It was festive and encouraging, but we’re not done yet. The danger is real, and we’re in it for the long haul. We will lift every voice in the struggle to save our Democracy – we will continue the momentum!
For those who were there – here are some delicious memories. And if you missed this one – see you next time!
Our peaceful movement is only getting bigger and stronger. “NO KINGS” is more than just a slogan—it’s the foundation our nation was built upon. Born in the streets, carried by millions in chants and on posters, it echoes from city blocks to rural town squares, uniting people across this country to fight dictatorship together.
The president thinks his rule is absolute. But in America, we don’t have kings, and we won’t back down against chaos, corruption, and cruelty. Grow our movement and join us.
A core principle behind all No Kings events is a commitment to nonviolent action. We expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values and to act lawfully at these events. Weapons of any kind, including those legally permitted, should not be brought to events.
>> IN BENICIA: October 18th NO KINGS DAY! 1-2pm at the Gazebo (map: First and Military Streets). Bring your signs, your neighbors, friends, and family, and your goodwill. We’ll “parade” this block for the hour on the sidewalk.
>> IN VALLEJO: Vallejo-Benicia INDIVISIBLE is holding a second NO KINGS Day of Action on Saturday, October 18, 10AM – 12PM, at Unity Plaza / JFK Library, 505 Santa Clara St. The event will include inspiring local speakers and live music as well as songs from our Resistance DJ. We will then march briefly through downtown Vallejo, ending around noon. The Vallejo event is listed with more detailed info on the Vallejo-Benicia Indivisible Facebook page (including a map).
>> ALL OVER THE BAY AREA: Here’s a LIST of NO KINGS Oct 18 events in the Bay Area, starting with Benicia – scroll down and click on an event for more details. Or… go to the big nokings.org or mobilize.us map and zoom in. Then click on a city for detailed info.
In June, we did what many claimed was impossible: peacefully mobilized millions of people to take to the streets and declare with one voice: America has No Kings. And it mattered. The world saw the power of the people. President Trump’s birthday parade was drowned out by protests in every state and across the globe. His attempt to turn June 14 into a coronation collapsed, and the story became the strength of a movement rising against his authoritarian power grabs.
Now, President Trump has doubled down. His administration is sending masked agents into our streets, terrorizing our communities. They are targeting immigrant families, profiling, arresting and detaining people without warrants. Threatening to overtake elections. Gutting healthcare, environmental protections, and education when families need them most. Rigging maps to silence voters. Ignoring mass shootings at our schools and in our communities. Driving up the cost of living while handing out massive giveaways to billionaire allies, as families struggle.
The president thinks his rule is absolute. But in America, we don’t have kings and we won’t back down against chaos, corruption, and cruelty.
Our peaceful movement is only getting bigger and bigger. “NO KINGS” is more than just a slogan; it is the foundation our nation was built upon. Born in the streets, shouted by millions, carried on posters and chants, it echoes from city blocks to rural town squares, uniting people across this country to fight dictatorship together.
Because this country does not belong to kings, dictators, or tyrants. It belongs to We the People – the people who care, who show up, and the ones who fight for dignity, a life we can afford, and real opportunity. No Thrones. No Crowns. No Kings.
BACKGROUND (by BenIndy Editor): On October 1, City Councilmember Terry Scott distributed without comment a link to a website, “Moving Benicia Forward”, movebeniciaforward.com. The front page invitation there reads, “We invite you to share your thoughts” and offers visitors to click on “Share Feedback.” This goes to a page with information about Signature Development Group, which is under contract with Valero “to evaluate redevelopment opportunities for the Benicia refinery property.” The page also offers a blank box for “FEEDBACK – Share your thoughts about the potential redevelopment.”
The Benicia Independent, by Marilyn Bardet, October 3, 2025
In my view, Signature Development Group’s setting up of an online platform inviting the public to submit ideas and comments for post-closure redevelopment of Valero’s ~900 acres seems like a well-meant gesture toward public involvement. I say “gesture” because such an approach to communication can lead to one-directional, top-down decision-making.
Since Valero’s announcement in April, Signature has been under contract with Valero to come up with a comprehensive re-development plan whose options would presumably be contingent upon, and possibly limited by, findings from investigations of soil and water contamination remaining from all uses by Responsible Parties, including the military. Yet, since April, the public has learned little or nothing from Signature about their initial thoughts, their approach, and preliminary reviews of conditions. What have the mayor and council members learned in conversation with Signature?
