“Hands Off” Open Thread
Yesterday, hundreds of thousands — perhaps millions — of people came out to protest Trump’s assault on democracy, including a live protest in Paris and an all day live and Zoom one in Dublin.
Indivisible says there were over 1,400 events. For those of showed up to a protest — here, at Place de la République in Paris — you may have made new friends or met old friends (very old, Christy Hardin Smith and I kept complaining!!).
There were several stories (most notably in New York City) about police staffing wildly inadequate to the numbers, largely because cops underestimated turnout. But everything was peaceful, with volunteers managing traffic in lieu of cops.
The sheer numbers are important. But especially because of increasingly constrained media (NYT has no coverage of the protest on its front page, but at least the story on seven random people is no longer there), it will be key for this event to lead to further localized organizing.
If you protested, share your story!
The rain held off and the people gathered at Vineyard Haven MA. http://happening-here.blogspot.com/2025/04/hands-off-vineyard-haven-mass.html
“Trump is so far up Putin’s ass he can see Sarah Palin’s house” is definitely a keeper. And from your comments, “Melania doesn’t live with him, why should we?” is very good.
I was planning on going to the protest in Belfast ME, but an edge-banding project that should have taken an hour yesterday morning went sideways and the rest of the day was taken up with the workaround. I shouldn’t have planned anything that morning.
Here are some good rundowns of ME’s protests yesterday:
https://www.mainepublic.org/2025-04-05/hands-off-rallies-gather-thousands-across-maine-towns
https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/news/politics/maine-politics/hands-off-rally-demonstration-president-donald-trump-administration-federal-cuts-elon-musk-doge/97-71bdf88d-e558-4858-a479-41598492c9dc
That second link was the lead story on that night’s News Center Maine’s newcast, and it has a clip of (Independent) Angus King delivering a very punchy and angry speech to the Portland crowd. He nails it with “This is the most serious assault on our constitution in the history of this country!”
In the first link, a Republican legislator from Wiscasset, Jim Crowley, attended the Augusta rally and delivered this telling commentary:
“It feels like I’ve stepped into some kind of a collection of science fiction short stories, and every story is worse than the previous one. I’m just flabbergasted. … I want to do whatever I can.”
The sizes of these protests is important, as is their ubiquity in this country. The next round will be larger and even more widespread because this is the sign of a movement that has gotten off to a very good start, and unlike the Iraq war protests 23 years ago, the US citizenry are the targets of the White House this time.
I’m sorry I missed the Belfast event. I’m definitely gonna use that Palin slogan next rally.
The Belfast event was…wow. Over a thousand, maybe 1200? In a city of 6000? Great energy, great signs, kids and dogs, not a negative honk afa I can tell. See you at the next one, neighbor.
Signs? I wanted cheap eggs, and only got Measles.
The Revolution will not be televised, but you might find it on Signal.
Needs More Pitchfork!
See you at the next one! Great signs! It occurs to me that there’s a lot of creativity in this mob.
Here’s a diary on dKos that has a wide selection of signs, some of them very memorable:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/5/2314829/-Best-Hands-Off-Graphics-and-Costumes
It’s a great compendium of signs and stories from all over the planet. Many of the signs were brilliant, but one narrative post stuck out for me:
“I wish I could figure out how to post the photos I took yesterday in front of the Albany County Court House in Laramie Wyoming. Protesters were three rows deep on both sites of the street extending to more than half a block past the courthouse on both ends. I estimate that to be about 1,000 people. And almost every car going in either direction of the protesters were honking their horns, waving, and shouting words of support. I was born in Wyoming and have lived there most my life. And have never seen anything like this.”
A county seat in WY. That says something.
The site’s Front Page as of this posting, otoh, has not one story about yesterday’s vast, rolling event. Meanwhile, here’s Kos’ latest wheel-spinning post:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/6/2313954/-Here-s-how-Trump-could-pull-off-an-authoritarian-third-term
It’s like they’re taking their cues from the NYT. At least they provide a platform for stories like the one linked above.
I meant to add (but didn’t beat the edit timer):
That kos piece could be described as “masturbatory doom-peddling.” Just giving that shit oxygen is like waving the white flag: if shit like that is even a mild possibility, our goose is cooked already, a charred husk.
And to add to the sheen on that turd, he doesn’t assign a single fucking FP writer to boost and report on 4/5 events.
I feel a diary comin’ on.
Unfortunately, my Belfast relatives did not attend; though they may be coming around. Even up here in The County the voices of protest shone through brightly; not Caribou, of course, but Presque Isle and Houlton stepped up. Did my soul good to be a part of it.
Yes. Like millions of people everywhere across the USA and in Europe too, we took to the streets yesterday in Evanston, Illinois. Lots of amazing energy in the air. It is impressive how quickly this new administration has mobilized the opposition. Seems the attack on our Democracy & Constitution is coming from every corner. We can’t think of one damn thing that is heading in the right direction at the moment. Full-scale implosion is on the horizon. Trending to Fascism & Idiocy. Maximum fucked-up-ness. Fuck. We are against it with every fibre in our American-made beings. We feel under assault. This is not our American Dream. Indivisble has emerged as a potent focal point of our opposition. People Power in action. There is Hope to be found in the energy and the numbers. Let this movement bloom. We can create a better day & a better way. No doubt. One word, one sign, one idea, one vote at a time.
Good atmosphere in downtown Philadelphia, the organizer said attendance exceeded 10,000. Impossible for me to validate that from the ground, but plausible given the crowds marching down Market Street. Attendees leaning older; I chatted with a woman in her 80s who said “the 90s” in her retirement community who couldn’t make the trip were discussing local action to block traffic in their walkers and wheelchairs.
Lots of good homemade signs and props, expressions from angry and righteous to hilarious to arty. Bonus points for the local content: “Keep Fluoride in our WOODER”. Thanks to the awesome drumline performers.
