-Despite a cold and rainy Saturday, thousands of Vermonters poured into the streets to protest the Trump administration and its policies at "Hands Off!" rallies in Brattleboro, Bellows Falls, Chester, and Wilmington on April 5.
More than 150 activist groups were involved in organizing 1,200 such marches and rallies across all 50 states, and southern Vermont turned out in force.
Organizers estimated that more than 1,500 people showed up in Brattleboro, more than 500 turned out in Chester, and a spontaneous unscheduled protest in downtown Bellows Falls drew more than 200 peaceful, sign-carrying, anti-Trump protestors.
The biggest of more than two dozen planned demonstrations took place at the Vermont State House in Montpelier, where an estimated 10,000 people attended.
Taken together, organizers said these were the largest demonstrations against President Trump since he returned to the White House in January.
'We can't let it stop our courage'
In Brattleboro, U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., addressed the throng of people in front of Centre Congregational Church.
"Many of us are feeling angry. We're feeling anxious, and we're worried about the state of our nation," Balint said before traveling to another rally in Middlebury. "I know all too many folks are feeling paralyzed by the sheer number of things that are coming at us. But we can't let it stop our courage."
Balint told the crowd that "it's not enough just to show up online."
"It's not even [enough] just to show up out here," she said. "We have to use our voices in places that are uncomfortable. You can't just talk to the people who agree with you. We have to show up and have uncomfortable conversations with our families, with our friends, with our community members."
In the end, Balint said, "it is not about left or right, it is about our nation. It is about our democracy."
After Balint's remarks, the crowd marched north up the sidewalks of Main Street toward the Common as cars passed, many honking horns in approval.
People were still filing onto the Common nearly an hour after the march started. The signs they carried ranged from clever to profane to cleverly profane.
One of the organizers of the event, Katie Allaway of Brattleboro Indivisible, described the event as one of the largest protests in the town's history.
Allaway came to Vermont from Laramie, Wyoming. She works for Element 74, a software development firm, as product owner of Vela, a software system for domestic and sexual violence programs. She is also a volunteer at the Brattleboro Restorative Justice Center.
"Over the last four years, I and my phenomenal team had done everything we can to protect this data," she said. "Never did I imagine that I would need to protect it from the government of the United States."
Allaway said that since Trump returned to office, "we have seen entire departments like the rape prevention education department at the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] eliminated. They also fired the Family Violence Prevention and Services office director, and HUD [Housing and Urban Development] funding is expected to be cut by 85%."
These organizations, she continued, "provide life-saving services to survivors and their families. And I am here to say 'No! You cannot steal my story or the stories of the million survivors I serve.'"
Ian Hefele, a former Peace Corps volunteer who served in Mozambique, said he had to rip up his planned remarks after he learned that Elon Musk's unofficial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) arrived at Peace Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C., on April 4, seeking access to its financial records.
This comes on the heels of cuts and chaos at other agencies that work on global issues and foreign aid, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
The main thing he said he learned when he did his Peace Corps training in Brattleboro at the School for International Training was that "you learn to live together by living together."
Echoing Balint, Hefele told attendees that they have to "get out into those uncomfortable conversations and […] keep talking and keep rallying, because both the Peace Corps and Brattleboro and Vermont teach us the importance of community."
A native of Connecticut, Hefele has lived in Brattleboro for more than a decade.
"I remember as a closeted gay teenager in Connecticut, hearing about civil unions in Vermont, hearing about Vermont just letting people live and letting people be who they are," he said. "So, the idea of building a family for the closeted teenager in Connecticut was just a pipe dream. But Vermont, you made it a reality for me, and I am so grateful."
Windham & Windsor Housing Trust Executive Director Elizabeth Bridgewater said the nation is "experiencing the biggest bait and switch that [it] has ever seen."
She said that the "slash-and-burn approach" of DOGE "isn't about efficiency. It isn't about making America great again. It's about consolidating money and power for the elites of this world."
