The “Hands Off” protest April 5, 2025 at the Ohio Statehouse in downtown Columbus.
This past weekend, Ohioans turned out in large numbers. They gathered by the hundreds and thousands at protests spread across the state. The weather was bad, but people kept coming.
They braved the rain and cold to warn Donald Trump and his shadow president, Elon Musk, that they will not surrender to tyrants in their egomaniacal pursuit of long-term power at the expense of the free. This is personal.
Demonstrations spanned deep red Ohio counties, solid blue urban strongholds, and suburban tossup districts. Hundreds of protesters gathered in Urbana, Republican Jim Jordan’s home base.
More than 200 Middletown residents wanted the world to know that “we are not all like him” as they protested at a local park and listened to anti-DOGE speeches.
In small Ohio cities that voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2024 and large metropolitan areas that voted overwhelmingly for Harris, the organic deluge of ordinary citizens swelling enormous crowds or lining up on sidewalks and roads as far as the eye could see was a faith-renewing sight.
On a soggy Saturday afternoon, Americans from all walks of life gathered seemingly out of nowhere to support their country and their freedoms.
The “Hands Off” protest April 5, 2025 at the Ohio Statehouse in downtown Columbus.
They stood shoulder to shoulder, holding homemade signs and American flags. Grandmothers, young parents with children, and a generational spread of Ohioans find common ground in a defining crisis unlike any other.
These were the people who stood to lose the most from the sledgehammer DOGE cuts, as well as the chaos and cruelty of an increasingly authoritarian police state. However, people of all ages, from seniors to students, turned out in force to protest.
In solidarity with citizens marching across the country, they demanded that the felon-in-chief and his erratic hatchet man keep their “hands off” earned Social Security benefits, Medicare coverage and lower prescription costs, Medicaid spending cuts, voting rights, reproductive freedom, veterans, education, history, cancer research, and 401(k) retirement savings accounts that have been completely decimated by Trump’s unforced tariff disaster.
Anti-Trump protests erupted in over 50 Ohio locations and thousands more across the country, following two days of heavy stock market losses directly linked to Trump’s sweeping, nonsensical tariffs on all imports.
Over $6 trillion was deducted from the value of 401(k)s. That’s a staggering amount of money lost in a market crash that was entirely self-caused.
Financial markets are predicting another rough week with staggering losses as Trump digs in for no apparent reason and fears of a global recession rise.
In a Sunday post, the tax fraudster who bankrupted six companies described his pointless tariff plan, which caused widespread damage, as “a very beautiful thing.” As markets continue to experience massive sell-offs, the “very stable genius” remains unconcerned.
“I don’t want anything to go down,” Donald Trump said; “but sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.” Who cares if you make a significant dent in the retirement nest egg of tens of millions of Americans who have spent their entire lives saving in their 401(k)s or IRAs? Not the man who gambled at Mar-a-Lago as markets plummeted.
However, the retirees who recently took to the streets in large numbers are concerned that they will run out of money. Many people no longer receive paychecks and must withdraw from retirement accounts, which are shrinking in real time.
They don’t have years to recover from a stock market in free fall, exacerbated by Trump’s insane tariff gambit. If lawmakers do not add more checks and balances to President Trump’s expansive trade war, countless older Americans may suffer as a result.
The richest 1% will survive the madness, but not the people fighting for their dignity and democracy in the rain.
They are starkly aware of the consequences of losing everything and are recognizing the power of E pluribus unum (out of many, one) to combat the tyranny of subjugation and impoverishment. As a result, they formed a visible public resistance.
At the Ohio State House. At the Craig Memorial Bridge in Toledo. Near Cleveland’s West Side Market. Outside the United States District Court in Youngstown. At Courthouse Square in Dayton.
In Cincinnati’s Washington Park. Lining Fulton Drive NW in Canton. Down Commerce Lane, Bluffton. In front of Sandusky Mall. Outside Guernsey County Courthouse in Cambridge, and so on. Every corner of the state.
There is no right or left movement gaining traction. Everyday Americans are rising up and refusing to give up liberty and justice for all to a callous lawbreaker backed by the entire Republican Party who is hellbent on destroying two and a half centuries of a world-changing democratic experiment in between rounds of golf.
I doubt the Ohioans who turned out in force last weekend, as well as their counterparts in other states, will be the only ones. The torch has been picked up. Generations have made far too many sacrifices to save something that is now in grave danger of extinction.
However, the growing protests in Ohio and across America provide hope that the unfinished pursuit of a more perfect union is still going strong.
