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Ohioans showed this past weekend they will not go quietly into subjugation and impoverishment • Ohio Capital Journal [1]

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Date: 2025-04-08

Ohioans showed up in a big way this past weekend. They gathered by the hundreds stretching into the thousands at protests scattered all across the state. The weather was miserable, but people kept coming. They braved the rain and cold to put Donald Trump and his shadow president Elon Musk on notice that they will not surrender to tyrants on an egomaniacal quest for prolonged power at the expense of the free. This is personal.

Demonstrations ran through deep red Ohio counties, solid blue urban strongholds, and suburban tossup districts. Hundreds of protestors rallied in Urbana, Republican Jim Jordan’s base. More than 200 Middletown residents, in Vice President JD Vance’s hometown, wanted the world to know “we are not all like him” as they protested at a local park and listened to anti-DOGE speeches.

In small Ohio cities that went overwhelmingly for Trump in 2024 and large metropolitan areas that went overwhelmingly for Harris, the organic deluge of ordinary citizens swelling enormous crowds or lining up on sidewalks and roads as far as the eye could see, was a faith-restoring sight. On a soggy Saturday afternoon, Americans from all walks of life came from seemingly nowhere to join each other for their country, for their freedoms.

The "Hands Off" protest April 5, 2025 at the Ohio Statehouse in downtown Columbus. (Photo by David DeWitt, Ohio Capital Journal.) The "Hands Off" protest April 5, 2025 at the Ohio Statehouse in downtown Columbus. (Photo by David DeWitt, Ohio Capital Journal.) The "Hands Off" protest April 5, 2025 at the Ohio Statehouse in downtown Columbus. (Photo by David DeWitt, Ohio Capital Journal.) The "Hands Off" protest April 5, 2025 at the Ohio Statehouse in downtown Columbus. (Photo by David DeWitt, Ohio Capital Journal.) The "Hands Off" protest April 5, 2025 at the Ohio Statehouse in downtown Columbus. (Photo by David DeWitt, Ohio Capital Journal.) The "Hands Off" protest April 5, 2025 at the Ohio Statehouse in downtown Columbus. (Photo by David DeWitt, Ohio Capital Journal.) The "Hands Off" protest April 5, 2025 at the Ohio Statehouse in downtown Columbus. (Photo by David DeWitt, Ohio Capital Journal.) The "Hands Off" protest April 5, 2025 at the Ohio Statehouse in downtown Columbus. (Photo by David DeWitt, Ohio Capital Journal.) The "Hands Off" protest April 5, 2025 at the Ohio Statehouse in downtown Columbus. (Photo by David DeWitt, Ohio Capital Journal.) The "Hands Off" protest April 5, 2025 at the Ohio Statehouse in downtown Columbus. (Photo by David DeWitt, Ohio Capital Journal.) The "Hands Off" protest April 5, 2025 at the Ohio Statehouse in downtown Columbus. (Photo by David DeWitt, Ohio Capital Journal.) The "Hands Off" protest April 5, 2025 at the Ohio Statehouse in downtown Columbus. (Photo by David DeWitt, Ohio Capital Journal.) The "Hands Off" protest April 5, 2025 at the Ohio Statehouse in downtown Columbus. (Photo by David DeWitt, Ohio Capital Journal.) The "Hands Off" protest April 5, 2025 at the Ohio Statehouse in downtown Columbus. (Photo by David DeWitt, Ohio Capital Journal.) The "Hands Off" protest April 5, 2025 at the Ohio Statehouse in downtown Columbus. (Photo by David DeWitt, Ohio Capital Journal.) The "Hands Off" protest April 5, 2025 at the Ohio Statehouse in downtown Columbus. (Photo by David DeWitt, Ohio Capital Journal.) The "Hands Off" protest April 5, 2025 at the Ohio Statehouse in downtown Columbus. (Photo by David DeWitt, Ohio Capital Journal.) The "Hands Off" protest April 5, 2025 at the Ohio Statehouse in downtown Columbus. (Photo by David DeWitt, Ohio Capital Journal.)

They stood shoulder-to-shoulder with homemade signs and American flags. Grandmothers, young parents with kids, a generational spread of Ohioans finding common cause in a defining crisis like no other. These were people with the most to lose under sledgehammer DOGE cuts, under the chaos and cruelty of an increasingly authoritarian police state. But from seniors to students, they showed up en masse to push back.

In solidarity with citizens marching across the country, they demanded the felon-in-chief and his erratic hatchet man keep their “Hands Off” earned Social Security benefits, Medicare coverage and lower prescription costs, Medicaid spending cuts, voting rights, reproductive freedom, veterans, education, history, cancer research, and 401(k) retirement savings accounts being absolutely decimated by Trump’s unforced tariff disaster.

The eruption of anti-Trump protests at over 50 locations throughout Ohio and thousands more nationwide, came after two days of heavy losses in the stock market directly tied to Trump’s sweeping, nonsensical tariffs on all imports. Over $6 trillion was wiped off the value of 401(k)s. That’s a staggering amount of money gone in a market crash entirely self-inflicted.

Financial markets indicate another rough week with staggering losses as Trump digs in for no good reason and fears of a global recession grow. In a Sunday post, the tax fraud who bankrupted six companies, called his pointless tariff plan wreaking widespread damage “a very beautiful thing.” As markets continue to convulse with massive sell-offs, the “very stable genius” remains unperturbed.

“I don’t want anything to go down,” said Trump, “but sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.” Who cares if you put a sizable crack in the retirement nest egg of tens of millions of Americans after they spent a lifetime of saving in their 401(k)s or IRAs? Not the man who putted at Mar-a-Lago as markets crashed.

But the retirees who took to the streets in huge numbers recently are losing sleep over running out of money. Many no longer get paychecks and must withdraw from retirement accounts shrinking in real time. They don’t have years to recover from a stock market in free fall that keeps going down because of Trump’s insane tariff gambit. If lawmakers fail to put more checks and balances on his expansive trade war, countless older Americans could be collateral damage.

The richest 1% will weather the madness but not the people fighting for their dignity and democracy in the rain. They are stone cold sober about the stakes of losing everything and are waking up to the power of E pluribus unum (out of many, one) to fight the tyranny of subjugation and impoverishment. So they assembled together in public resistance you couldn’t miss.

At the Ohio Statehouse. On the Craig Memorial Bridge in Toledo. Near the West Side Market in Cleveland. Outside the U.S. District Court in Youngstown. At Courthouse Square in Dayton. In Cincinnati’s Washington Park. Lining Fulton Drive NW in Canton. Down Commerce Lane in Bluffton. In front of the Sandusky Mall. Outside the Guernsey County Courthouse in Cambridge and on and on. Every corner of the state.

This is no right or left movement gaining traction. It is everyday Americans rising up and refusing to cede liberty and justice for all to a callous lawbreaker — backed by the entire Republican Party — who is hellbent on destroying two and a half centuries of a world-changing democratic experiment between rounds of golf. I suspect the Ohioans who showed up in a big way last weekend, and their counterparts in other states, won’t be the last. The torch has been picked up. Generations have sacrificed too much to preserve what is in grave danger of perishing today.

But the gathering protests in Ohio and America give hope that the unfinished pursuit of a more perfect union is ongoing and still remarkably robust.

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[1] Url: https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2025/04/08/ohioans-showed-this-past-weekend-they-will-not-go-quietly-into-subjugation-and-impoverishment/

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