Fear of a Trump Monarchy Puts Tens of Thousands in the Streets…
“Back the eff up, Trump!” Protesters lampoon the Trump administration inside Madison Square Park over the weekend. Photos/Joe Maniscalco
By Joe Maniscalco
Retail worker Thea Kindos stood out from the tens of thousands of other protesters who marched down 5th Avenue in New York City on Saturday afternoon to denounce the Trump administration and what many fear is his all-out assault on whatever might be left of American democracy.
She wore red robes and a white bonnet evocative of a dystopian character from The Handmaiden’s Tale as she slowly made her way with the rest of the Bryant Park crowd onto West 40th Street for the start of the march.
The Westchester County resident talked about the so-called SAVE Act and her very real fear as she approaches 70, that women’s rights—as depicted in Margaret Atwood’s seminal novel—will be taken away in the next election.
Retired chef Thea Kindos invokes Margaret Atwood’s “The Hand Maiden’s Tale” inside Bryant Park.
“I'm concerned about my daughter who works with Special Ed kids,” she told Work-Bites. “I’m also concerned about my son who works in the National Park Service. I’m concerned about my friends who are retiring. I'm supposed to retire next year… what's going to happen? Right now I work in retail, but I was a professional chef for 30 years and my husband's in the catering business. He has immigrants working for him and he's worried about them.”
Saturday’s “Hands Off march” in New York City coincided with about 1,200 similar street actions simultaneously taking place in all 50 states.
A couple of New York City public school teachers who didn’t want to be identified marched together just ahead of Kindos and talked about how offended they are about Trump’s attacks on the US Department of Education and public schools.
Tens of thousands of marchers protesting the Trump administration packed 5th Avenue for NYC’s “Hands Off” demonstration.
“Just the lack of government being able to function when you have a man in the executive branch who's doing everything and Congress is kind of giving up holding him accountable for anything,” one of them told Work-Bites. “The judicial branch scares me a little bit, too. I mean, they're gonna be the last bulwark here—and I don't have a lot of confidence in them— so, getting out here in the streets and doing something is really just doing your civic responsibility at this point.”
Another teacher and content creator who said she was getting ready for an international flight and also didn’t want to identify herself fearing reprisal, told Work-Bites, “Hands off everything.”
“Everything is at risk,” she said. “We are losing our democracy—or at risk of that. I’m also very concerned about the rollback on climate policies because we don't have a lot of time to stop the worst impacts of that. We're just walking backwards and disenfranchising a lot of everyday people from social safety nets and trying to pass it off as a big tax break for the ultra-wealthy. I’m all for people making money and some form of capitalism—but not not like this—and not by illegally disrespecting the Constitution.”
Hands Off Our Future: Children carry signs jeering the Trump administrations attack on public schools.
Other marchers carried homemade placards likening Trump and assorted members of his administration to Nazis. One cadre of toe-headed kids at the end of the march carried signs saying, “Hands Off Our Future.”
One marcher carrying a sign declaring “Hands Off Unions” identified himself as a member of United Scenic Artists Local 829 and said “There’s always an attack on unions—but, obviously, [the Trump administration’s] agenda is to destroy unions.”
Last month, Trump signed an executive order stripping the collective bargaining rights of federal workers with “national security missions” saying, “President Trump refuses to let union obstruction interfere with his efforts to protect Americans and our national interests.”
The administration previously issued an order stripping Transportation Security Officers of their collective bargaining in a move Association of Flight Attendants President Sara Nelson warned was all about “authoritarian control” that could result in the airline industry suffering a “tragic event.”
“I’m just really sad, and I’m scared,” Kindos added before joining the rest of the march.