Not a bad start, this will have to be the first of many events
I checked out a lot of the local coverage for the Philly protest, and while there were lots of pictures, nothing that clearly showed the size of the crowd in the AP or NBC/CBS/ABC local affiliates’ stories. I had to look outside news media to get any of those, but there were overheads of other locations’ crowds on some more traditional news sites where there was news helicopter coverage (i.e. Denver protest from Yahoo News: https://www.yahoo.com/news/photos-many-coloradans-gather-hands-193155719.html). As for Philly, 10k might be a reasonable estimate (I really don’t know). There were DEFINITELY plural-thousands in attendance based on my Mark 1 Eyeball assessment. Here’s a Reddit post (I know, I know) with a series of drone-camera overheads, and the middle 2 are looking west down Market St. (with City Hall as the backstop):
https://www.reddit.com/r/philadelphia/comments/1jsr3un/in_case_you_missed_it_drone_pics_from_the_philly/#lightbox
The first of the middle two you can see the 9th St. sign in the foreground, so it was probably taken just before the end of the 800 block, and the second one is taken from about halfway down the 900 block based on the Sephora store location in the image (compared to the Google Street View of that block).
As for the follow-up, Hands Off/Indivisible already has a May Day nationwide event showing on their main page as the next Day of Action.
So nice to see your smiling face and in summery garb, Marcy! And bonus for the shot of you and Christy, whose insights and writing I miss to this day–please convey a cheery, affectionate hello to her for me. I’m sure folks have seen pictures of the NYC march, a somewhat soggy but beautifully organized and pretty much flawless event, from my boots-on-the-ground perspective. Lots of “people who look like me” no matter what you looked like, and a corps of well organized marshals keeping crosstown traffic AND the march running.
Was wondering what the police presence would look like, given Adams’ nuts in Trump’s pocket, and kept scanning the skies for surveillance drones, and scanning the crowd for undercover cops and surveillance, but didn’t see any. Later heard there were a few right-wing trolls toward the end of the march, trying (largely fruitlessly) to engage people; but marshals kept them separated from the crowd while the few cops present simply looked on as the marshals handled it.
From my perspective the mood of the crowd was quietly enthusiastic and determined; chants didn’t particularly catch fire but periodically the entire crowd emitted a spontaneous, satisfyingly loud roar that seemed to sweep for blocks. I hope this is the template for future such marches, and there WILL obviously be future marches, even when the level of civic interruption might have to ratchet up. I’m not sure what the viability would be of Trump sending feds and/or the Guard to beat heads, and have no doubt he’d do it if he could get away with it. But for now, this was (to me) a pretty much perfect event.
A “spontaneous, satisfyingly loud roar” in the canyons of Manhattan? Ooooh. I’d love to hear that!
Having read about the understaffed NYC protests, I figured it was because they knew that it would be peaceful. Does not excuse the decision.
But what if counter-protestors would have shown up and there was trouble?
And as a side note, of course if counter-protestors would have shown up, they would have been “pardoned” and peaceknicks would have been jailed or sent off to El Salvador or Gitmo.
Exactly my implied point, which you elucidated well and I didn’t.
Here in Bisbee AZ we enjoyed a sizable, and peaceful, turnout for a tourist ghost town of just under a population of five thousand. The determination and camaraderie reminded me of the October 15th, 1969 Moratorium Against the Vietnam War. The Moratorium marked the beginning of a much broader and organized movement to end the war.
Your comment is a flashback for me, as back in 2003, the first week or so in March I had embarked on the Arizona Trail, endeavoring to hike from Mexico to Utah, crossing Arizona. Around March 10, I surfaced just north of the Empire Ranch in the Las Cienegas Conservation Area and attempted to hitch the last few miles in to Benson to reprovision. Who picked me up but a couple of hippies on the way back to Bisbee in a van gaudily and completely covered in Stop the War slogans! While I had been hiking along the Arizona Border for some 150 miles, with no guns and no cell phones, what immigration problem, right?, Bush had led us astray under false pretenses into the Iraq War. I’ll always have time for Bisbee and I’m sorry I can’t thank those two hippies adequately as I was bushed! Patchouli pacem forever!
OMG, Reddhedd!!! You and Christy together again…in Paris!! Stories please.
Wasn’t able to get out myself, but was cheered by the massive numbers throughout our country, and the world, especially the big turnouts in small red towns. Great energy, and definitely momentum to build on. Our fabulous new newspaper had reporters out at three events in the County with updates throughout the day. They interviewed participants and got stories of how Trump/Musk/DOGE are affecting their lives in very real ways. Funding cuts, layoffs, and on.
While I myself was relieved at the lack of police presence, I’m realistic that going forward the administration is going to want to “control” future crowds in ways that we need to be prepared for.
It is possible Trump will want to “control” the protestors regardless of how peaceful they are. My concern is are Americans going to have to deal with Civil Rights Marches style “control” or Kent State style “control” or given the pardons so many received from Trump after Jan, 6 will those people take another run at things.
That’s why Corey Booker’s marathon Senate speech last week led with a remembrance of John Lewis. Lewis, MLK, et al succeeded in getting the Civil Rights Act considered and passed because of their strict adherence to non-violence.
I’ve been getting regular updates and urgings from a local activist and friend whose son was a MoveOn leader, and there’s a constant mantra of non-violence coming from Indivisible leadership as well as everyone I’ve met in the movement so far.
Unlike previous large scale protests in this country, virtually everyone demonstrating against the Trump cabal this time will have video recording devices with real-time uploading capacity.
If we can’t differentiate ourselves from the tactics of the J6 mob, we might as well stay home. Another difference between, say, the Iraq War protests before the invasion and now is that there are no Dems or Independents straddling the fence, let alone colluding with the GOP as was the case in 2002/3; and as I noted above, the targets of Trump’s ire aren’t just foreigners this time but US citizens, at least all of us who aren’t immensely wealthy. The political dynamics, iow, are like nothing seen in history, as far as I can determine.
