Editor’s Note: Correspondents from across the country – in Indianapolis, in Montclair, New Jersey, in Seattle, and in Montpelier, Vermont, offered up their views of the rallies. Here in Providence, a crowd estimated to be more than 20,000 marched from Hope High School to Burnside Park. Here is a report from mid-coastal Maine.

BRUNSWICK – In mid-coastal Brunswick, Maine, a small city of 22,352 boasting the third-largest public library in the state, Saturday’s horde of demonstrators against Trump & Co.'s raid on democratic rule was comprised primarily of locals.  

A few had decided instead to swell crowds in Portland or Augusta, Maine’s capital.  But many outlying towns had opted for hometown rallies. Word had it that next-door Freeport – home to L. L. Bean – had scheduled theirs to begin at 7 a.m., before weekend shopping hours began.

The morning skies were gray and misty. Temperatures never topped the high 30s. A later Reddit feed claimed 3,000 had swarmed Brunswick’s long, barely-thawed Town Green. 

This count jibed with my own and others’ in the first half-hour, as we observed new bodies steadily streaming in. A handful of Bowdoin College students showed up and a few children ran circles around their parents. About  15 percent of  Brunswick’s permanent adult residents assembled to look their neighbors in the eye, nod, and make common cause.

Homemade placards    
Groups mingled and mourned the “death by a thousand cuts” to American civic freedoms and civil rights. Their signs and placards raged about Trump/Musk’s vicious ICE depredations, the hollowing out of the federal government, the barrage of ill-conceived tariffs and the unfounded assault on the economy and, above all, Trump’s reckless squandering of America’s civic honor and international good-will.

My husband and I held a sign-making party earlier in the week, but I dawdled on constructing my own until an hour before we left for the rally. In my heart swirled anxiety, fear and shame. 

Rumors of violence against public assembly and free speech disturb me, yet  I could  hardly show my face without a sign of my own. It took some time to find parking within walking distance of the gathering at Park Row and Maine  Street.   

The crowd, dogs and scooters left little room to squeeze close to hear speakers on the 19^th century Gazebo. I soon excused myself to  wander back to the far reaches with my video camera held high.

The faces showed a mixture of determination and relief to be finally doing something.  The thronging posters echoed many of the slogans my husband and I had been slinging around for the previous month. The messages ranged from wise and witty to simple, scrawled affairs, lettered hats, dogs with one-word tee-shirts, men wrapped in flags, and women flourishing laddered signs with blinking lights.  

An inflatable pink unicorn stalked among the crowd,  occasionally stopping to chat. A later commentator on the Reddit feed complained: “What’s the point?” Sadly, they hadn’t risked their own time or bodies to find out in person what democracy is made of. Or to hear one speaker proclaim, “Words are not enough. You have to put your feet on the street.”

Hands off    
The air was filled with megaphone calls and speeches, chants and songs punctuated by honking cars on Maine Street. Conversations wound around the gaps. People eyed each other’s words and wit approvingly.  Hands Off! – Medicaid; Hands Off! – Medicare; Hands Off! –Social Security! More Hands off:  “Veterans Benefits!; and  “Our Libraries!”; “Our Schools”;  Our Universities”; “Our Bodies!”; “Health care!”; Our Data!”; “Our Democracy!”

Simple graphics underscored the messages.

• “DEMOCRACY Over DICTATORSHIP"
• “Resist!”  “Resist…. Tyranny”; “….Dictators”;  “Trumpty Dumpty Must Fall”;  “Tariff = Radical Ignorance.”
• “Hands off Our Civil Service: Fire Doge”; "Hands off” again ….”Immigrants”; “Students”;  “Our Trans Kids”; “National Parks”; “NOAA”; “Voting Rights”. [Ah, Voting rights.]
• MAGA’s mantra re-appeared, re-mantraed: “Make Democracy Great Again.”  “Make America Sane Again.”  “Are We Great Yet?” “Make America America Again.”  My historically-minded husband’s favorite requires a moment of thought:  “Make Russia Great Again.”

Impassioned, pained, and sarcastic [the obscene as much as the literary comments are protected speech]:

•   “Buy American:  Putin Already Has”; “NYET!”  in chalk on a blackboard [“NO” in Russian]; “Impeach Putin’s Bitch”; “F*** ELON”; “We Wanted Lower Egg Prices. We Got Measles”; “IKEA Makes Better Cabinets”; “Fear and Anger, Grab ‘em by the Midterms!”
• Suggestions for more equal and compassionate governance:  “Deport Elon Musk”; “Tax Billionaires, not Groceries.”  I wished I hadn’t tossed out my own “Zelensky for President,” but I may have another chance.  Inventive lists and rants riffed off the initials in “D..O.G.E…”
• Enduring values and defense of legitimacy: “Choose Truth and Kindness.”  “Billionaires Don’t Care About You but Your Government Should.”  “Who Here Voted for Musk?” “Compassion and Justice Are Companions, not Enemies.”
• The words of elected officials: “The Power of the People is Greater than the People in Power [Sen. Cory Booker]”; “See you in Court,”  Gov. Janet Mill’s tart reply to Trump’s attempt to bully the State of Maine, circulated  on sweatshirts as well as placards.
• Quotes of note:  “Make Orwell Fiction Again.”  “Literacy and Justice for All.” The crowd’s favorite, hands down, was not a voice of adult outrage,  but a  snow-suited two-year-old in a stroller playing peek-a-boo with his mother’s  grounded placard: “Trump Needs A Time Out.”

Public display of democratic sentiments, whether it feels “safe” or not, has been protected by the U.S. Constitution Bill of Rights, passed by America’s first Congress in 1789 and by each of our 50 state constitutions.  They endure for as long as we the people enforce their protections. A free society based in equality and justice requires access to and open discussion of verifiable facts. We cannot let ourselves be ruled by fear of others’ opinion, by modesty, or by those who dominate us with catastrophizing and conspiracy fantasies.

Depending on prior registrations to estimate who was present is clearly inaccurate.  The outpouring of dissent on Saturday was likely not in the  “hundreds of thousands” around the country but in the millions. Let’s keep the lifeblood of democracy flowing – in our veins and in our laws.  By the time it flows in our streets, it may be too late.

Elizabeth Michelman is a frequent contributor to ConvergenceRI.

© Elizabeth Michelman 2025