Protestors gathering outside of a branch of the New York Public Library in Midtown Manhattan. Photo by Madi Markham.
At the April 5 “Hands Off!” protest in Manhattan, amid a dreary urban backdrop, as many as 100,000 protestors marched to call out what they identified as the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on civil and human rights in the United States.
Many protestors carried signs referencing fascism, highlighting aspects of authoritarianism at the federal level since January. Slogans included “Stop the coup,” “No tariffs, kings, 3rd term,” and “Keep ur dirty hands off our democracy.”
One protestor who spoke with Old School Catalyst was carrying a “Hands off Mahmoud Khalil” sign, referencing a Columbia student activist who is currently in ICE detention over his involvement in his campus’ pro-Palestinian protests.
“I think what happened to Mahmoud is so upsetting on so many levels, because it shows the total breakdown that has happened, where … someone who has committed no crime–who hasn’t even been accused of a crime–can be snatched up,” said the protester, who asked to be identified only as Peter. “So what that says is that legality does not matter and that’s the [administration’s] point of doing this, is to be like ‘Fuck you, fuck laws, we do what we want, because we’re billionaires.’”
Echoing Peter’s sentiment about the role of billionaires in the federal government’s recent decision-making were the many signs referencing Elon Musk, whose leadership of DOGE has led to billions in funding cuts, impacting a wide array of individuals, programs and projects, from food banks to National Parks. So far, nearly 260,000 federal workers have lost their jobs or will be out of a job due to planned cuts. These job losses do not count employees who’ve lost their jobs at nonprofits impacted by cuts to federal grants. At one point in the protest, chants of “Tax the rich, tax the motherfucking rich!” broke out.
Another protester, Anna, noted that she believes the current instances of ICE abducting pro-Palestinian protestors for deportation is the Trump administration “testing the limits” and “planting the seeds” for being able to replicate this practice on legal citizens who oppose the current administration.
Scholars and advocacy organizations have made similar arguments in recent weeks as ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have increasingly targeted individuals in the United States for their citizenship status, involvement in pro-Palestine protests or critiques of Trump himself. Statistically, while the number of deportations this year is lower than April 2024, the rate and number of ICE arrests during the beginning of Trump’s second term are significantly higher than in 2024. Additionally, the federal government has begun monitoring immigrants’ social media accounts, and DHS made a social media post claiming that the agency intends to “stop ideas” at the border.
Primarily organized by Indivisible and 50501, “Hands Off!” protests took place in more than 1,400 cities and towns in the United States, as well as several virtual “Hands Off!” demonstrations hosted by disability rights organizers and a handful of protests abroad. According to the organizers, the nationwide protests may have garnered attendees in the millions, including crowds in communities across Florida.
Despite the scale, some broadcast networks and major media outlets have scarcely covered the anti-Trump protests this year, something critics, independent journalists and researchers alike have pointed out. CNN has been a notable exception. Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) analyzed reporting by corporate media on protests in the United States since January and found that recent coverage by these outlets has been inadequate, and largely downplayed the number and scale of these protests.
In contrast, organizer and author of How to Read a Protest L.A. Kauffman posted on Bluesky that an effort such as this has “only happened one or two times before in all of American history” and that the “Hands Off!” protests “rank as one of the very largest decentralized days of protests EVER.” On a similar note, FAIR estimated that “even if only 10 people showed up to each event, you’d have tens of thousands.”
Despite initial poor coverage by many major media outlets, the April 5 protesters made clear that there’s a diverse but unified front growing against the aggressive campaign at the federal level to reverse the progress on social equality and civil rights made in the United States over the span of many decades. Protestors of all ages carried signs with messages including “Silence is compliance,” “Ikea has better cabinets,” and a dozen variations of “Hands off ___.”
The majority of signs focused on Trump, Musk or the GOP. Some signs were sympathetic to Democrats, in particular Cory Booker, a New Jersey Senator who had held the Senate floor for a record 25 hours just days before. But some protestors had different takes on the Democratic Party in general.
One protestor, Isobel, said, “In our government, I certainly had hoped for a bit more pushback from Democrats… It still remains to be seen if they have a bigger plan.”
Another attendee, Elizabeth, shared that she felt lawmakers on both sides of the aisle “are just being cowardly and kowtowing to what is a bully.” She said she had voted Democrat in the past, but wouldn’t again.
A recent Harvard CAPS/Harris poll of more than 2,700 registered voters reported that just 37% of respondents approved of the Democratic Party, the lowest approval rating since March 2018.
Several other polls conducted in the last month have presented similar results: just 29% of 1,000 participants in a UMass poll approved of what Democrats are doing; an NBC poll found just 27% of the 1,000 surveyed registered voters approved of the Democratic Party; and a recent CNN poll of some 1,200 Americans found that about half of “Democratic-aligned” adults in the sample believe that “the leadership of the Democratic Party is currently taking the party in the wrong direction.”
And in an interview for Rolling Stone, co-founder of Indivisible Ezra Levin expressed a similar sentiment, in colorful terms: “We need folks to actually start leading — and to call out the leaders who are failing us, because we don’t have time to fuck around right now.”
The “Hands Off!” protests might be proof of just that: people across the United States are stepping up and standing up in a dire struggle against what they widely perceive as authoritarianism.
