Americans opposed to the early actions of President Donald Trump and his allies, including ally Elon Musk, took to the streets in protest across the country Monday.
Among the demonstrations organized by the 50501 Movement and other activists included a gathering outside of the United States Capitol in Washington, DC.
Rally attendees sang “solidarity forever, our unions make us strong” and held signs that read “immigrants make America great.”
The loosely organized event had an open mic feel as participants were invited to step up and share stories of why they felt compelled to push back in this moment.
Virginia-based Jacqui Olkin, who works at a nonprofit assisting refugees, said she thinks lawmakers has been “alarmingly quiet” in their response to Trump.
“The new administration is making judgments illegally about what money, that’s been congressionally allocated, should actually be spent on what it was budgeted for. That’s illegal, and Congress is being alarmingly quiet about that right now,” said Olkin.
“That scares me and concerns me, and I feel like people need to come out and say that’s wrong and stand up for democracy,” she added.
Though she is a Democratic voter, she expected elected members of Congress regardless of party affiliation to follow the constitution.
“I think I’ve always believed that people in Congress, they take an oath to the Constitution, and so I’ve always believed that they would, in the end, stand up for the Constitution, and the separation of powers and the rule of law. And I haven’t seen anything from the Republicans in Congress that suggests that they are willing to challenge Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who wasn’t even rightly elected,” said Olkin.
More about the protests: 50501 (originally short for “50 protests, 50 states, one day”) is a grassroots movement created to organize against the policies and actions of the second Trump administration, according to the group’s website.
Retired Maryland schoolteacher Yvonne Baicich, a daughter of Holocaust survivors, described this political moment as a horror story.
Baicich came to America at 11 years old because of her family’s belief in democracy and says she’s been fighting to uphold this system of government ever since.
“We’ve had problems, of course, but we were lulled into the idea that somehow the Constitution was going to save us and that a takeover like this was not possible, and here we are,” she told CNN.