“Take another run at things.” Certainly possible! But remember: most of the Jan. 6th rioters were so-called “normies,” basically dupes. They’re right-wing extremists of a sort, but it takes a lot to get them “riled up” enough to riot. Speeches by Trump, Giuliani, etc. only got them halfway there; it needed an extra push from the hard-core insurrectionists, mainly the Proud Boys.
The Proud Boys would be the main group turning out with the intention of wreaking violence on peaceful protesters. Nobody knows exactly how many members the group has, but it’s almost certainly fewer than 3,000 nationwide. They’d be hard pressed to come up with more than 50 or so toughs at any one protest without months of planning. As long as there are hundreds of protests with hundreds (or thousands) of people at each one, the fascists will mostly stay home or just catcall on the sidelines.
The real hard-core types, militias like the Oath Keepers, save their powder for major events – not pissy little street fights. The one real danger is lest all the groups get organized around a single event (like Jan. 6), manage to get the protesters engaged in physical fights, and give the felon-in-chief the excuse he wants to declare martial law.
The november elections in 26 and 28. If we still have a democracy by then.
This is one more thing at makes the distributed geography of the protest day so effective: concentrating opposition against it is impossible (even if Trump loses it to the point of calling in the National Guard, where would he send them? Everywhere?).
And it’s more inclusive since folks don’t have to travel too far (unless they want to) and it’s with folks they live around, many of whom they already know. It’s not like going to DC or NYC or another large metropolis (for a major portion of us), which can be daunting and impractical.
I remember being at the MoveOn protest in NYC in ’02 I think, when we shut down Manhattan and the cops herded us into literal pens in blocks running out of eyesight in all directions. Cops on horseback in most the intersections. I was there with my wife and son (who was 16). It was chilling and we couldn’t even hear or see the program. We were just herded in pens, thousands per block in every direction. I can’t even find it in Wikipedia now. Bloomberg ordered the execution of it. And it was supposed to be focused on the UN deliberations at that point. It was spooky, actually, the silence of the lambs kind of, the entire immense crowd. Fuck Michael Bloomberg.
The point being, anyway, that that kind of control takes *huge* infrastructure. Coordinated distributed crowd activity is the way to counter that.
@Gaycyclist: https://ballotpedia.org/Elections_calendar
That’s a lot of elections and a very full ’25 calendar in every direction, but every direction is important, like school boards and municipal governance. But there are also national races on that ’25 list. Note that the GOP established their current dominance from the ground up in many ways.
How do we know Trump is a terrorist? Because of the fear he willfully, purposefully, and relentlessly inspires. Terrorism survives as political strategy because it works.
At the New Haven Green rally Saturday I met a woman about my age with a great sign that read “Trump L’Oueil.” She was happy to let me photograph the sign, but not her, and she was afraid to give her name, leaning close to whisper “What if he finds out?” As so often these days, there was no need to specify who ‘he’ was.
Even I was surprised by how many of those around me seemed nervous: masked, concealed under hat brims or behind sunglasses on a wintry day. I wonder how many would brave the public square if they knew how many already are–if the press conveyed the truth, that is.
Terrorizing the press is of course job one, however, and it’s already working as planned.
Marcy and Christy! Love this! We had the largest crowd ever in Albuquerque! Civic Plaza, where the event was held holds 20,000 ppl, and the estimate is 15.000! It was pretty cold, but no precipitation. Dolores Huerta, 95, was in town for the annual celebration in remembrance of Caesar Chavez. She came to the rally and spoke. We learned some lessons as organizers, and we look forward to continuing these protests.
We had disrupters, but our safety team was able to move them along.We had no confrontations of significance, it was non-violent. Every speaker was told to make an ask for action at the end of their speech. Overall, really a great day.
Thanks to everyone across the country and around the world. HANDS OFF!
I would have been unable to attend anything in-person due to a scheduling conflict, but there was little promotion of events here locally. It is good that things appear to be approaching a critical mass for organizing the oppositional forces.
Last night I was talking with a retired friend in Sacramento. He attended a big rally at the capitol grounds there – he estimated there were a few thousand folks and that it was peaceful. I asked about counter-protesters, and he said he saw just one dude on a trump flag, and that a trooper or police officer appeared to have been assigned to keep an eye on him. My friend also commented on how hard he is finding it to volunteer for helping out – through some type of clearinghouse (maybe 50501) he had reached out to a number of local organizations, but only heard back from one.
In Anoka County, MN, on a fair weather day, hundreds turned out. Winner protest statement, a woman had her dog’s sweater saying, “Dogs not DOGE,” Not for passerby notice, but solidarity building.
It has to be a growing thing, to get politician attention and movement, even in bad weather. Next protest, encourage others to add numbers, to grow it.
The most telling thing to me, it was on Main Streat, Anoka, and the horn tooting in support was real and encouraging.
If it grows as 2026 elections approach, rats will abandon the sinking thing.
How bout this link to hands off. It’s how I found out about our local event yesterday. https://handsoff2025.com/?SQF_SOURCE=indivisible
Saw some of the American news and they showed a number of the demonstrations! It was good to see so many people show up for so many demonstrations. Read about protestors going to Homan’s home and protesting, peacefully. ICE had sent a Mom and her 3 children to detention and the town wasn’t happy about that. Nothing like bringing an issue “home” to politicians, as long as they stay off the property and remain peaceful.
Canadians are now being advised to take only “burner” phones and leave all other electronics at home, if they are going to the U.S.A.
Marisa Kabas covered this story in depth on her blog “The Handbasket.”
It’s a tiny town, with one school for all the kids, K-12. The principal has been outspoken despite a lot of trepidation:
https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/sackets-harbor-tom-homan-jaime-cook
Yes, and:
https://bsky.app/profile/marisakabas.bsky.social/post/3lm6gbvlntk2e
April 6, 2025 at 5:47 PM
Corporatism – it’s not just for the NYT!
Today’s “Meet the Press” made no mention of these protests in the first half hour of the show. Adam Schiff was a guest and mentioned it; Welker let it pass. Finally, in the last five minutes, Welker showed photos from several cities and suggested the rallies were all about Elon Musk. She quickly moved on to mentioning that Obama “came off the sidelines” and never remarked on the rallies again.
