Went to the one in Holland, MI (point of reference: hometown of Betsy DeVos) and it was very well attended and lively. People lined a main thoroughfare in town on both sides for about four blocks and there was a near-constant blast of car horns in support. Some great signs, lots of American flags, pride flags, Ukraine flags, Canadian flags and noise makers.
I wanted to go to the one in Grand Rapids, MI, but I can’t take Hubster to something like that. And I can’t leave him alone (no one available to stay with him, I checked) for the 4 hours or more it would take.
I missed the edit. It’s so far been a good turnout in MI. Lansing was really big.
Boston Common. A small portion of the whole crowd before we marched up to City Hall Plaza.
Marching.
Decent crowd in Nassau County, Long Island, signs and umbrellas in a light drizzle. Filled courthouse lawn (loosely packed enough one could walk through the crowds, dense enough to look like quite a mob from the street or sidewalk). I’m generally not much for “two legs bad, four legs good” but it was reassuring to be among those who feel strongly about the loathsome creature and his minions and toadies.
I just went to the one in Monterey CA. It was quite peaceful, and the passersby seemed very supportive.
However, there were a pair of cops, in uniform, patrolling the edge of the crowd who were very loudly expressing opinions that were very pro trump. One expressed regret that he wasn’t allowed to arrest us all or worse.
I expect that there will be incidents.
The size of the crowd at the rally in San Luis Obispo rivaled the attendance of the downtown Farmers Market which is 5,000 on a slow Thursday night. The demographic heavily skewed white people near or at retirement age. It reminded me of the makeup of the Tea Party rallies 15 years ago. I’m not sure if that is good or bad. Almost zero young adults. I hope Cal Poly had their own event. Otherwise, we’re fucked.
My wife and I went to the one at the state capitol in Topeka today. It was overcast and about 40° with a cold cold wind blowing out of the north. I suck at estimating crowd size, but I’d guess about 3000 or so. We stayed for about an hour then left because it was too damn cold.
A friend went to the one in San Antonio today. She said there were probably 600-ish people there. Very friendly and congenial. No MAGAts, which will probably surprise some readers who think Texas is wall-to-wall red.
Just got back (20 minutes ago) from our local event here in the Springs, the turnout was far greater than I expected, considering that despite yesterdays weather reports, it was 32F the whole time, light wind, and humid (it snowed earlier and there were individual flakes drifting the whole time).
The organizer indicated there were about 4k people there, but I suspect it was less, just spread out a lot due to the lack of space at the venue, making it look like more. Still, there were a LOT of people for an area as conservative as Colorado Springs, and a wide grouping of POC (seriously White Bread here), LGBQT+ (which probably represented the majority of the young people), and older folks (mostly worried about VA and Medicare).
That was one weakness I noted, that there were widely different levels of enthusiasm for the 8 or so speakers, depending on what fraction of the crowd it felt they were speaking to, but overall I felt it was very successful. The local counter-protestors were very few and ignorable (perhaps they didn’t want to bother considering the temps!) as long as I ignored the folks who circled the couple of blocks in their Cybertruck (1) and 3-4 pickups with giant Trump/Flags which were either boo’d, flipped off, or ignored.
Gift link
Mass Protests Across the Country Show Resistance to Trump
Demonstrators packed the streets in several cities to bemoan what they considered a lack of strong opposition to the president and his policies.
Organizers said approx 600,000 had signed up to attend. But of course, you could just show up. Not a real long article, but the pictures are quite heartening.
Now leaving Carson City,NV where we heard the crowd estimated at 7,000. Which would be like a million in NYC.
It was freakin’ AWESOME. Sign-waving crowds lining the street on the main drag in front of the capitol, and cars driving up and down waving and honking. Very noisy, very fun. Lots of clever signs.
There were 2 guys with a Trump flag, ignored. I saw 2 cars with middle fingers, vs 100’s cheering and waving.
Fantastic!
Here are some more great pictures.
In photos: “Hands Off!” protesters rally against Trump across the U.S.
https://www.axios.com/2025/04/05/hands-off-protest-movement-trump-musk
Big turn out in super leftie Santa Barbara. A few thousand people and way over represented by white Boomers. It was a few speakers at a plaza downtown and then a one mike march to the beach. There were a few cops along the route to keep the peace. One of the speakers was Bowser from Sha Na Na who is some kind of Social Security advocate now. He said, “I love the music of the 50s but I don’t want to go back there”
I cut out at the end of the march but the beach rally is still going on. They are going to stand there and spell something and have a drone take a picture.
The speaker at the end said not to engage with magas. They have free speech rights too. I didn’t see any though. They are relatively few here.
This kind of thing is way out of my comfort zone but I’m glad I went
Easily 250 or 300 people outside of our Congressman’s office in Tupelo, MS of all places! And most of the people who drove by seemed to be supportive, which was a pleasant surprise.
I wasn’t able to attend a rally due to both health and budget issues, but I’m very grateful to those who did attend! And accounts so far indicate both large numbers and few (if any) incidents.
New Yorker writer Philip Gourevitch posted on Bluesky:
Interesting that the cops didn’t expect much turnout.
As several have mentioned, reports from many places are that attendees were overwhelmingly white and older. Understandable perhaps in view of anxieties over Social Security and Medicaid.
But:
Lots of creativity all over the nation with the signage:
(It reads: NOT USUALLY A SIGN GUY BUT JEEZ)
I was at the Washington Monument rally today in DC. It was so big you couldn’t see how big, that’s how big it was. It was the most peaceful protest I’ve been to, and I’ve been to a lot. Everybody was relaxed and happy. Relieved, I expect, to see so many others like them.
One sign I could directly related to:
“It’s so bad, even the introverts have turned out!”
I didn’t feel like going into Boston proper today, especially as it’s 40 and raining (wasn’t raining this morning, but it was in the forecast to start at some point). So I went to a suburban protest. No marching, no chanting, but we all gathered at an intersection and held signs and cheered when someone honked positively at us (some sarcastic honking with "fuck you"s happened too). A couple hundred people on all four corners. Very chill. And also very … older … demographically speaking. My teen was one of like 2 teens and I saw very few people under 50, 55. Maybe it was people who wanted to drive directly to a protest site rather than schlep into town via trains and/or buses.
Looks like things went well in our neck of the woods – 28 second video within the article:
I wasn’t sure I would go to mine, but the day was so beautiful, I had to. Just wanted to add another warm body to the crowd.
I’m terrible at estimating crowd sizes, but I’d say around 2,000. Mellow, mellow, mellow. Lots of honks of support, a couple of jerks but they weren’t persistent.
The majority were oldsters, but we had a respectable number of younger college age folks, too.
I left about a half hour early and probably didn’t miss too much.
Wish I’d thought to grab my camera. Next time!