Saturday, for the second time in this month, more than 1,000 people converged on downtown San Antonio to protest against the Trump administration’s anti-democratic policies, dismantling of government agencies and defiance of the courts.
The rally — promoted as a “day of action, unity and resistance” — was one hundreds planned for the same day by the 50501 Movement, a decentralized network focused on fighting Trump’s agenda. The name signifies that the group helped launch 50 protests across 50 states on a single day in February.
Marchers at the Alamo City rally carried signs decrying the administration’s deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, its targeting of transgender people and the unfettered access it’s given billionaire donor Elon Musk to federal agencies and their records.
Before the march departed Main Plaza, Democratic U.S. Rep. Greg Casar reminded participants that Americans also came together in the 1920s to fight the robber barons that strangled the economy and again in the 1960s to demand civil rights. Continued protest, along with voting and organizing friends, family members and coworkers can end Trump’s grip on power and usher in political change, he added.
“We can flip this state not just from red to blue but from one that is robbing working class people to one that puts working class people first, from one that is trampling our rights to one that defends our rights,” said Casar, whose district includes parts of both San Antonio and Austin. “There can and must be a better world on the other side of this, ya’ll, and we’re creating it right here, right now.”
Several in the crowd wore military uniforms and carried American flags or signs blasting the administration’s cuts to the Veterans Administration. Madison Square Presbyterian Church Pastor Eunbee Ham wore her clerical vestments to the protest, which she said she’d also urged members of her congregation to attend.
“I encouraged them to come out because I’m thinking, ‘Never again.’ I’m thinking about Nazi Germany,” she said. “When we look back, we think, ‘How could people in that country have let that happen? How could those same people who practiced Christianity, who prayed on Easter, let those horrors happen? Well, it’s happening now, and it’s up to us to say something.”
As protesters gathered in Main Plaza, retired Air Force Col. JC Clapsaddle urged them to sign a conjoined U.S. and Ukrainian flag that will accompany donations of medical equipment he’s organizing for the embattled European country. He said vets and service members are dismayed Trump has sided with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in the conflict.
“It’s one of the few times I’ve seen Republican and Democrat military personnel united,” Clapsaddle said. “They’re united in their outrage that Trump, over all our allies and friends, chooses to support Putin.”
A woman who would only identify herself as Christie was there with her husband and two children, 11 and 7.The family has come to several previous anti-Trump rallies and will continue to turn up for more, she added.