It’s absolutely right that this has to be a starting point for local organizing. Media attention is almost nonexistent, especially given the size of the events, and will not create any leverage with lawmakers.
I couldn’t go to the protests yesterday because I had other obligations. But I was absolutely gobsmacked while driving to that obligation to go past a protest in Bothell, WA. Bothell is a middle ring upper-middle-class suburb of Seattle. This is an area that was competitive for the GOP before MAGA took over. They don’t do protests (in general). If people want to protest, they go to the big one in Seattle.
Bothell Hands Off turned out people 3-5 deep over 3 long blocks, both sides of the road. And that’s with at least half a dozen protests in Seattle and suburbs competing for attendees.
Had an amazing turnout in Wenatchee WA (very red). Heartening to see younger people amongst the q-tips. Best sign “We Shall Overcomb”.
Doesn’t sound like there was a shortage of either!
Huzzah for Bothell!
Quite a turnout in nearby Edmonds. I and several others I spoke to were just as glad to not schlep all the way to Seattle Center for “The Big One”. No shade to those who did, I’m sure it was great and it looked well attended.
That one was also covered by local TV news, though the two stories I saw were a bit both-sidesy and weak sauce with the framing. I had to laugh at the local RNC guy they interviewed saying “Yeah…well…the fraud and waste are real…” as if that were all these protests are about. WEAK! (Even if that were all we were protesting it would be weak, because sending in ignorant baby tech-bros with chainsaws is NOT how you effectively deal with waste/fraud/abuse.)
I was happy with how many people showed up in Lincoln Nebraska and how many signs and honks we got as many people drove by. It was hopeful which is all we have right about now.
SFGate had a story about the protests – they’re doing better than NYT, it appears.
There were none in the San Fernando Valley. Apparently everyone is too rich, too poor, or too busy.
Participated in NYC. Zero counter protesters, although one old crank passerby felt he had to offer some words. Cold and drippy, but what a huge number of people. Volunteers did a tremendous job of handling cross-town traffic, and the drivers showed a lot of support and very little frustration. So many signs with every opposition wrinkle you could think of. Lotta smiles, lotta good feelings, lotta resolve. Lotta union groups. A couple dozen cops who expressed surprise at the crowd and had very little to do. Tourists seemed completely unsurprised and supportive. ✊
My first protest of many to come.
At the SF Civic Center HandsOff! event, among 5-10K others, I saw a guy all dressed up as UncleSam carrying a sign “HandsOff Our Constitution.” It was heartening.
While it really seems like conservative lawyers and lawmakers are having their cake and eating it too these days, the success of yesterday’s peaceful protests should raise some eyebrows in their war rooms.
Here’s to hoping the pulse of our nation’s body politic speeds up enough to save our democracy.
Marcy thanks for keeping the paddles-charged in case we all need a jump!
I went to one of the smaller protests here in Portland, Oregon. I say smaller, but there were still an impressive number of people there, especially when you consider that this one took place in far southeast Portland. This was in an area not hospitable to large groups of people where box stores, highway on-ramps, busy and wide throughways dominate. I was especially pleased to
see what a wide array of people were gathered. Very old, quite young, LGBTQ, lots of faces of color- basically all my neighbors. My pals went to the main large protest downtown and said it was huge and emotionally inspiring. Counter protesting was almost 0.
The main protest on the Portland OR waterfront was thousands of people. I’m a bad estimator, but we covered two bridges wall to wall and the streets leading up to them. The route was an hour’s slow march but it was 2-3 hours from the first person starting to the last person ending. 100% peaceful, with cops and volunteers managing traffic. No counter-protestors AFAIK. Many people waiting in their cars were enthusiastic in support. I’ll be there next time, and next time, and next time.
the photos from that main protest that began circulating online were just stunning, and so inspiring.
First time poster to chime in that the protest in downtown Portland was huge. I’ve seen no firm estimates as yet, other than “thousands,” but to us and the folks we went with, it seemed many thousands. I’ve seen some estimates from attendees posting elsewhere of 12K and 15K, as well as even higher numbers.
We arrived shortly after the noon start time, and the crowd was so large that we couldn’t get anywhere near the podium or hear any speeches. People chatted with old friends they encountered and circulated to take pics of the most clever signs.
The local TV station KGW did great coverage with video that really does illustrate the vibe and the mix of people in the downtown Portland crowd:
https://www.kgw.com/video/news/local/protests/thousands-gather-at-portland-waterfront-as-part-of-hands-off-protests-against-trump-administration/283-34f54045-d105-4800-ac18-1b2e072aff0a
I’m saving our signs for the next one.
[Thanks for updating your username to meet the 8-letter minimum. Please be sure to use the same username and email address each time you comment so that community members get to know you. /~Rayne]
Little old Tigard, OR (suburb of Portland, OR) turned out in its downtown–maybe a thousand people in a town of 54k, in the shadow of the big march in downtown Portland and another half-dozen protests in the metro PDX area.
People of all ages, including old(er than me) folks with walkers and on scooters making their way. Very few hecklers. Tesla takedown protests will continue weekly in a couple Portland-area locations. It was a great day.
Seattle had lovely weather and a huge turnout at Seattle Center. Alas the sound system wasn’t very good and we couldn’t hear any of the speeches and I realized we were missing music, no stirring protest music to get people moving. But no problem, it was moving to see the size of the crowd.
I don’t know your rules for URLs well enough so I won’t try but MikeCaulfield on Bluesky posted a link to Rick Steves the travel guy speaking at the Edmonds Washington rally and it is really really good. It’s on YouTube search on Hands Off Edmonds Washington.
The weather was stunning in Edmonds, too.
Rick Steves was great–I think my favorite was as we all marched down to the ferry dock and he led “Show me what Democracy Looks Like!” with significant, silly, “dad energy” that I really appreciated.
