Tens of thousands gather against Trump a DC “Hands Off” Protests | Washington DC

The estimated demonstrators are in tens of thousands gathered in Washington on Saturday in an exposure of mass dissent against Donald Trump’s policies that the organizers hoped would have had the snowball in a rotating cycle of protests that in the end could hinder the president of the United States in the elections of the congress next year.

Anger with Trump and his billionaire lieutenant, Spacex and Tesla entrepreneur Elon MuskHe was expressed in a sea of ​​signs and banners in the Washington Mall, in the shade of the Washington monument. Many messages denounced the two men for closing government agencies, cutting jobs and services and – in often graphic terms – for threatening the survival of the democracy of the United States.

“Resisting as if it were the Nazi Germany of 1938” and “Fascism is alive and vegetable and lives in the White House”, read two slogans in the Gathering Hand Off, organized by the indivisible civil society group and with speeches of a series of other organizations and democratic members of the congress.

The event, which coincided with about 1,000 other themed events across the country, was punctuated by a fusillade of Barbi addressed to Trump Ea Musk, whose infiltrations in government agencies through the non -official “governmental efficiency”, or without congress approval, and no cash election interventions have been seen.

“They believe that democracy is condemned and believe that the change of regime is at the gates if they can only seize our payments system,” said Jamie Raskin, a democratic representative of Maryland which is the first floor of the party in the Chamber Judicial Committee.

He added: “If they think of overturning the foundations of democracy, they don’t know who have to do with”.

Saturday’s events followed weeks of anxiety among the anti-trump forces that the president had put to the test through his agenda in the absence of adequate resistance by the Democrats of the congress and less the manifestations of popular opposition of mass that appeared at the beginning of his first presidency.

But they arrived even days after the Democrats he designed encouragement from Victory in a race For a vacant place of the Supreme Court in Wisconsin in which Musk had successfully plowed $ 25 million $ his money Support the Republican candidate spoiled by Trump.

He also followed the launch of Trump’s top policy of the import rates, which he triggered huge dive In international share markets and have fueled the fears of an economic recession.

Several speakers and participants said they hoped that the gatherings would encourage other American disillusioned delays from Trump’s policies to join future rallies, giving a novice protest movement.

“We want to send a signal to all the people and institutions who have shown early obedience to Trump and showing that they are willing to bend the knee that is in fact a mass public movement that is willing to get up and stop him,” said Leah Greenberg, executive director of Indivisible.

“If our political leaders get up, we will have their shoulders. We want them to get up and protect the rules of democracy and we want them to see that there are people out there they are willing to do so. The goal is to build a message.”

Robert Weissman, a co -resident of Public Citizen, a group of defense of consumer rights, said to the crowd: “There is only one thing that can face the authoritarian moment we are facing, and this is the movement we see here today.”

To the question from the Guardian if the mass events were sufficient to stop Trump, he said: “It is not a one -off thing. It must be a supporter phenomenon. There have been many criticisms about the Democrats for not getting up to the congress, so an event like this will stiffen their vertebral column.

“It is a matter of improving democrats and giving them courage – and it will do so. This is also true for ordinary people, because Trump’s authoritarian playbook is designed to make people think that it is useless to resist. This shows power and will bring more people.”

Several Democrats of the congress predicted that the event would inspire further protests, ultimately feeding an electoral triumph in the intermediaries of the congress next year, when control of the room of representatives and the Senate will be at stake.

“This is the aspect of freedom that fights against fascism,” said Eric Swalwell, representative for California. “This is not the last day of the struggle, it is the first day. When everything comes to (being) written, you will see that April 5 is when everything has become alive. Energy and activism generate energy and activism.”

Several members recognized that the protests were rarely sufficient to supplant authoritarian governments, as demonstrated in countries such as Turkey and Hungary, whose leaders of Strong Man, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Viktor Orbán survived in office despite repeated episodes of street protests.

“We invited some historians to discuss this question,” said Raskin. “They said that in some countries there was only a legislative parliamentary strategy and that it only succeeded at about a third of the time.

“In other countries, there was only a popular resistance strategy, and this has succeeded a little more than a third of the time. But when you have a popular resistance strategy and an effective legislative strategy, it wins more than two thirds of the times. It is not a guarantee, but you must have a popular national mass action at the same time that you have an effective legislative strategy, too much.”

The representative Don Beyer, whose district of the North Virginia – seat of 75,000 federal workers – was influenced in an disproportionate way by Musk’s assault on government agencies, compared the effect of Trump’s actions with the upheaval undertaken by Mao Zedong in the Chinese cultural revolution.

But, he said, Trump would have been derailed by the elections of next year, who said he was “a little confident” would be “free and fair”.

“They are not perfect (but) people have the opportunity to speak,” said Beyer. “The elections are very decentralized and organized by the district. There are many possibilities to reject. We have just seen it in Wisconsin.”