The signs were almost as diverse as the crowd wielding them.
Hundreds of people lined both sides of William Street near Blue and Gray Parkway on Saturday afternoon for a local iteration of the national “Hands Off” protest that took shape simultaneously in more than 1,000 American cities.
And almost all of them came bearing a message, deeply personal and scrawled on poster board.
“What did Daniel Tiger ever do to you?” one protestor’s signage asked, referring to proposed cuts to public media — including PBS — from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
“It’s so bad that even the introverts are here,” read another sign that resonated with me on a deeply human level.
I didn’t bring a sign, which put me in the distinct minority Saturday. But I’ve been spending most of the day since thinking about what it would’ve said.
As we navigated the crowded sidewalks, from High Street down to the Route 1 ramps, my wife and I ran into a lot of people we knew.
First, we saw our friend Kathy, a quirky preschool mom, and her mother, both of whose signs were festooned with dinosaur stickers.
“Stop fascism,” Kathy’s sign read.
Within about a minute, this much was obvious: The vast majority of these folks were not seasoned protestors. They were literally just our neighbors, exasperated folks still clinging to a shred of hope that this thing* can be salvaged.
While I’m not quite that optimistic, I found this much heartening: While the protestors’ focuses were all different, they were also specific, tangible. Hands Off national park workers/scientists/my grandma’s Social Security.
“I didn’t go to war for this shit,” one veteran’s sign read.
This wasn’t an abstract “resistance;” it was a defiant, desperate plea for the federal government to cease self-immolating and burning up livelihoods in the process.
I encountered public officials, including (just kidding, not about to dox anyone), friends from college and old co-workers.
When I confided in a local defense attorney that I’m planning to take the LSAT soon — possibly to become a public defender — his reply was succinct: “Well, good, because there’s going to be a lot of indigents the way this is going.”
An old college friend and relatively new father rather impressively one-upped my own cynicism. His point: OK, so folks are waving signs. Now what?
I countered that it was at least better than screaming into the void. Instead, we were screaming at motorists who had the misfortune (or was it a privilege?) to turn left at the traffic light heading into downtown. Many of them honked in solidarity. It was a sensory nightmare, honestly.
More than one person asked in which capacity I was attending the protests: professionally, as a reporter, or personally. It’s a fair question, and the honest answer is: Both?
Journalists are people, after all.
For example, this journalist is: the father of a child who receives special education services; the proud partner of public school teacher; a reporter who grapples with his own infinitesimally small role in shaping our public discourse, and who is keenly aware of his own failures and those of his profession in that pursuit.
But that’s too much to fit on a sign.
*the United States of America