He hit one pretty false note, though. He doesn’t understand what we mean when we criticize Legacy Media. (As most here know, it has nothing to do with moving everyone to social media). So I felt compelled to send a quick email this morning explaining:
“However, there was one false note in your talk that I’d ask you to reconsider, if I may.
“Legacy media” isn’t a right-wing framing. They usually say something like “Fake News!” or “Failing [publication]”
There is significant and growing frustration from those of us who turned out on Saturday, those who are most likely to continue to turn out and speak up. We call it Legacy Media for a reason: their constant both-siderism and their sanewashing of Donald Trump’s…well, let’s call it nonsense.
Here are images from the top 10 US newspapers from Sunday.
millions-of-americans-disappeared-thanks-to-us-media
https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/04/07/millions-of-americans-disappeared-thanks-to-us-media/
When NYT and WaPo can’t be bothered with anything but a tiny photo and blurb below the fold, this is a problem! This DISTORTS the lived experience of millions of Americans fighting for our democracy.
THIS is Legacy Media, and it’s doing real damage.
They are NOT Show[ING] What Democracy Looks Like!”
Yes I cringed and sighed at his Legacy Media bit, too. Otherwise he kept the crowd engaged and got right to the point about how the CDC and EPA and all that belong to us and how the oligarchs are stealing not just SS and data but everything.
My husband and I participated in the Hands Off protest in Ann Arbor, Michigan. There were several protests in this small city, and we were at the main one on Washtenaw Avenue. It was jammed full of protesters, as far as the eye could see in front of us and behind us. A massive turnout. This is remarkable given that it was competing with the ever-popular annual Hash Bash (54th anniversary!). Protest or smoke dope at the university diag? Your choice! Thousands appeared to choose to protest.
Nancy,
I was a senior at Southfield High when I attended the first Hash Bash in 1972 and enrolled at UMich that fall. We attended the Westside Hands Off at Maple and Jackson where all 4 corners of that busy intersection were packed. I would guess about 1,200 attendees
Great spirit and solidarity there and constant honking approval
There was one gentleman there with a tiny maga sign who was silent and everyone treated him respectfully.
Boston’s protest spread from the Parkman Bandstand on the Common all the way to City Hall, despite the chilly drizzle of April which we call Spring. Speakers included Mayor Wu, Rep Ayanna Pressly, Sen. Ed Markey, Lt. Governor Kim Driscoll and head of the AFL-CIO, Chrissy Lynch. Also, The Drokick Murphys. One sign, playing off the colors of Dunkin’Donuts, was “America runs on Immigrants.” Unions and churches help lead the demonstration. The crowd was estimated at 25,000.
I didn’t attend a protest, but the best picture of the many great ones I saw,
came from Boston via Ed Walker’s feed at Bluesky:
https://bsky.app/profile/artologica.net/post/3lm3otpvnec2y
April 5, 2025 at 3:42 PM
Make Way for the Ducklings!
It was the handiwork of a 7 year old girl.
Who had the 25,000 estimate? Just curious, because the local NBC affiliate posted 100,000+ last night.
It was one of our two local NPR stations, WGBH. I went back to check and found that that 25,000 number was the number expected by organizers. It’s not hard to see that was a far lower number than turnout.
My wife’s snowbird parents, in their mid to late 70s, drove 15 miles to attend a protest near Clearwater, Florida. While MIL had attended political protests in the 1960s and early 1970, FIL had never previously attended a protest. The fact that the protesters in general seem to trend older is interesting.
Glad to hear there was a good-sized protest in the Clearwater area – my mother, who lives there (but in her 90s and too frail for marches), always complains about all the ignorant magats in the area.
I had a work obligation and couldn’t attend our event in New Haven, but my partner did, and it was very well attended – filled the entire Green. Local paper (relatively conservative) said hundreds but it sounds like at least a thousand.
She too commented on the relatively elderly nature of the crowd. Not sure if it’s that younger Americans are thoroughly disengaged, feel helpless, and/or just don’t have a history of engaging in protests. Anyway, I’m looking forward to being free for the next one – and the next.
The elders are pissed off. We thought we had secured voting rights, civil rights, women’s rights and LGTBQ rights for our kids and grands. Now we have to do it all over again.
SS is also a massive motivator, and retirement accounts.
Ravenclaw, I was at the Green Saturday. The crowd struck me, too, as “older” (I should talk) when I first got there before noon, but once we started marching we saw many more young folks. In fact, by the time we made it back to the Green, almost everyone around us looked Yale (student) age.
Marcy: It’s SO wonderful that you and Christy protested together in Paris! :-)
[And that’s an absolutely gorgeous necklace!]
Yes–I noticed the necklace too. Wanted it instantly.
We had beautiful weather and a wonderful turnout at the California State Capitol in Sacramento yesterday.
It was truly exhilarating to be surrounded by so many like-minded people. Lots of doggies, too —and even a GOAT!
I have not seen this mentioned anywhere but is the name “Hands Off!” a reference to the orange grabber rapist? That was the first thing I thought when I saw the name.
I had concerns of people getting run over by a very fine person in a Swasticar so I opted out. I’m done thinking “MAGAs are crazy but they’re not THAT crazy.”
Check out the signs!
https://www.meidasplus.com/p/top-15-signs-at-hands-off-protests
Matt, “hands off” was the theme. The organizers offered some prompts: hands off our data, hands off our veterans, hands off science, hands off medicaid, hands off our national parks, etc. I saw so many great signs.
A very large demonstration in Oakland, as well as others in SF and Berkeley. No police in sight while I was there, even when folks took off walking down the middle of our main street, Broadway. Beautiful weather, and an inspiring crowd with every kind of people, carrying lots of creative homemade signs. (Among many I liked: “We shall overcomb!”)
Chicago was glorious!
Perhaps close to 110,000 strong, over the course of the speeches, and marching — for about three hours, despite windy gray 45 degree weather!
It was boisterous, and with a deep infusion of union labor… was loud but never outside of completely peaceable.
Here are two YouTube snippets, each under a minute — from my own meager editing skills:
[The code could not swallow a fully embedded YouTube screen, I guess — see next post.]
