More than 50 years ago, I stumbled into an antiwar protest on the campus of Kutztown State College, a small liberal arts school near Allentown, PA, where I was a student majoring in English.
This was probably sometime around 1970 or '71, and the war in Vietnam was in hyperdrive and dividing the nation. Protests were no guarantee of a safe space for free speech by that point: the shootings at Kent State where four young people were killed at the hands of the Ohio National Guard had occurred in 1970, and every gathering of demonstrators anywhere thereafter was fraught with danger and fear of the unknown. Uncertainty hovered over us like some dark, viral cloud.
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| The Wehrles and the Hoffmanns speak with one voice. |
Still, I came to the protest by accident. It wasn't a particularly large demonstration, but I was curious, so I wandered by to see. I carried no signs and I came without a true agenda. But the next thing you knew, I was raising my fist in defiance. Hell, no, we won't go.
And that was it. My days as a protester were over.
Until yesterday.
Less than three months into the second Trump administration, there's been nothing but chaos. An illegally created (and absurdly named) Department of Government Efficiency, headed by an unelected billionaire oligarch, somehow has been granted (or assumed) the power to cut one federal agency after another: slashed, possibly beyond repair, are critical agencies like USAID, the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of the Interior (including the National Parks Service), the Department of Veterans Affairs, NASA, and NOAA, to name some.
The result of these cuts has – or will – stifle medical research into such fields as cancer research, Alzheimers, autism and Parkinson's. Cuts to the Department of Education will eliminate school lunch programs. student loans and civil rights protections. Even the arts have been hampered with cutbacks created by Trump's expanding net of autocratic power.
It's Project 2025 in full form.
All of which pisses me off. People are being hurt while Trump, a convicted felon who laughs at us daily from behind the Resolute Desk, gathers more and more power.
So Kim came to me the other day and said she wanted to go to the National Day of Action (Hands Off!) protest to be held on the steps of the Old Courthouse on the square on Saturday. Kim has been growing more and more frustrated by the cruelty and stupidity of this administration and wondered how we could respond.
So, Saturday afternoon, we joined the 55 or so people who collected on the square. I'd made each of us a cardboard sign – Kim's sign said, "Stealing women's rights is wrong," and mine said, "Hands off our Democracy."
As soon as we got there, we ran into Scott and Catherine Hoffmann, our former next door neighbors who are now living in Charlotte. Catherine said they had the option of protesting somewhere else yesterday, but she wanted to be in a place where she had lived for decades.
We stayed for a little more than an hour in the 80-plus degree weather. We were encouraged by the occasional car that honked its horn in support as it drove past the courthouse on Main Street. That was a positive sign to see in cherry red Davidson County. Another surprise was a pickup truck that pulled up in front of the courthouse from out of nowhere. Moments later, a young man was distributing bottles of water to the gathering.
Today is April 20. It's Easter. It's also 90 days past inauguration, the day when Trump issued an executive order to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 after falsely proclaiming a national emergency on the Mexican-U.S. border. The Insurrection Act could pave the way for Trump to institute martial law in this country, which could have implications for our First Amendment rights. Oh, and by the way, April 20 is also the anniversary birthday of Adolph Hitler. Just sayin'.
Will any of this matter? Is anybody listening?
I don't know, but the seeds of a grassroots movement (50501 decodes into 50 protests, 50 states, one movement) are often sown in the most unlikely places. The trick will be to grow and maintain momentum, especially as the crucial 2026 midterm elections grow closer.
In my hour of protest I felt something I hadn't felt in more than 50 years. It felt good. It felt like we had a voice. It felt important.
It felt righteous.
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