Over 1,000 protesters amassed at Boston Common Feb. 17, enduring high winds and freezing temperatures to voice their dismay with President Donald Trump, tech billionaire Elon Musk and recent federal policy changes.
After around 30 minutes of chants and speeches in front of the Massachusetts State House, Boston police shut down streets and the crowd marched to City Hall Plaza and later to Faneuil Hall.
The event was a part of 50501, a decentralized grassroots movement named for its goal of holding 50 protests in 50 states in one day. It took place 12 days after the nationwide protests Feb. 5. Boston’s previous protest began in the same location, but only garnered a fraction of the turnout. Rebecca Winter, a press representative for 50501, attributed the increased participation to visibility resulting from the first mass protests and collaboration with other organizations.
“We did a lot more work this time to try to spread the word. We also joined up with Lace Up. Show Up. who was already planning to protest here at 11 a.m., so we worked with them and also Political Revolution to try to put it together,” Winter said. “Since [50501] is a grassroots organization, it is going to grow and we’re looking to get more people involved.”
Winter said that the timing of the event on Presidents Day was intentional.
“The theme for today is ‘no kings on Presidents Day,’ and that is because we believe that this administration is trying to demolish democracy and put Donald Trump as a king, an emperor, an oligarch, what have you,” Winter said.
The claim that Trump is seeking the power of a king was especially pertinent a few days after the protest, when in a Feb. 19 post on his social media platform Truth Social he referred to himself as a king for his move to end New York City’s congestion pricing program. Soon after, the official White House account on X and Instagram released an AI-generated image of Trump in a crown with the text, “Long live the king.” This has led to widespread backlash, including a statement from New York Gov. Kathy Hochul that declared, “We are a nation of laws, not ruled by a king.”
The idea that Trump’s presidency is evolving into authoritarianism appeared to resonate among many protesters. Jenna Blum, a New York Times and international bestselling author who attended the event with her publicist, spent years studying the rise of the Nazis in Germany. She said her work has raised alarm bells in the modern day.
“I write historical fiction about the rise of fascism, and that’s one of the reasons I’m here today, because we are witnessing the rise of fascism in our country right now,” Blum said. “What I’m seeing is a complete disregard for the Constitution and our system of checks and balances. … The complete flouting of the laws by Trump and Musk means that we’re entering an authoritarian government, a fascist government, not a democracy.”
Blum’s 2004 historical fiction novel “Those Who Save Us” tells the story of Nazi Germany from the perspective of women. Blum said her research for that book is what motivated her to attend demonstrations.
“Because I interviewed Holocaust survivors to write [“Those Who Save Us”] and did 10 years worth of research, what I see happening right now is very alarming to me, and all the survivors I interviewed said to yell it out so it never happens again,” Blum said. “So I’m here today to yell it out.”
Many posters and banners called out fascism as well, especially those from Refuse Fascism, an activism group founded after the start of Trump first took office in 2016. Scott Gilbert, an organizer with Refuse Fascism, spoke to protesters gathered at Faneuil Hall. In an interview with The Huntington News, he said that identifying features of fascism and standing up against it is vital.
“We need to stop the consolidation of fascism before it’s too late,” Gilbert said. “It’s really an emergency and a lot of people don’t get that.”
Achieving this goal requires a mass movement comparable to the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, Gilbert said.
“We have to do just like they did in 2020,” Gilbert said. “[An estimated] 15 million people were in the streets after the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and it got so bad that Trump was in his bunker. That’s how we do it. Millions of people, day after day after day.”
Some attendees of the protest had doubts about the effectiveness of public demonstration. Shawn Ferreira, a resident of Haverhill, passed out flyers at the State House for his recently founded activist group, E3 Network of New England. Ferreira said that he believes there is a major movement in progress but is reluctant to believe it will make a tangible impact.
“I think we’re seeing a huge revolution, but Trump’s not the kind of person that listens to stuff like this,” Ferreira said. “He’s not [Joe] Biden, he’s not [Barack] Obama, he’s not John McCain. He’s not like any Republican or Democratic president we’ve ever had before. He’s a megalomaniacal oligarch, and so we have to figure out how to change this revolution so that we’re actually making a difference. How exactly [to do that] I don’t know, and that’s what I’m here trying to figure out.”
Ferreira said that he hopes connecting activists through his E3 Network will build a community to discuss how to change this movement.
“I’ve got a bunch of flyers here that I’m passing out so that we can all talk about this and ask each other, what do we do?” Ferreira said. “That’s what I’m creating. It’s a non-official social organization of people just coming together to discuss, to volunteer, for nonprofits to find volunteers.”
Ferreira’s flyers linked not only to E3’s social media accounts but also to the 50501 Movement’s webpage, encouraging attendees to get involved in future 50501 events. And though Ferreira questioned the efficiency of protests, the 50501 Movement is optimistic about the possibilities.
Winter referenced “Why Civil Resistance Works” by political scientist Erica Chenoweth, whose research points to tangible evidence for the effectiveness of peaceful public demonstrations.
“Erica Chenoweth did a wonderful study looking at all of the peaceful and non-peaceful demonstrations done from 1900 into the early 2000s and found that peaceful protest actually works twice as well as violent actions do,” Winter said. “If you can get 3.5% of the population to show up, then it works every time, according to [their] research. So the larger we get, the more effective this is going to be. I believe we can get there.”
To achieve that goal, Winter encouraged anyone to get involved in any way possible, with more events planned for next month.
“We’re going to have more [protests] in March. Currently, we’re looking at one on the [fourth] of March, and we’re likely also going to have one on the 15th, which will be the ides of March,” Winter said. “There is a place for everyone here, so even if you’re not physically able to come out, please contact our organization and find out how you can volunteer on the back end.”