Here are those links:
https://youtu.be/pK2U1IGkc8E?feature=shared
and…
https://youtu.be/nJf4Ha3bN14?feature=shared
Namaste, one and all!
About 25,000 in Los Angeles. No police presence
Went to two events in Silicon Valley: noon to 1:30 in Redwood city and 1:30 to 3:00 at the Tesla dealership in Palo Alto. Saw a report that Redwood City may have had 1,000 people, but it looked more like 2,000 to me. Palo Alto was a bit smaller, but at least 1,000 to 1,500. Many were about my vintage, meaning they remember the 60’s protest era. Lots of car-honking support from heavy traffic on El Camino Real at both events.
Tiny little Brevard NC had a couple hundred jam-packed outside the courthouse, and lots of drive-by honk-support!
I didn’t attend any of the events, but my sister went to one of the smaller gatherings in the Pico-Robertson area of L.A. Here’s a photo from there:
https://truby.com/xzq/HandsOff.png
Just looked at the print LA Times. It’s not on the front page.
Actually it is on the front page:
https://truby.com/xzq/LAT.png
A little tiny blurb in the far lower right corner. Apparently they’ve consigned “front-page coverage” of these events to the California section. Maybe Patrick Soon-Shiong consulted his AI “bias meter” and it told him to do this…?
This is why SFGate covers L.A. now.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/hands-off-protests-against-trump-and-musk-are-20260074.php
National Park Service reported an “official” count of 5.2 million participants nationwide on BlueSky a few hours ago. Even if they are off by, say, a MILLION, that’s pretty darned impressive.
One little NPR article about “thousands” in my newsfeed today.
Next one is April 19. Let’s keep this train rolling.
I was hoping to see rolling demonstrations! Big and small, let’s keep this train on track.
Sean–
That is almost certainly false. NPS by policy no longer gives crowd estimates even for the National Mall, which is a NPS Unit (actually several units), and hasn’t for years. In 2017 they only released their photographs from the top of the Washington Monument, they provided no numerical estimates. Also, currently NPS leadership is overwhelmed trying to keep parks open per Secretary Burgum’s order, while being 3-4 months behind schedule in hiring and training seasonal staff, and with virtually no ability to make purchases under $10K for things from toilet paper to hardware to repair doors and toilets due to the purchasing card freeze. They also appear to have no idea what DOI & DOGE have decided for cuts, RIFs, and reorganization.
altNPS did release a series of estimated crowd sizes summed over the protests across the United States on their BlueSky. altNPS is by definition not NPS. Some of its members are former or current NPS employees; those still working for NPS are very careful to separate their NPS time, effort, and identity from their altNPS identity and work. They care about the country as well as about the parks, and want to work for both. I would give very good odds that there is substantial overlap in altNPS membership and membership in coalitions that organized and attempted to document crowd size for the Hands Off protests yesterday.
That all said, even the San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper and the local ABC & CBS TV affiliates estimated Hands Off San Diego as having 12000 protestors at the downtown Civic Center, and hundreds more at each of several other protests across the county. Those numbers were from the police and sheriff departments, but the newspaper sent out a photographer (or paid a freelancer). The stories were framed as local news, with a single sentence that the San Diego protests were part of 1200 such protests nation-wide.
The numbers are from the ALT Nat Park Service fb page, so not official. They do explain how they arrived at the estimate
https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1073204141516444&id=100064806036542
OK, neither the San Diego U-T nor the police & especially sheriff have gone “soft” or lost their historic Republican bias. The nonprofit Times of San Diego provides both the police estimate of 12K, but also their estimate of 16K based on a spot count of 200 marchers per minute times 80 minutes it took the march to pass a spot.
https://timesofsandiego.com/politics/2025/04/05/hands-off-marchers-flood-downtown-san-diego-streets-say-theyve-had-enough-with-trump/
Lesson learned that it is easier to get crowd counts if there is a march component so flow past a point. Also, for organizers, using a flow past a point count is a good way to get solid, defensible numbers to provide to news organizations.
Eschscholzia –
Sorry – perhaps you missed the quotation marks around official?
Or maybe you didn’t catch my reference to plus/minus a million?
Heck, you might even be surprised to learn it takes like 5 seconds to search “National Park Service” on BlueSky and find that only 2 accounts show up – Alt National Park Service and Zendikar National Park Service.
I guess I just figured folks here could work out to whom – and even to where – I was referring well enough.
Cheers!
50501 Movement is also estimating 5.2 million – as per Instagram post, “On April 5, 5.2 million people across the country stood up to say HANDS OFF our democracy” — but also not stating the source or method for arriving at the estimate.
The weather was terrible in southern New England. That plus some tentativeness expressed by friends who didn’t come out should be overcome in the future. We need to rally our friends and pray to the Sun God(s).
Very informative and in some ways encouraging interview of Gil Duran by Wajahat Ali.
Here: https://thelefthook.substack.com/p/why-musk-and-the-broligarchy-are
Forgive the long copy-and-paste:
“Protests aren’t the only tool in the anti-authoritarian toolkit, but they’re incredibly important. Protests help us see each other; they make it feel safer to refuse to obey the dictator, and make it more possible for us to organize mass non-cooperation.
“It’s an essential step in the process.
“Ending an authoritarian regime requires a level of mass participation that we’ve rarely seen in this country.
“Mass protests are an opportunity for regular people to join the movement, and to demonstrate (literally) to everyone that it’s safe and popular to take part. They help build the movement.
“It’s true that protests alone don’t end authoritarian regimes; that tends to happen through “electoral revolution” (aka winning and enforcing an unfair election) or through mass non-cooperation like a general strike.
“But, protests help the movement get to the scale needed to achieve breakthrough.
“Last point: the goal of protests (and direct action) isn’t to target the dictator, but to shift the public. The way to bring down dictators is through building a movement so large that the regime can’t continue.
“Dictators want people to be afraid. Movements win by making participation feel good.” @maxberger.bsky.social
Excellent stuff. TY.
