At noon on Wednesday, protesters wearing keffiyehs and carrying pink and blue transgender pride and rainbow flags gathered at the Massachusetts State House in protest of President Donald Trump’s administration.
Since his inauguration, Trump has signed 54 executive orders, resulting in pauses in foreign aid, bans on transgender people serving in the military and the use of federal funding for gender affirming care, and suspending refugee resettlement in the U.S. Protestors at the State House claimed that these orders went against what they believe to be civil and human rights, going against their individual beliefs of how the government should operate.
The crowd shared many different forms of opposition to Trump, with chants and signs representing a range of issues such as transgender rights, equality, women’s rights, immigration, and LGBTQ+ rights. Signs with phrases like “No one elected Elon,” “Get billionaires out of our government,” “Empathy not apathy,” “Do not be nice to ICE,” and “Black Lives Matter,” dotted the landscape.
At the front of the State House steps, three individuals were dressed in costumes as handmaids, akin to those in” The Handmaid’s Tale,” a dystopian-set novel written by Margaret Atwood that depicts a totalitarian society that oppresses women, acting as a warning about the consequences of controlling women and revoking their rights. Laura Bonetzky-Joseph, one of those dressed as a handmaid, stated that she had grown up in a household with domestic violence, had been sexually assaulted at the age of 15, was raped in her forties, and then survived a marriage that “stole twenty years” of her life.
“What Elon Musk and Donald Trump use is a tactic called DARVO—deny, attack, and reverse ‘victim and offender.’ It’s a tactic we see in family courts against sexual assault victims every day,” she said.
The protest originated from the 50501 movement which sought to bring together citizens across the country to protest Trump on Feb. 5. The protest fell in line with the movement’s objective, with protests occurring in Sacramento, California, Austin, Texas, and other major cities.
At 1 p.m., the group of demonstrators headed South on Beacon Street to march to the John F. Kennedy Federal Building and City Hall. Half an hour later, the demonstrators returned to the State House, coming together on the steps of the State House, in front of the Robert Gould Shaw memorial.
There, attendees of the protest held a small dance circle, chanting “Ain’t no power like the power of the people ‘cause the power of the people don’t stop.”
Multiple vehicles passing by beeped their horns in support, with the crowd cheering them on.
Michael Palmer, a veteran who attended the protest, held a sign stating “Veterans against Trump.”
“I was in Berlin when the wall went down, and everything was supposed to be great after that. Right? But it didn’t happen, and here we are,” he said.
Palmer stated that the only way to protect democracy is to get Trump and his “lackeys” out of office, he stated that he hoped demonstrations like the anti-Trump protest would make people realize that there are a lot of people who are dissatisfied with the current government.