I’m seasoned in this: we’re well past the point of needing more info than has been spoken in generalities. We must get conversations out into the open.
BENICIA’S GENERAL PLAN AND A CITIZEN TASK FORCE
I don’t believe there is any substitute for the kind of “roll-up-your-sleeves-put-on-your-thinking caps” work done in person, when learning and respectful deliberation can take place among a broad-spectrum of community stakeholders. Any discussions on this momentous venture should be under guidance of the goals and policies of the Benicia General Plan.
Such a public oversight process is necessary and foundational to any plans for the Valero properties if those plans are to gain public approval. I believe Elizabeth Patterson’s reasoning and recommendation for establishing a community stakeholder task force now is absolutely sound, based on a proven record of what such an open deliberative process nets.
The task force could resemble a modified version of the General Plan Oversight Committee [GPOC], a council-appointed 17-member committee charged in 1995 to rewrite the city’s outdated 1978 general plan. (Note: in 1978, the refinery, then owned by Exxon, was new—only 10 years old!). As a professional planner, Elizabeth was appointed to facilitate the committee’s work, and under her leadership, GPOC members dove into discussions and debates on often contentious issues concerning land use, sustainable economic development, community health and safety, and community identity. Outside speakers offered expertise to inform GPOC and the public. The goals, policies and programs hammered out by consensus became the integrated guidance document required by the state, with legal standing, that we have today, inclusive of periodic updates. Our Benicia General Plan has stood the test of time and will keep evolving.
In effect, any decisions made for the Valero properties will shape the city’s future, for good or ill, and could represent a significant general plan “update”, thus invoking need for such a citizen task force.
The visions we collectively hold for our city’s sustainability and future development must entail hard-nosed assessments of prospective major changes over the next 5 – 10 years: changes that will be cumulative. (Think large-scale residential development currently proposed for Seeno property, the Arsenal, and now, possibly for portions of Valero property). Such changes deserve open public discussion that an on-going task force would serve as vehicle for: a public process oriented toward specific goals to ensure far-sighted oversight of what will unfold through cleanup investigations and redevelopment planning, inclusive of CEQA reviews.
While it may seem early in the game, so far, five months into it, no such public process has been set up by the city council to proactively engage residents as full participants in an endeavor that has apparently already begun.
CLOSURE CLEANUP BONDING — AND A NEVER IMAGINED REFINERY CLOSURE
In 1995, Koch Industries had come to town exclaiming the benefits of permitting a development proposal for a massive petroleum coke storage and shipping terminal at the port, which would serve all five Bay Area refineries. The public’s outcry in protest was enormous, and successful. Notable at that time, activists spoke up about the need for a secure bond to be required of Exxon that would pay for a future refinery cleanup. While Koch failed in its development bid, nothing came of recommendations for a “closure cleanup bond” to be put up by the refinery.
In 1999, the new general plan was adopted, just when Valero was negotiating terms with Exxon for purchase of the refinery. Though the general plan did not directly incorporate goals that specifically addressed the refinery’s possible closure, key policies addressed the need to protect residents from exposure to contaminated soils—the concern expressed based on the city’s oversight debacles revealed by the Rose Drive/Braito Landfill investigation and cleanup.
All that said, Valero Energy Corp’s announcement of its options for shutting down by April 2026, was a stunner. It became the hottest concern of the city, and respectively for the governor and legislature: nobody was prepared. The city instantly worried about projected serious “gap” in revenues, and the state, the significant “gaps” in the gasoline supply chain that shuttering production at the Benicia refinery would/could cause. Once it was determined that Valero wasn’t “taking” any of the state’s offers to stay open, the state seemed to walk away from the problems for the City raised by prospects of closure.
So, unfortunately, the city never imagined a future refinery closure, and thus, what legal obligations attendant on such an undertaking should be raised, such as a condition of any future development permit applied for by Valero. (For example, Valero’s permit for the 10-year Valero Improvement Project begun in 2003.) Thus, the city missed several key opportunities to impose a permitting condition that would, at the very least, require that Valero put up a bond dedicated for funding of closure and thorough cleanup of refinery properties.
