About 150 people gathered on Saturday at Point Reyes National Seashore headquarters, joining thousands of others at parks across the country to protest the Trump administration’s firing last month of at least 1,000 National Park Service employees.
The Resistance Rangers, a group of some 700 off-duty and former park service staffers, planned rallies at each of the country’s 433 park units on Saturday. By the afternoon, protests had taken place at 170 sites, from Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico to Acadia National Park in Maine.
Shortly after noon at Point Reyes, a group of protesters lowered the American flag that flies in front of the Bear Valley Visitor Center. They raised it again—upside down, the historic signal of distress. Similar actions have echoed across parks nationwide since employees at Yosemite National Park unfurled upside-down flags over the granite face of El Capitan and at Yosemite Falls.
Carrying signs bearing slogans like “Hands Off Our Parks” and “S.O.S. This Is Not a Drill,” the local protestors chanted “Save our parks!” to the steady beat of drums.
Leading the rhythm section was Bruce Fox, a drum circle facilitator from Point Reyes Station who held what he called the “mother drumbeat” on a large tubano. He brought enough percussion instruments for 30 others.
“I’m at the mild panic stage,” Mr. Fox said about his current state of mind. “I’m most concerned about global thermonuclear war.”
He was invited to the protest by a friend, a former park service employee who told the Light they wished to remain anonymous.
“Park rangers are getting cut even though it’s not going to save the government any money,” that individual said. “It’s never really been about saving money. It’s about dismantling our public services that we pay taxes for.”
Two seashore staff members were among those dismissed last month, though one was promptly hired by the Point Reyes National Seashore Association. They were part of a wave of cuts that targeted employees hired within the past year in what the administration said was an effort to reduce government spending.
The anonymous former park employee learned about the protest through the Resistance Rangers. “Decentralization is a big part of this movement, and I think that’s why it worked so well,” they said. “The protests fell together organically. I wasn’t the organizer, I just invited a few friends.”
Sarah Killingsworth, a wildlife conservation photographer who lives in Inverness, discovered the gathering just hours beforehand through her friend Jerry Meral. “I think people feel the need to do something right now,” she said. “This was our way, at the local level, of showing support for our national park.”
Mr. Meral, another Inverness resident, protested with a sign that said “Save Our Seashore. Stop Trump.”
“I thought I’d show up and there’d be maybe five of us,” he said. “But it turned into quite a crowd. It’s hard to picture an issue that grabs public attention faster than closing or de-staffing our parks.”