CHICAGO: Protests and events against President Donald Trump’s controversial policies that include mass deportations and cuts to Medicaid and other safety nets for poor people have started Thursday at more than 1,600 locations around the country.
The “Good Trouble Lives On” national day of action honors the late congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis. Protests were being held along streets, at court houses and other public spaces. Organizers have called for them to be peaceful.
“We are navigating one of the most terrifying moments in our nation’s history,” Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert said during an online news conference Tuesday. “We are all grappling with a rise of authoritarianism and lawlessness within our administration ... as the rights, freedoms and expectations of our very democracy are being challenged.”
Public Citizen is a nonprofit with a stated mission of taking on corporate power. It is a member of a coalition of groups behind Thursday’s protests.
Major protests were planned in Atlanta and St. Louis, as well as Oakland, California, and Annapolis, Maryland.
Honoring Lewis’ legacy
Lewis first was elected to Congress in 1986. He died in 2020 at the age of 80 following an advanced pancreatic cancer diagnosis.
He was the youngest and last survivor of the Big Six civil rights activists, a group led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. In 1965, a 25-year-old Lewis led some 600 protesters in the Bloody Sunday march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Lewis was beaten by police, suffering a skull fracture.
Within days, King led more marches in the state, and President Lyndon Johnson pressed Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act that later became law.
“Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and redeem the soul of America,” Lewis said in 2020 while commemorating the 1965 voting rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
Chicago will be the flagship city for Thursday’s protests as demonstrators are expected to rally downtown in the afternoon.
Betty Magness, executive vice president of the League of Women Voters Chicago and one of the organizers of Chicago’s event, said the rally will also include a candlelight vigil to honor Lewis.
Much of the rest of the rally will have a livelier tone, Magness said, adding “we have a DJ who’s gonna rock us with boots on the ground.”
Protesting Trump’s policies
Pushback against Trump so far in his second term has centered on deportations and immigration enforcement tactics
Earlier this month, protesters engaged in a tense standoff as federal authorities conducted mass arrests at two Southern California marijuana farms. One farmworker died after falling from a greenhouse roof during a chaotic raid.
Those raids followed Trump’s extraordinary deployment of the National Guard outside federal buildings and to protect immigration agents carrying out arrests on Los Angeles. On June 8, thousands of protesters began taking to the streets in Los Angeles.
And organizers of the June 14 “No Kings” demonstrations said millions of people marched in hundreds of events from New York to San Francisco. Demonstrators labeled Trump as a dictator and would-be king for marking his birthday with a military parade.
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Nationwide protests begin against Trump’s immigration crackdown and health care cuts
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Nationwide protests begin against Trump’s immigration crackdown and health care cuts
- Protest actions held Thursday in more than 1,600 locations around the country
- Major protests planned in Atlanta and St. Louis, Oakland in California, and Annapolis in Maryland
UK govt bans pro-Palestinian march over alleged Iran support
- The UK government has banned an annual pro-Palestinian march planned for Sunday which London police claim is organized by a group “supportive of the Iranian regime“
LONDON: The UK government has banned an annual pro-Palestinian march planned for Sunday which London police claim is organized by a group “supportive of the Iranian regime.”
Interior minister Shabana Mahmood said late Tuesday she had approved the rare police request to prevent “serious public disorder” if the Al-Quds Day march and counter-protests had gone ahead.
It is the first time a protest march has been banned since 2012 but a static demonstration will be permitted, according to London’s Metropolitan police.
Mahmood said she was “satisfied” a ban was “necessary” due to “the scale of the protest and multiple counter-protests, in the context of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.”
The minister added that she expected to see “the full force of the law applied to anyone spreading hatred and division.”
The Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), an NGO which organizes the annual Al-Quds Day march, said it “strongly condemns” the decision, which it called “politically charged.”
“We are seeking legal advice and this decision will not go unchallenged,” it added, accusing the Met of having “brazenly abandoned their sworn principle of policing without fear or favor.”
It said the London force “unashamedly regurgitate Zionist talking points about the IHRC “without a shred of evidence.”
The group describes the day and march as an “international demonstration ... in support of Palestinians and all the oppressed around the world.”
- ‘Unique risks’ -
Al-Quds day, which takes its name from the Arabic for Jerusalem, originated in Iran in 1979 in support of the Palestinian people, and is now marked annually in various countries, notably in the Muslim world. It aims to protest Israel’s occupation of east Jerusalem.
But the Met’s Assistant Commissioner Ade Adelekan said it was “uniquely contentious having originated in Iran and in London is organized by the Islamic Human Rights Commission.”
He claimed that the organization was “supportive of the Iranian regime.”
“The threshold to ban a protest is high and we do not take this decision lightly,” Adelekan said.
He noted the Met has “a proven track record” of permitting free speech and protest rights at dozens of major pro-Palestinian and other demonstrations in recent years.
“But in our assessment this march raises unique risks and challenges,” he said.
“We must consider the likely high numbers of protesters and counter protesters coming together and the extreme tensions between different factions.
“We have taken into consideration the likely impact on protests of the volatile situation in the Middle East, with the Iranian regime attacking British allies and military bases overseas.”
The ban on the march and any associated counter-protest marches is valid for a month from Wednesday.
Interior minister Shabana Mahmood said late Tuesday she had approved the rare police request to prevent “serious public disorder” if the Al-Quds Day march and counter-protests had gone ahead.
It is the first time a protest march has been banned since 2012 but a static demonstration will be permitted, according to London’s Metropolitan police.
Mahmood said she was “satisfied” a ban was “necessary” due to “the scale of the protest and multiple counter-protests, in the context of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.”
The minister added that she expected to see “the full force of the law applied to anyone spreading hatred and division.”
The Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), an NGO which organizes the annual Al-Quds Day march, said it “strongly condemns” the decision, which it called “politically charged.”
“We are seeking legal advice and this decision will not go unchallenged,” it added, accusing the Met of having “brazenly abandoned their sworn principle of policing without fear or favor.”
It said the London force “unashamedly regurgitate Zionist talking points about the IHRC “without a shred of evidence.”
The group describes the day and march as an “international demonstration ... in support of Palestinians and all the oppressed around the world.”
- ‘Unique risks’ -
Al-Quds day, which takes its name from the Arabic for Jerusalem, originated in Iran in 1979 in support of the Palestinian people, and is now marked annually in various countries, notably in the Muslim world. It aims to protest Israel’s occupation of east Jerusalem.
But the Met’s Assistant Commissioner Ade Adelekan said it was “uniquely contentious having originated in Iran and in London is organized by the Islamic Human Rights Commission.”
He claimed that the organization was “supportive of the Iranian regime.”
“The threshold to ban a protest is high and we do not take this decision lightly,” Adelekan said.
He noted the Met has “a proven track record” of permitting free speech and protest rights at dozens of major pro-Palestinian and other demonstrations in recent years.
“But in our assessment this march raises unique risks and challenges,” he said.
“We must consider the likely high numbers of protesters and counter protesters coming together and the extreme tensions between different factions.
“We have taken into consideration the likely impact on protests of the volatile situation in the Middle East, with the Iranian regime attacking British allies and military bases overseas.”
The ban on the march and any associated counter-protest marches is valid for a month from Wednesday.
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