As City Manager Giuliani said to me recently when I met with him to discuss my concerns, “We’re on our own now”. I’d just stated that there is no state law that requires full disclosure of total costs of a thorough cleanup. This bears repeating: there’s nothing in either our municipal laws or state law that would protect the City from any Valero failure to meet what the state and city should have formerly considered firm obligations for refinery closures and cleanups. Expecting a lawsuit to resolve such issues would be a David and Goliath contest.
WE’RE LEFT WITH QUESTIONS…
Will a citizen task force be established by council for the long-haul, to be dedicated to oversight of a cleanup process, and, ultimately, for reviewing re-development plans as proposed?
We of the Benicia community are now in the responsible position to publicly model what we mean by a process that oversees “refinery closure, cleanup and restoration” and appropriate sustainable future land uses for former refinery/military lands.
Marilyn Bardet
Good Neighbor Steering Committee
BCAMP Board Member
BISHO Working Group
Valero Community Advisory Panel
Vallejo-Benicia Indivisible is holding a second No Kings Day of Action on Saturday, Oct. 18 starting at 10 am at Unity Plaza, John F. Kennedy Library, 505 Santa Clara St. in Vallejo. The event will include inspiring local speakers and live music as well as songs from our Resistance DJ.
We will then march briefly through downtown Vallejo, ending around noon. As with all Indivisible events, this rally will be strictly nonviolent, joyful and uplifting.
The event will be one of more than 2,200 scheduled across the United States, protesting current presidential overreach that is causing harm by depriving ourselves and our neighbors of health care, food and the right to constitutional judicial recourse.
There will be barrels for our food drive for the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano Counties. Please bring packaged or canned foods, no glass or perishable items.
Scheduled speakers include Cassandra James, Solano County Supervisor; Allyssa Victory, ACLU Senior Staff Attorney; Will McGarvey, Executive Director, Solano Pride Center; Jaclyn Eyvonne, Vallejo Poet Laureate with original poem for this event; Mina Diaz, former Vallejo City Council member; Pastor Kim Kendrick, Community Congregational Church, UCC; and a representative from the North Bay Rapid Response Network, an organization protecting immigrants in our region.
Please dress for the weather, bring water, signs and sunscreen and your peaceful, joyful energy!
>> IN BENICIA: October 18th NO KINGS DAY! 1-2pm at the Gazebo (map: First and Military Streets). Bring your signs, your neighbors, friends, and family, and your goodwill. We’ll “parade” this block for the hour on the sidewalk.
>> IN VALLEJO: (as above) Vallejo-Benicia INDIVISIBLE is sponsoring a NO KINGS rally on Saturday, October 18, 10AM – 12PM, in Unity Plaza / JFK Library, 505 Santa Clara St. The Vallejo event is listed on the Vallejo-Benicia Indivisible Facebook page (including a map).
>> ALL OVER THE BAY AREA: Here’s a LIST of NO KINGS Oct 18 events in the Bay Area, starting with Benicia – scroll down and click on an event for more details. Or… go to the big nokings.org or mobilize.us map and zoom in. Then click on a city for detailed info.
In June, we did what many claimed was impossible: peacefully mobilized millions of people to take to the streets and declare with one voice: America has No Kings. And it mattered. The world saw the power of the people. President Trump’s birthday parade was drowned out by protests in every state and across the globe. His attempt to turn June 14 into a coronation collapsed, and the story became the strength of a movement rising against his authoritarian power grabs.
Now, President Trump has doubled down. His administration is sending masked agents into our streets, terrorizing our communities. They are targeting immigrant families, profiling, arresting and detaining people without warrants. Threatening to overtake elections. Gutting healthcare, environmental protections, and education when families need them most. Rigging maps to silence voters. Ignoring mass shootings at our schools and in our communities. Driving up the cost of living while handing out massive giveaways to billionaire allies, as families struggle.
The president thinks his rule is absolute. But in America, we don’t have kings and we won’t back down against chaos, corruption, and cruelty.
Our peaceful movement is only getting bigger and bigger. “NO KINGS” is more than just a slogan; it is the foundation our nation was built upon. Born in the streets, shouted by millions, carried on posters and chants, it echoes from city blocks to rural town squares, uniting people across this country to fight dictatorship together.
Because this country does not belong to kings, dictators, or tyrants. It belongs to We the People – the people who care, who show up, and the ones who fight for dignity, a life we can afford, and real opportunity. No Thrones. No Crowns. No Kings.
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