Bridgewater also feared for the continued existence of the nonprofit sector, noting that 20% of Vermont's workforce is employed by a nonprofit agency, and 70% of those agencies rely on federal funding to perform their missions.
"That's a lot of people whose jobs are in a vulnerable place right now," she said, noting that they "provide vital services in our community: health care, education, healthy food for our children, and housing services."
"These are examples of our money at work - our money that is being redirected into the pockets of people that already have so much," Bridgewater said.
A quieter protest in Bellows Falls
No marching or oration took place in Bellows Falls, whose protest started with a gathering at Hetty Green Park before participants moved down the hill. They lined Westminster and School streets, where they held up signs and waved to passersby.
The Hands Off! event in Bellows Falls was similar to many of the smaller protests around the nation in that it developed almost organically. The Bellows Falls event was not officially listed at the Hands Off! website, and it was mainly promoted through word of mouth and social media.
Yet more than 200 local residents participated.
Many thought that Charlie Hunter, a local artist and community activist, or musician and songwriter Holly Brewer, were the main Bellows Falls event organizers, but both said they'd merely helped publicize the event.
Hunter carried an American flag at the protest, a symbol of patriotism that he said has been hijacked by the Right and needs to be reclaimed by all Americans.
"It's important for protestors to utilize the immediately understandable symbols of American patriotism" like the flag, he said.
Brewer, who attended protests Saturday in Springfield, Chester, and Brattleboro, said that this is a "decentralized movement, and we now have 20 years of decentralized organizing" to fall back on.
She said that activists, journalists, and many others have moved away from the social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook that are owned and controlled by a few super-wealthy men. Instead, they have adopted the microblogging, decentralized social media service Bluesky.
Millions of activists have also started using the free direct communication app Discord, she said, and the user-run, forum-style social news platform Reddit.
"Using these platforms," Brewer said, "the ideas get out there, and people run with it. Doers want to do it, and followers want to help."
Brewer said that national grassroots, anti-authoritarian groups like 50501 (50 protests, 50 states, one movement), Hands Off!, No Kings, and Third Act have provided much of the organizational structure for the recent protests and other anti-fascist actions.
A few crowd chants and the dozens of signs carried at the protest made the crowd's anti-Trump and Musk sentiments very clear. The signs often made their points with humor, photos, drawings, and no noticeable misspellings.
Jan Sheehy's two signs referred to Bible verses.
While she described herself as not particularly religious, she said that many Trump supporters on the Right identify as Christian conservatives, and she thought that referencing scriptures - one from the Old Testament and the other from the New - might move some to read and think about its meaning.
She shared Leviticus 19:33–34 which, in the New International Version of the Bible, says: "The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt."
The second verse, from the Gospel of St. John 13:34, quotes Jesus: "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another."
Some signs were a play on the Trump campaign slogan "Make America Great Again," one redefining MAGA as "Morons Are Governing America."
Of course, in keeping with the national protest theme of Hands Off!, President Trump's decades-long sensitivity about his hand size (prompted by a magazine editor in New York describing the real estate developer as a "short-fingered vulgarian" in 1988) was frequently referenced by sign makers.
A few noted "Hands Off Free Speech," "Hands Off Our Democracy, Healthcare, Social Security," and "Keep Tiny Hands Off Democracy."
The national protest taking place at the end of one of the worst weeks in U.S. investment history, triggered by Trump's imposing massive tariffs on approximately 90 countries, was perhaps a factor in making this the largest national protest turnout to date of Trump's second term.
In the three days prior to April 5, Wednesday to Friday, April 2 to 4, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 4,000 points, losing more than 7% of its value, or roughly a decrease of $3.1 trillion in market value. The impact on retirement investments was massive.
This prompted several sign makers to reference keeping "hands off" Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Other signs referenced the longstanding Republican wish to remove public subsidies for public radio and television.
Or, as one sign read, "Fire Elon Musk. Save Elmo."
With additional reporting by Robert F. Smith and Joyce Marcel of The Commons and Kevin O'Connor of VTDigger.org.
This News item by Randolph T. Holhut was written for The Commons.