Why the Anti-Trump Rallies Don’t Bring Me Much Hope

America showed its true colors in 2016

Protesters at Tax March San Francisco, April 15, 2017. Photo by Pax Ahimsa Gethen, CC BY-SA 4.0.

This past weekend, hundreds of thousands of people gathered in “Hands Off” protests against the Trump/Musk administration. This was the first mass protest of Trump’s second presidency, and many more such actions are planned.

More than 1,000 'Hands Off' anti-Trump protests hit cities across the US

While I have not attended any rallies this year — for reasons I will explain shortly — I did attend and photograph many such protests after Trump’s first election in 2016. I posted many of these photos to Wikimedia Commons, and for these and other contributions I was recognized as the Media Contributor of the Year in 2023.

Documenting the resistance