“Hands Off!” mass rallies scheduled nationwide for April 5

Politics & Elections
1

Just heard about this today.

WASHINGTON—Hundreds of rallies, marches and protests from Alaska to Hawaii to Northern Maine to Southeast Florida—plus four overseas—will bring hundreds of thousands of people into the streets on April 5 to, as organizers put it, “Stop the MAGA Assault on our country and our Constitution.”

The protesters, with many groups including, the Women’s March, Public Citizen, the Progressive Democrats of America, Indivisible and local unions all taking the lead, “are taking to the streets to defend our freedoms, our rights and our future,” organizers declare. A nationwide planning meeting, via Zoom, is scheduled for 8 p.m. Eastern Time on April 1.

Details about that meeting and the planned events are on the websites of those groups.

…

Most of the events will start at noon local time in D.C., Baltimore, Woodlawn, Md.—at Social Security’s headquarters—the Daley Center, Staten Island in New York City, Philadelphia City Hall and at the Washington Monument in D.C., among others, along with events in the New York City suburbs, Buffalo and upstate. There will be three events in Los Angeles, including one at the Los Feliz Library at 11 a.m., and others in its suburbs.

There will also be events in metro Chicago area—Elgin, Arlington Heights and Joliet, and downstate in Springfield, Champaign-Urbana and Ottawa, site of a Superfund site that, as a result of Musk’s cuts, won’t get fully cleaned up.

Some events, will start earlier, such as at 11 a.m. at Bryant Park in Manhattan, where the “Fight for 15 and a union” movement originated more than a decade ago. One of the latest will be at Pershing Square in front of Los Angeles City Hall at 4 p.m. Pacific Time. The overseas events will be in London, Lisbon, Portugal, Merida in the Mexican Yucatan and Lyon, France, so far.

And the events won’t stop on April 5. Minsky said protests are planned when Trump Education Secretary Linda McMahon—a GOP donor who’s been given the assignment to destroy her department—visits San Diego three days later, for example.
…

This could be interesting. One does wonder what, if any, impact it could have on…well…anything. It’s a place to start. Rachel Maddow has been highlighting rallies and protests around the country on her nightly broadcast. It certainly won’t have an effect on the [cough, cough] administration, but maybe it will get the attention of people who did not bother to vote in the last election and cause some movement there. Lots of protests will at least get some media coverage to counter the appearance of Trump/Musk in every other story/headline. Hell, FAUX News may even cover a couple of them.

2

Maybe more detail (?):

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While I encourage people to protest nonviolently, you should expect MAGA counter protests, and when these two groups meet up it won’t be pretty. I also expect the administration to take notice of who is organizing these protests and would expect some kind of retaliation. It could be anything from income tax audits to mass arrests and deportation. Fascist regimes don’t tolerate public protests against them for long.

4

I don’t mean to be a downer, but there were plenty of big peaceful protests in 2017 and they led to almost nothing meaningful. What is going to make this protest impactful in a way that those others weren’t? Or, to put it another way, what about this rally is going to give Trump-Vance-Musk-MAGA any reason to heed it?

5

I would love this, being a hippie and all. But without a car it would take too long to get to Cleveland Oh. If only they’d have something in Mentor.

6

As I see it, there is another audience where there might be some impact.

7

And now all we need is a time machine, and their change of opinion might actually make a difference.

8

A friend, my daughter and I will be going to the rally/march at the Detroit Institute of Arts. I’m trying to come up with wording for my poster board. Any suggestions?

9

If I could stand for longer than fifteen minutes on concrete (I have crummy feet), I’d go to the one in San Jose.

10

Um… we do have elections coming up. Duh. Are you pretending not to understand?

I took a friend (now of blessed memory) to a protest rally a few years back. He was in a wheelchair.

11

Have you checked? There are at least 7 in the mostly-red-district Finger Lakes area; though the closest I know of is further from me than I’d hoped.

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I haven’t, but I will.

13

Is there anything useful in this thread:

14

I signed up. I need to find someone to come to Lake county ( Ohio) to be my transport.

15

We’ll be going to ours in Carson City.

16

Democrats started winning elections in purple-to-red states in 2017 (AL Senate special, VA governorship and House of Delegates) and kept right on winning elections right until January 5, 2021, by which point they’d captured the federal trifecta and several governorships in states where Democrats would ordinarily have no business winning (KS, KY, LA). You can debate how much of that was down to protests vs. other stuff, but protests aren’t always about persuading the current set of elected officials to change their minds. Often, they’re about persuading undecided voters and giving people who are already voting for you the sense of cameraderie and movement-energy that they need to turn into donors, volunteers, and organizers.

I don’t get the narrative that the Resistance in Trump’s first term failed. Measured by electoral results, it was massively successful. It’s when people start to relax and drift away from politics that you lose elections, especially when the other candidate is giving his supporters lots of opportunities to rally and feel like they’re part of a mass movement, and your candidate just is not.

17

My group is planning to set up outside a Tesla dealer. I wonder if we should change our focus, in light of the news of elon’s impending departure from DOGE.

18

What? Is this legit? I hadn’t heard anything.

19

It’s come up a couple of times in the Pit thread, though with less confirmation than ideal, as well as that as a “temporary” gov’t employee, his tenure should be limited to 130 days.

(AGAIN, Pit thread, read at your own risk!)

As for the OP, I learned about the rally thanks to the Polls-Only thread, and my wife and I will be attending. I’m not sure how popular it will be here in very conservative Colorado Springs but it’s worth it.

20

Oh, ok. Well, 130 days + 2 weeks, amirite?