COLUMBUS, Ohio— The return of President Donald Trump has inevitably resulted in the return of anti-Trump protests.
Demonstrators have gathered in Cleveland, Ohio, and across the country over the last eight weeks to protest a variety of real and feared actions taken by Trump and other Republican leaders.
In some cases, protesters took to the streets. In other cases, they’ve targeted the local offices of Republican lawmakers, who they feel aren’t listening to their concerns.
Last month, Ohio’s two U.S. senators, Republicans Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted, received so many calls that their office phone systems failed.
Given our politically polarized times and the number of demonstrations following Trump’s first presidential victory in 2016, the protests were unavoidable.
However, Northeast Ohio anti-Trump organizers and political experts say there are some differences between today’s protests and the rallies eight years ago, including more sophisticated tactics and an increased sense of urgency and desperation among participants.
What are the protests?
Since last January, when Trump was sworn into office, there have been at least a dozen protests of various sizes held around Northeast Ohio.
According to organizers, 1,500 people attended the International Women’s Day march at Market Square Park earlier this month.
Other demonstrations, such as those held outside Republican U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno’s downtown Cleveland office every Wednesday, typically draw a few dozen people.
Attendees at some events, such as the Women’s Day march and a President’s Day protest at West Side Market last month, demonstrated on a variety of topics, including preserving abortion rights and mocking billionaire Elon Musk, who leads Trump’s contentious government efficiency initiative. These protests were held in conjunction with similar demonstrations across the country.
However, other demonstrations were more narrowly focused, such as the nearly 100 people who stood outside Cuyahoga Valley National Park’s visitors center earlier this month to protest the Trump administration’s layoffs of approximately 1,000 National Park Service employees and 3,400 National Forest Service employees.
Ellen Frank, a retired retail executive who volunteers with Mobilize the Vote Northeast Ohio, said the increased emphasis on smaller, locally organized “popup” protests is a significant departure from the protest movement during Trump’s first term.
Many Northeast Ohio protest groups are now coordinating with one another to avoid scheduling competing events on the same day, Frank explained.
“We’re highly aware of burnout — like how many of these can you participate in a week?” Frank said.
Who’s going and why?
According to several Northeast Ohio anti-Trump organizers, turnout has been higher than expected thus far.
“I thought it would fade away, but every week, every day, someone new joins our Facebook page,” said Barb Kaplan, the lead organizer of Crooked River Action, a progressive activist group in Summit County. “It’s been exhausting, frankly, but it’s in a good way.”
Kathy Wray Coleman, the head organizer of the Women’s Day march in Cleveland, said the 1,500 attendees “shocked” her and other organizers, who expected a turnout of about 600 given that they only started planning the march about three weeks ago.
“I think people are upset as hell,” Coleman said, citing a variety of issues that have prompted people to protest, including mass layoffs of federal employees and concerns that Republicans will cut funding to programs such as Medicaid and food stamps.
“What’s so sad is that President Trump seemed to check all the boxes in terms of the issues that we hold dear,” she told reporters.
According to David Niven, a political science professor at the University of Cincinnati and former speechwriter for Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland, many Ohioans who oppose Trump feel a “greater sense of desperation” than after Trump’s 2016 victory.
“There was, at least in (Trump’s) first term, for most folks, a sense that this was kind of unprecedented, and things would get back to get back to normal at some point,” said Niven. “And going through this a second time, and actually going through it in a much bigger, more dramatic scope — you know, it calls into question what normal is anymore.”
According to Niven, participating in a march or protest gives them the sense that they are not alone in their feelings.
Goals
Aside from providing reassurance, the specific goals of the protests differ.
Ellen Frank works with Mobilize the Vote Northeast Ohio to coordinate weekly protests outside Moreno’s Cleveland office.
Frank, a retired retail executive, stated that her group’s protest goals are to raise awareness about various political issues (ranging from Medicaid funding to food bank funding), to persuade Moreno to provide more specifics about his positions on those issues, and to persuade the senator to attend a town hall meeting to discuss those details.
Frank said that once Moreno, a vocal Trump supporter, fleshes out his views on those issues, Mobilize the Vote can begin urging and pressuring him to change positions with which they disagree.
“We are like little terriers. We’re in it for the long haul because we know we can’t just swoop in, fly by night, and effect change in two months,” Frank said. “We will keep pounding on this with him until he starts changing some of his mindset.”
In an email, Moreno spokeswoman Reagan McCarthy stated that the senator and other Senate Republicans have vowed not to cut Medicaid benefits.
“Assisting Ohioans is Senator Moreno’s top priority,” McCarthy stated. “He meets with Ohioans every single day both in Ohio and Washington and has been transparent about his commitment to passing President Trump’s agenda.”
Kaplan stated that her organization has similar goals of raising awareness and pressuring Republicans over their support for Trump policies. However, Kaplan expressed hope that candidates for school boards and other local offices will be elected in the future.
“Our ultimate goal is to keep people engaged and to channel their fear and their anger into positive work for the community,” she told me.
Some previous protest movements have resulted in tangible political victories, such as the Tea Party movement, which helped propel many conservatives into high office during the Obama administration.
However, for protesters in Ohio, where Republicans control state government and Trump has won by large margins in the last three presidential elections, that is not a realistic short-term goal, according to Niven.
“You have to have to crawl before you can walk,” he joked. “Before they can worry about field organization, they need an outlet for their energies, for their frustrations, for their hopes.”
Looking forward
There’s little indication that anti-Trump protests in Ohio will subside anytime soon.
Some upcoming Northeast Ohio protests include a series of rallies on March 23 by a postal workers’ union opposing the Trump administration’s decision to cut 10,000 USPS jobs and the president’s proposal to privatize the postal service.
According to Coleman, plans are also in the works for a pro-reproductive rights march in Cleveland on June 24, the third anniversary of the United States Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade.
“The more people that take to the streets,” Coleman explained, “the closer we get to seeking justice and redress to our issues.”