EW, so great to see you with Christy! If I remember correctly, she stepped back from posting at FDL for health reasons. What a treat to see her appearing to be in the pink at a protest : )
Boston was FANTASTIC! The turnout was hard to describe and the pictures fail to convey how massive it was. This is partly due to the distributed nature of the protests. There was a large local protest that we passed en route to Boston from one of the inner suburbs. Many of the surrounding towns had local protests in addition to the large one in Boston. The bus was full, the subway was packed, the protest itself had a larger turnout than expected and the weather was not ideal. I can only imagine how much larger it would have been with better weather.
I’ve seen a lot of photos and commentary online, but what I haven’t seen is mention of the Boston protesters leaving their signs at the end of the day along the rock wall and wrought iron fencing at the Granary Burial Ground where Paul Revere and Sam Adams are buried. It was surprisingly moving to see. Whether as a tribute or an offering, it conveyed a sense that it is our turn to pick up their mantle to defend ourselves against tyranny.
As one of my friends pointed out at the end of the protest, the list of indictments against King George in the Declaration of Independence apply to a surprising degree already to Trump.
It’s our turn to defend our country and I was delighted to be a part of it.
I also want to add that April 19th is the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord. There are protests planned, at least locally, for that date and I cannot wait…
History is inescapable in our little corner of the country, but in the current crisis it is coming alive in a way that is hard to describe. You can feel it here. I suspect as Mother Jones reported this morning, you can feel it everywhere.
One of the signs in the Meidas Touch link posted above is :
“One if by land / Two if by sea/ WTF, Hegseth / Just texted me.”
Love it!
There were a bunch of locally themed signs, along with people in costumes including tricorner hats : ) It was so fun : )
It was the biggest protest crowd I’ve ever seen on the Common. I walked with the group from the Common to City Hall but skipped the speeches.
I found it odd that BBC-America TV news did not seem to mention the USAmerican protests and covered the Turkish housing protests instead. Local TV said “tens of thousands,” one estimate I heard on the ground was 50,000 but I don’t know how real that was.
Now, how do we use this interest as a platform for more and more effective efforts agains the Trmpist Putsch?
I went with a couple of friends to one of the smaller events in L.A. This one in Culver City was peaceful, several hundred people at the least and more arriving as I left. Both sides of the busy street were filled with protestors with homemade signs. No counter protestors at all, not even anyone driving by. Most of those driving by were honking in support. Mostly older crowd but a scattering of younger folk.
About 200 people showed up in Oakhurst, which is a small place. First protest I had attended since the Iraq war, when I lived in Oakland and went to the Civic Center in SF. More supporters than opposition. Highlight: The lady in front of me yelling “I’ll pray for you” to an SUV driver who flipped us off.
My daughter and third-grader grandson joined a crowd of 5,000 in Spokane. The Sunday paper reported the size as reported by police estimate at 5,000 and called it the biggest ever protest in Spokane. Also reported hundreds in neighboring Couer d’Alene Idaho and Sandpoint Idaho. There was a lowkey police presence here and in Couer d’Alene.
Only reaction was from trumper boys driving by in pickup trucks.
I was 1 of 400-500 in Sandpoint,ID. That’s impressive for both the town’s population and surrounding redness. Most passing cars were supportive, too. What I didn’t see was one Canadian license plate, where approximately 10 per cent would have been normal prior to Trump’s war on Canada.
Thanks for that update, The Spokane paper just had the following: Hundreds protesting Trump also lined First Avenue in downtown Sandpoint. I visited Sandpoint last July, so have an idea about the size of downtown. Good showing!
Considering all of the retired LEOs and neo-n*zis in and around Sandpoint, this is a gratifying report.
I didn’t attend, but this is what it looked like here:
“ ‘Hands Off’ protests denouncing Trump and Musk take place in Jacksonville, St. Augustine”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6rOVYNpzOo
The last protests I attended were at Kent State in May 1970. So, I decided to look for what is happening there now. One of the things I saw was somebody carrying an F-ELON sign. LOL.
Beautiful day in the park. Lots of diversity. I chatted with a man holding a “I sold my Tesla” sign. I didn’t manage to get there with a sign, but it would have said “Tariffs are taxes on us.” But someone else’s sign said that for me. I saw many veterans with signs. A great experience with wonderful people. I’ll be at the next protest.
I went with my daughter to the rally at the Daley Center in downtown Chicago. The plaza was full and the streets on all three sides were too. We found a place to lean against a wall, and chatted with people around us. Apparently there were speeches, but the sound system was totally inadequate.
Maybe next time we can use Grant Park, and get a rock concert sound system.
There were a number of pro-science signs. My favorite:
Got Polio?
Me neither.
Thanks, vaccine.
We went to Milwaukee to visit our daughter so we joined the thousands at the Federal building. Lots of great signs. I am partial to the giant piece of cheese crushing a Tesla truck.
I saw that the other day – it was posted at Slacktivist.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/302c4e1afd176f817c61b54c9bcad936895b72353ae03d3da30331265b1a7bec.jpg?w=800&h=979
That was one of my favorites, too!
Huge crowds at the State Capitol in St. Paul Minnesota! The state highway patrol said 25,000 but I think it was double that, comparing it to the Women’s March in 2017 when they said there was 50,000. In any case, people were fired up and mad as hell at all the things Trump and Musk are taking away from Americans. My favorite banner was the one that showed the silhouette of the Parisians on the ramparts in Les Miserables against the U.S. Capitol building and the quote, “Do You Hear the People Sing?”
https://www.redbubble.com/i/poster/Les-Miserables-Do-You-Hear-The-People-Sing-by-gobroadway/32626588.LVTDI
We attended the rally in Oakland, and even though turnout was decent (several thousand) it felt kind of underwhelming. It was poorly organized with speakers few could see (in a recessed amphitheater), bad PA system; lots of people just milling about. Nowhere near the energy and turnout of the 2017 pink hat march.
But it was entirely peaceful and there no counter-protestors, so it turns out we were probably over-prepared by going with zero digital footprint.
