Nationwide protests planned against Trump’s immigration crackdown and health care cuts
CHICAGO AP 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 are planned Thursday at more than locations around the country The Good Trouble Lives On national day of action honors the late congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis Protests are expected to be held along streets at court houses and other society spaces Organizers are calling for them to be peaceful We are navigating one of the preponderance terrifying moments in our nation s history Society Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert noted 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 Inhabitants 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 are planned in Atlanta and St Louis as well as Oakland California and Annapolis Maryland Honoring Lewis legacy Lewis first was elected to Congress in He died in at the age of following an advanced pancreatic cancer determination 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 a -year-old Lewis led a few 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 explained in while commemorating the 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 stated the rally will also include a candlelight vigil to honor Lewis Much of the rest of the rally will have a livelier tone Magness disclosed 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 bureaucrats 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 thousands of protesters began taking to the streets in Los Angeles And organizers of the June No Kings demonstrations stated 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
