On Wednesday, Feb. 5, thousands demonstrated across America in response to President Donald Trump’s actions in office.
About 20 people participated in Cortez, waving signs and gathering in front of the Welcome Center on Main Street for an hour.
“It’s necessary,” one demonstrator said. “There’s been a lot of people slowing down and waving. The response has mostly been positive.”
“Maybe it’s the warm weather,” another said.
The movement was organized online under #buildtheresistance and #50501, which stands for 50 protests, 50 states, one day, according to The Associated Press.
“We the people have to stand up to make change,” a protester said. “I’m here to call attention to what’s going on. I don’t think most people are paying attention. If they were, they’d be outraged.”
In Cortez, the protesters said they were “shocked and dismayed” by what Trump has done in the few short weeks he’s been in office.
“It’s not OK. It’s not constitutional, or respectful of human rights,” a protester said.
So this demonstration, they agreed, “is not political. It’s moral and ethical.”
One woman who asked not to be named made a sign that said, “No food on a dead planet. Love, your mama.”
If Trump deports all our farmworkers, she said, there will be nobody there to harvest crops when it comes time, “and the food will rot in the fields.”
“What an atrocity, when we have people starving,” she said.
Another protester created a sign with farmworkers in mind: “Eggs, $25 a dozen” it read.
“If Trump gets rid of farmworkers, all food prices will go up,” she said. “Not just eggs.”
She said she was glad to see that Rep. Al Green, a Texas Democrat, filed impeachment charges on Trump for wanting to “take over” Gaza.
Green called the proposal a “desperate deed” that would result in ethnic cleansing, according to an article by The Guardian.
“Action is the antidote to despair,” one woman said, quoting Joan Baez.
“I can’t sit still as Social Security and human services are taken away,” she said.
Another woman had recently retired, and expressed her fears of Medicaid and other like services going away.
Others were there to “stop the damn white patriarchy” and to “talk about civility” with one another, having conversations “to bring sides together.”
One questioned, “Did you vote for Elon Musk?”
Some cars drove by, waving middle fingers and Trump hats, but, like they said, the response was mostly positive.
“We the people have to show up. Why aren’t more people outraged?”