There were some great signs, however.
(Waves to Christy!)
I am wondering how important speakers are. My protest didn’t have speakers. I didn’t miss them. in retrospect, I found it most worthwhile to talk to folks and read signs surrounding me. Very decentralized for a fairly large gathering. Trying to get us all to a central spot for a photograph for crowd size was like herding cats. But it all worked.
We just showed up, not knowing what to expect really. Oakland has a special election to replace the recalled mayor, so there were a lot of candidates (including Barbara Lee) taking the opportunity to make their pitches within the broader context.
Family and I attended the protest in Dover, DE, with several hundred others – a good turnout for the area. Everyone who drove past as we marched around downtown was supportive. It would have been fun to go to a larger one in Philly or DC but I think the dispersed protests are very valuable, and this low-key local event was much more manageable for my young twins, Superman and Captain America.
I agree. The number of protest sites is just as important as the numbers attending each. There were separate rallies in several suburbs of Chicago, each drawing hundreds if not thousands of people. That means a much wider number of people witnessed the concerns of our millions.
The only way these protests gets widespread coverage in the MSM is if folks show up wearing masks, camo outfits & carrying guns. It’s perfectly legal here in Texas. It’s what the other side does, it seems to make headlines and it doesn’t require a bunch of people either. That said, I was happy with the turnout in San Antonio….but it didn’t even make the local evening news…The Final Four Basketball Tournament going on here may have had something to do with it though.
Trump wins another golf championship!
At least that’s what he told reporters. Laura Loomer says he tied with another player.
Hands off our 401ks!
$11 TRILLION lost since Inauguration Day.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/u-s-stocks-poised-for-biggest-two-day-wipeout-in-history-as-marketloses-9-6-trillion-since-inauguration-day-430919f6
$11 TRILLION. What is DOGE up to? Maybe 0.1% of this? Penny wise and pound foolish.
Why isn’t this going viral?
Nice to see you both! Takes me back to the old FDL days. Despite crap weather here in North Texas we had about 600 on our town square. Mind you, it is a college town so we do protests pretty well, so I’m imagining it would’ve been twice that had the weather been better. Lots of honking horns and thumbs up. No counter-protesters and practically no police presence.
Remember: for every one person who attends, there are dozens who are in support!
Late to post this, but thought I would share my experience this past weekend.
Went out to Boston, accompanied by my elderly neighbor and her friend. We boarded a bus that was rented and organized by a group of volunteers, and took it into the city.
The merry tones of a marching band filled the air of the Boston Common, as people streamed in from all sides to pack the entire park as far as the eye could see. People of all ages, colors, and creeds came out to stand together in solidarity. There was a palpable energy in the crowd as tens of thousands of people gathered. Many would remark at how happy they were to see so many like minded folks coming out in support of the cause. There were so many wonderful, funny, and creative protest signs . After some rousing speeches from a few local religious leaders, we marched toward City Hall Plaza.
I hardly saw any counter protesters at all that day. Maybe just two or three, but they weren’t all together and I wasn’t really looking for them. Their numbers were insignificant to our own. Those that dared to try and antagonize the crowd were ignored or had their voices drowned out by the sheer number of us. They would realize they could not bait us and could only watch as a seemingly endless stream of protestors marched down Tremont St and towards City Hall Plaza. This would not be a day they could take from us.
When we arrived at City Hall Plaza we listened to several speakers as well as an acoustic performance by the Drop Kick Murphys. It began to rain part way through the speeches but it didn’t deter the crowd. There were so many people you couldn’t even fit them all on the plaza and we overflowed into the surrounding streets.
The police presence there didn’t feel oppressive. Other opinions and experiences may vary of course but I didn’t see nor have I heard about any arrests or conflicts. They did a great job blocking off the streets for us to march and made me feel like they were there to protect us. I’m sure other places may have had a different vibe, but on this particular Saturday in Boston, their being there made me feel good.
Overall, it was a lovely experience. Despite the media suppression, events like these have a real chance to show people that there is a massive group of people out there willing to stand up for the right thing. It was good to see so many people willing to stand up, get off the couch or away from the keyboard and make their voices heard. I won’t say it makes me any more hopeful for the future, but just seeing everyone come together like this, shows me that at least we’ve got a fighting chance.
Thanks to everyone who came out to protest and a big thanks to the volunteer organizers that helped keep eyes on the event and direct folks to where they needed to be.
Stay safe out there.
Be seeing you.
There were about 6-700 people in the town in California where Mrs. Troutwaxer and I protested, and the response was overwhelmingly positive, with no more than a half-a-dozen counter-protestors, plus 3-4 guys who did burnouts in their hickup trucks. It was somewhere between 1 and 2 percent of the population of the county where we live.
400 or so folks in Danbury Ct. State AG Tong really fired up the crowd and was an impressive speaker. Only disappointment was how white the crowd was. (Danbury has a very sizable Latino population and I kept wondering if they were scared of being seen in public or if the reach-out to that community was not well done, suspect the earlier.)
OT: great to see ole FDL faces.
I rallied in Denver, wearing my “…to a candid world” shirt and bearing my pocket Declaration and Constitution.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16eyAaGdHZ/
OHhhhhh! The picture warms my heart! Marcy and Christy! Add in Paris and the picture could not be more perfect!
We had a bit of our own “march” of sorts. Long before we knew the date of the marches, we were scheduled to host a celebration of a friend becoming a new US citizen! The honoree spoke with eloquence at the timing of current events and becoming a citizen. Lots of determined voices raising challenging views on freedom and liberty. It was in a way, a Hands Off protest.
Protested in Alameda, CA (my home town in the Bay Area). At least 1000 people showed up. Many great signs & met some wonderful people. My signs were Moscow Agents Governing America (one word each row with big sparkly MAGA letters down the side) and RESIST with an inverted US flag as the I and holographic glitter above and below. I had to make them unique! LOL. It was my first ever protest & I’ll be doing it again on the 19th & more in the future, I’m sure. I can’t be silent!