Mass Protests Across the Country Show Resistance to Trump

They came out in defense of national parks and small businesses, public education and health care for veterans, abortion rights and fair elections. They were against tariffs and oligarchs, dark money and fascism, the deportation of legal immigrants and the Department of Government Efficiency.

Demonstrators had no shortage of causes as they gathered in towns and cities across the country Saturday to protest President Donald Trump’s agenda. Rallies were planned in all 50 states, and images posted on social media showed crowds in places like St. Augustine, Florida; Franklin, North Carolina; and rainy Frankfort, Kentucky.

While crowd sizes are difficult to estimate, organizers said that more than 600,000 people had signed up to participate. On Fifth Avenue in New York, the protest stretched for nearly 20 blocks. In Chicago, several thousand people flooded Daley Plaza and adjacent streets, while in the nation’s capital tens of thousands surrounded the Washington Monument. In Atlanta, police estimated the crowd marching to the gold-domed statehouse at over 20,000.

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The “Hands Off!” rallies were organized by Indivisible, MoveOn and several other groups that led protests about abortion rights, gun violence and racial justice during the first Trump administration. Organizers said they hoped to shift the emphasis to pocketbook issues like health care and Social Security, with the message that Trump is making life harder for the average American.

In Chicago, Glynn Tipton, a 45-year-old pharmaceutical professional, said he was attending to make friends feel safer.

“I’m a generic white guy, so they aren’t coming for me,” he said. “There’s a lot of my friends who are Jewish, trans, in the military or sick, and they’re not doing OK. It’s OK for me to stand out here, so I should for the ones who are afraid.”

Karen Fitzgerald, a 71-year-old retired teacher from Naperville, Illinois, said she was most concerned about veterans and the environment.

“I’m disgusted and sad that we have to do this,” she said. “A country that doesn’t take care of its veterans is not a place to be proud of.”

Ian Mains, a cybersecurity consultant and former Army warrant officer from Aurora, Colorado, said he was protesting for the first time. He said he had never noticed migrants causing trouble in his community, but he decried that “they’re being demonized right now.”

He added that the deportation of migrants to El Salvador — “without any accountability whatsoever, it makes me wanna puke.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.