The protests come as stocks took a beating this week amid President Donald Trump’s latest round of tariffs

Mercury News, by Jakob Rodgers, Stephanie Lam, and Martha Ross, Bay Area News Group, April 7, 2025

Hundreds of thousands of people flocked to the nation’s streets Saturday in an eruption of anger, alarm and seething discontent over President Donald Trump’s wholesale remaking of America’s economy, its government and its place in the world.

The so-called “Hands Off” rallies — stretching from the picturesque Maine hamlets to California’s coastal cities — signaled the largest organized opposition since Trump’s gutting of the federal workforce and his numerous other edicts targeting everything from diversity measures to his perceived enemies. They capped a week that saw Wall Street post its most devastating losses since the lead-up to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, as Trump unveiled his most punishing round of tariffs yet in a moment he coined as “Liberation Day.”

“We are looking at a crisis,” said Nancy Latham, who helped organize a protest in Oakland with the group Indivisible East Bay, where thousands of people rallied outside City Hall before marching through downtown. “We are already in a constitutional crisis, Latham added. “If you ask me, there’s already been an authoritarian breakthrough.”

Protesters waived signs declaring “Trump is a Russian asset” and “DOGE is a criminal conspiracy.” Among them stood Morgan Lynn, 51, who donned a Statue of Liberty costume and railed against what she saw as the “pure hypocrisy and white supremacy” touted by the Trump administration. A community college teacher, she called the notion of Trump’s administration withholding funding “a form of terrorism.”

“They want to destroy us, so they can privatize everything,” Lynn said.

In San Jose, thousands of protesters poured into the downtown area carrying colorful homemade signs that read, “Dump Doge,” “Resist fascism,” and “Hands off our Future.” At a St. James Park rally, protesters banged on drums and chanted “Power to the People” and “United We Stand.”

“This is more than just a moment, this is more than just this afternoon,” said Celeste Walker, a Felton resident and member of chair of Orchard City Indivisible, a self-proclaimed “resistance” group. “We must refuse to be silent. We must declare that we see each other and that we won’t back down.”

“The only way we’re going to get change at this point is by grassroot efforts,” added Karen Uhlin, of San Jose. “People have to make their opinions known.”

In Walnut Creek, an estimated 5,000 people gathered outside the Tesla store at Broadway Plaza to express their anger and dismay, then streamed past Nordstrom, Lululemon and the Apple store.

Jim and Cheryl Lekas, semi-retired small-business owners from Martinez, pushed Jim’s 92-year-old mother, Joyce Lekas, in a wheelchair in the march as she held up a sign saying, “Hands off my Social Security” and “Hands off our schools.”

A former physicist for the federal government, she talked about nearing the end of her life, saying: “I don’t want to leave a country under Trump to my kids and grandkids.”

In recent weeks, siloed protests in February and early March snowballed into increasingly widespread and coordinated demonstrations of disgust and anger at Trump’s administration. Last weekend, protesters swarmed Tesla dealerships across the nation — including in Walnut Creek, Palo Alto, Santa Clara and Berkeley — in a bid to picket outside all of the company’s 275-plus showrooms with signs declaring “Honk if you hate Elon” and “Fight the billionaire broligarchy.”

By contrast, Saturday’s rallies inundated city centers across the nation. In many places, they appeared to be among the largest mass mobilizations since the Women’s March of 2017 after Trump’s first inauguration and the Black Lives Matter demonstrations following George Floyd’s killing by police in Minneapolis in 2020.

“The attacks that we’re seeing, they’re not just political. They are personal, y’all,” said Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign advocacy group, during a rally at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., that included appearances by Democratic members of Congress. “They’re trying to ban our books, they’re slashing HIV prevention funding, they’re criminalizing our doctors, our teachers, our families and our lives.”

“We don’t want this America, y’all,” Robinson added, according to the Associated Press. “We want the America we deserve, where dignity, safety and freedom belong not to some of us, but to all of us.”

The gatherings happened at cities large and small. In Scranton, Pennsylvania, U.S. House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi protested alongside a few hundred people while in town for a friend’s wedding, AP reported.

The rallies came amid a particularly tumultuous week that ended with Trump introducing a flat 10% tariff on all imports while singling out about 60 countries for even harsher fees, many of which topped 40%. Investors reacted with dismay, sending the S&P 500 tumbling more than 10% in two days, while the Nasdaq finished the week more than 20% below its record high in December.

After watching his 401(K) holdings take a beating this week, Oakland resident P. David Pearson rallied several dozen seniors to the corner of Piedmont Avenue and 41st Street. The experience left the 84-year-old UC Berkeley professor of education — who voiced fears about paying his rent if the market losses continue — feeling like “a patriotic American doing what’s right for my country.”

“This was about people demonstrating their resolve to do the right thing for our country,” said Pearson, adding that his own retirement accounts have declined 25% in recent months.

Asked about the protests, the White House said in a statement that “President Trump’s position is clear: he will always protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for eligible beneficiaries. Meanwhile, the Democrats’ stance is giving Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare benefits to illegal aliens, which will bankrupt these programs and crush American seniors.”

Protesters voiced myriad goals for Saturday’s protests, including pressuring Democrats to more forcefully resist Trump, raising the temperature on Republicans to check their party leader’s actions and building momentum for another blue wave in 2026. Others suggested that an opposition movement was just beginning to stir.

“It’s going to take generations to clean up this mess,” said Jim Lekas, a protester in Walnut Creek, while lamenting Trump’s alienation of longstanding allies with his tariffs and his friendliness with Vladimir Putin and other autocrats. “Trump is a symbol of neo-fascism. We have a lot of work to do.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.