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.
“When those in power try to silence us, we rise louder,” the coalition declared, singling out Republican President Donald Trump and his handler, chainsaw-wielding multibillionaire Elon Musk, in particular, and “the Republican assault on our freedoms and our communities” in general.
“They’re taking everything they can get their hands on—our health care, our data, our jobs, our services—and daring the world to stop them. This is a crisis, and the time to act is now,” the organizers from Hands off! warned.
“This mass mobilization day is our message to the world that we do not consent to the destruction of our government and our economy for the benefit of Trump and his billionaire allies. Alongside Americans across the country and the world, we are marching, rallying, and protesting to demand a stop the chaos and build an opposition movement against the looting of our country.”
Building the resistance
The grass-roots organizers of the events are building the resistance and pushing Democratic Party leadership to say they have to build beyond what the Democratic Party is doing, speakers at the Progressive Democrats of America meeting on March 30 said.
PDA chief Alan Minsky, in the organization’s weekly zoom call to more than 450 activists, said, “We need a progressive force inside the Democratic Party” to take it over and take control from the D.C.-based corporate Democrats, their campaign consultants and their lobbyists.
Minsky declared that “if we’re going to defeat Trump and Trumpism, we have to have a vision for the future” like Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind-Vt., has been preaching on the stump, “and articulate it” in terms and discussing programs people can understand” such as the Trump-Republican-Musk threats to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Progressive Democrats participant Frances Mothwalla, who sought a U.S. House seat in California, but lost in the state’s all-party “jungle primary,” reminded listeners that they’re fighting interconnected oppressions, not just by Musk, Trump and the oligarchy, but from racism, capitalism and misogyny. “It is imperative that we carry all the issues with us. They’re intersectional,” Mothwalla said.
In some places more than others organized labor is throwing its weight behind the mass events. The Chicago Federation of Labor, for example, is a cosponsor of the Daley Center rally and event.
“We need everyone who cares about our city, our nation, and our planet to make their voices heard,” organizers of the downtown Chicago rally, at the Daley Plaza starting at noon, declare. “Join us and let’s show Trump and Musk that we will not sit by as they attack everything we hold dear. It’s time to say HANDS OFF!
“Hands off Medicaid! Hands off Social Security! Hands off Our Bodies! Hands Off Our Public Lands! Hands Off Unions! Hands Off Immigrants! Hands Off Trans and LGBTQ+ Rights! Hands Off Clean Energy! Hands Off Our Courts! Hands Off Our Democracy!
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.
Destruction of the Education Department, along with the nation’s public schools, is a favorite right-wing cause and has been for years. The rightists, including white nationalists such as Trump, hate public school students because a majority of them are kids of color. They hate teachers as part of their hate of unions. And they hate that schools teach kids to think rather than accept sanitized pablum in schools.
The events won’t be just in major metro areas. California has 117 events scheduled, the upper Midwest—including Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin—has more than 200, in cities as large as Chicago and Detroit and as small as Ottawa, Ill., site of a Superfund site that now won’t get cleaned up thanks to Musk’s cuts. Washington state has 85 events scheduled, from the megacity of Seattle on down to the small town of Sequim.
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