At a protest on Saturday at the Capitol in Madison, a man who asked to be identified only as Tony said he was worried about cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the withdrawal of U.S. support for Ukraine. | Photo by Ruth Conniff/Wisconsin Examiner
It was a blustery, grey Saturday afternoon on March 15 as about 40 people wearing togas, carrying signs and waving upside-down American flags gathered on the steps of the Capitol in Madison to protest Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the current administration’s assault on democracy.
The Madison rally, part of a loosely organized nationwide effort launched by the 5051 Movement, was one in a series of 50 protests held in 50 states on a specific day. The theme on this day was the “Ides of March” — hence the togas and signs denouncing Trump and Musk as American Caesars.
“I am tired of bullies in our state and in our national government,” said a white-haired man who asked to be identified by only his first name, Tony. “I think they’ve lost the whole idea of what our government is all about.” Threatened cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the withdrawal of U.S. support for Ukraine’s effort to repel Russia’s invasion were among the issues that brought him to the protest.
“I’m old,” said Ann Kimber, 70, explaining why she showed up to the Capitol in her wheelchair. “I get Medicare. My daughter’s on Medicaid. And I know some people who need their VA benefits. I want people to know we’re concerned they might go away.”
Kimber organized a Facebook group of Fitchburg seniors, she said, because she felt there was nothing happening to resist the dangerous assault on the federal government by the Trump administration. She was optimistic that protests were having an effect, causing the administration to backtrack on some of its planned cuts. “I think each group that has some stake in the matter should be out there protesting all the time,” she said.
Kimber recalled the massive 2011 protests against former Republican Gov. Scott Walker, whose attack on public employee unions and drastic cuts to education propelled tens of thousands of Wisconsinites to mount historic rallies at the Capitol. She said she thought Trump and Musk, like Walker, would suffer an inevitable public backlash because of their arrogance, acting like kings. “If they would have been a little more subtle about it they would get farther,” she said.
Madison, home to one of the top research institutions in the country, stands to lose $65 millions as Trump takes a meat cleaver to National Institutes of Health funding, with dire ripple effects for the state’s economy and for critical progress on everything from curing childhood cancer to dementia.
But unlike the 2011 Wisconsin uprising against Walker, the public response to the stunning aggression of Trump and Musk has been eerily quiet. Some of the Madison protesters said they thought too many people were intimidated about speaking out, especially after the high-profile arrest of Columbia University student and pro-Palestinian protest organizer Mahmoud Khalil, who was taken from his apartment in New York earlier this month and held under threat of deportation at a detention center in Louisiana.
“If they’re gonna start arresting people for the stuff they say … that’s fascism 101,” said Julie Mankowski, who helped organize the Madison event and showed up wearing a king-size bedsheet. “When the first person disappears, if there’s not enough outrage, it becomes no resistance at all, just fear,” she added.
People of various ages and backgrounds joined the march, including “a lot of faces I haven’t seen,” said Mankowski, “a lot of people with diverse concerns, but the real theme seems to be this is not what our country is about.”
After chanting on the State Street corner of the Capitol for a while, the group made a lap of the Capitol square, flags flying, led by a cheerful young man with a megaphone who chanted, “Fascists out of the White House!”
A couple of self-appointed marshals stopped at each intersection, facing traffic as the group crossed the street. One young man had a handgun in a holster on his hip and a “defend equality” patch on his shoulder with the image of a military-style assault rifle against an LGBTQ pride flag. The jarring suggestion of violence was muted by the jolly mood of the gathering. Cars honked and passers-by accepted handbills promoting free speech.
The Ides of March theme had shifted to free speech, explained Carrie McClung, another toga-clad protest organizer, after Khalil’s arrest. “I hope more people start coming out,” McClung added. “I know people are frustrated. I know people are angry. And I hope it encourages people — this is our right to be out here.”
The first popular test of the Trump/Musk regime will take place in Wisconsin on April 1, in a state Supreme Court race Musk has spent millions to try to buy. Some protesters carried signs supporting Judge Susan Crawford in that race and opposing Musk-backed candidate Brad Schimel. The race has garnered national attention since, as The Wall Street Journal reports, it will show whether Musk could be a political liability for Republicans.
Buoyed by all the honks of encouragement and thumbs-up from passing pedestrians, the Madison protesters wound up back on the corner of State Street where they bopped to tunes on a boom box.
While Democrats and much of the public have been too shocked and disoriented by the scale of Trump’s assault on democracy to react, the ragtag group stood out in the wind, trying to spark a movement.
In fact, this spring, signs of a bigger backlash have begun to appear, including a 3,500-person rally with Bernie Sanders at UW-Parkside in Kenosha earlier this month, where an additional 500 people were reportedly turned away from a packed arena. Videos of Sanders’ Fighting Oligarchy tour have gone viral. The same weekend as the small Ides of March Madison protest, I heard a gravelly Brooklyn accent coming through my teenager’s bedroom door.
“From the bottom of my heart, I am convinced that they can be beaten,” Sanders said of the billionaires taking a chainsaw to the social safety net and Hoovering up the wealth of our nation. “Despair is not an option.”
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