get involved. They are scared, they are worried, they are frustrated, they’re angry,” she said. Paige communicates with elected officials for the group, as well as about 15 other nonprofits that range from 805Undocufund and the S.B Transgender Advocacy Network to the Women’s March, Democrats, voter’s league, political action committee, and Fearless Grandmothers.

It was the Society of Fearless Grandmothers who proposed getting everyone at April’s Hands Off march into a drone photo at West Beach. The Grandmothers had done something similar during the pandemic when Ann Shaw took a drone shot of empty shoes to represent the people who couldn’t assemble and protest. “Drones often make the news for the worst reasons,” said Shaw, so before Hands Off, she mapped all the off-limits areas by Stearns Wharf and got the FAA documentation necessary for the flight.

Indivisible Santa Barbara: Larry Behrendt (left), Marilynn Brewer, Keith Carlson, Myra and Ian Paige, and their friend Riley. | Credit: Courtesy

As Shaw kept her eyes on her controls and the drone camera, her partner, Haik Hakobian, kept an eye on the sky. “At one point, a seagull flew by and seemed to need another flyby to check out the weird, hovering ‘bird.’ Haik alerted me, and we watched the gull inspect the drone briefly and then fly off.”

Shaw said she joined the Fearless Grandmothers because of their focus on climate change. She had read a news report during George W. Bush’s presidency of the Pentagon’s prediction of climate change events: “likely wars, mass movement of people, and famine,” Shaw recalled. “But the news was silent on the subject. The silence freaked me out. I don’t think I’ve had a restful night of sleep since.”

For Ian Paige, he was fighting to keep the country they all grew up in: “We don’t want to see it disappear for our kids, our grandkids, and the community.” Though he had retired, Paige re-activated his State Bar standing for a few years in order to advocate with the Immigrant Legal Defense Center. “I think we are all doing this because of the injustice of what [Trump] is perpetrating is so huge that we really have to rise up and fight.”

“And we’re not stopping,” Myra Paige added. “We’re tired, but we’re not stopping. We’re working toward the 2026 midterms to take the House back.”

4•1•1: Santa Barbara’s May Day rally takes place at the courthouse arch facing Anacapa Street, with a march to State Street to follow. 6:30-8 p.m., Thursday, May 1. The TRUTH (Transparent Review of Unjust Transfers and Holds) meeting takes place on Tuesday, May 6, at the County Board of Supervisors (9am, 105 E. Anapamu St.).