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US PROTESTERS TO DEMS: FIGHT WITH EVERY TOOL AVAILABLE  
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Kira Lerner, George Chidi and Rachel Leingang
July 21, 2025
The Guardian
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_ Day of rallies across US hears demands for more united, organized
and aggressive party opposing Republicans _

View image in fullscreen Tomesia Day raises her fist while listening
to a speech in Nashville, Tennessee, on Saturday., Photograph: George
Walker IV/AP

 

Democrats [[link removed]] need to
take bolder and more aggressive actions to oppose the Trump
administration
[[link removed]], protesters
across the US told the Guardian during a day of rallies
[[link removed]] last
week honoring the late congressman John Lewis.

Lewis, a civil rights leader and Democratic congressman from Georgia
who died five years ago, called for people to participate in
non-violent “good trouble, necessary trouble” to advance their
causes.

While some elected Democrats have escalated their tactics
[[link removed]] against
Donald Trump and his administration – delivering multi-hour
speeches, risking arrest and physically interposing themselves as a
disruption – protesters said they want to see a more united,
organized and aggressive opposition party.

“There’s a lot more that I would like to see from them,” said
Jace Snyder, a weather research technician from Lovejoy, Georgia, who
attended the protest in Atlanta. Snyder is particularly concerned
about the Trump administration’s cuts to federal agencies including
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).

“If they have to shut down the entire legislative process until the
Republicans fold, OK, shut it down … Shut down the Senate. Don’t
pass anything. Do whatever is needed to make it so that these cuts
don’t happen to vital agencies.

“We’ve gone beyond the ‘be polite to your political
opponents,’ phase, because they’re not giving us the same
courtesy,” Snyder added. “Fight, fight, fight with every single
tool available you can.”

[people marching and holding signs]

Protesters march in the street outside the Monroe county courthouse in
Bloomington, Indiana, on Thursday. Photograph: Jeremy Hogan/Sopa
Images/Shutterstock

Quentin “Coach Q” Pullen, a veteran, fitness coach and candidate
for the Fayette county board of commissioners, said he reviewed some
of Lewis’s speeches in preparation to speak at the Atlanta event. So
much of what Lewis had been talking about since the 1960s was still
relevant today, he said.

“We’ve got to rise to the time, because if we don’t, there’s
too much at stake that he bled for,” Pullen said. “He bled so that
we don’t have to. But now we’re back at a point where they’re
almost going to make us do it.”

Protesters also said they wanted to see Democrats
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own values rather than tacking to the center or right during elections
in an effort to win, which hasn’t been working. For some who rallied
on Thursday, the Democrats’ position on the war in Gaza, and Joe
Biden’s support for Israel, are bruising reminders that their party
is out of step with its base. Palestinian flags flew among the
marchers in Minneapolis, and people chanted to stop the war.

Simon Elliott, from Minneapolis, said Democrats should embrace popular
positions, like spending more on human needs than on war and
deportations. “Right now we’ve seen the Democratic party and
elected officials, they’re really in retreat,” Elliott said. “It
seems as though they somehow are just overwhelmed by the pace at which
the Trump administration is moving. We’ve seen very little
resistance from the Democratic party.”

Democratic Socialists of America representatives moved through the
crowd in Minneapolis, asking people if they thought the Democrats were
doing enough. They found receptive audiences who wanted to see more
from their elected officials, both in tactics and policies.

“Justice requires all of us to participate with our whole being, all
of the time,” said Peggy Flanagan, Minnesota’s lieutenant governor
and a candidate for US Senate. “We are choosing courage over
compromise.” From the crowd, a protester yelled “tell Amy!” an
apparent reference to Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota’s senator who has
voted to confirm some of Trump’s nominees.

[people holding signs ]

Santa Barbara, California, citizens hold signs on
Thursday. Photograph: Amy Katz/Zuma Press Wire/Shutterstock

The Target boycott featured heavily in Minneapolis’s protest, which
stopped for a length of time outside Target headquarters downtown as
people chanted: “Target, Target you can’t hide, you sold us out,
you have no pride.”

Rebecca Larson, the co-lead of Indivisible Twin Cities, said the group
was working on other ways to put pressure not just on elected
officials, but other pillars of civil society. Indivisible and other
progressive groups have been calling for Democratic officials to be
more vocal and actively work as an opposition party. But people who
want to resist don’t need to wait on their elected officials before
getting more heavily involved.

“We are looking at ways that all people, every individual, can find
a way to not cooperate,” Larson said. “It involves things like
supporting the Target boycott. It does involve things like calling
your elected officials. It involves going to protest. And for some
people, it may include more acts of civil disobedience, like we saw
during the civil rights era in the 60s. We’re trying to encourage
everybody to participate in the resistance in whatever way that they
can.”

Grecia Glass in Minneapolis said Democrats were doing better at
standing up to Trump than they were a few months ago. She has a few
favorites: Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jasmine Crockett,
Jamie Raskin. “Some of them are doing it, and I stand behind
them.” But, she said, “I’m very unhappy with the Democratic
party as a whole.”

When asked about people such as Brad Lander standing up to
immigration officials
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she said, “that was amazing, what he did”. Lander was hauled away
and detained by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice)
officials while shielding immigrants outside their court hearings in
the city.

In Washington, Jane Anderson from Columbia, Maryland, acknowledged
that there was not much more Democrats can be doing right now with
minorities in both chambers of Congress. “We need to be out on the
streets, no doubt about it, but I don’t want anything to get
dangerous because that’s just the Republican playbook,” she said.
“I think peaceful protests speak a lot louder than violence.”

[a large group of people with signs]

Several hundred people gathered on the west steps of the Wisconsin
state capitol on Thursday. Photograph: Jeff M Brown/Zuma Press
Wire/Shutterstock

Heidi Smith-Miranda, who came to the Minneapolis protest from Coon
Rapids, Minnesota, said: “I like good trouble and I like
nonviolence. But my dad fought in world war two. Sometimes there’s
only so much you can do peacefully.

“I don’t want to be violent, nobody wants to be violent, but
it’s really hard to just stand by and watch your neighbors get
pushed around, pushed to the ground and thrown into a van by a masked
group of people,” she added.

Mary Baird, who traveled to the Washington protest from North
Carolina, said Democrats needed to remember that they are ultimately
accountable to their voters.

“We don’t really want to vote out the Democrats but we will,”
she said. “So don’t think that just because you’re a Democrat
that your seat is safe, because we’re sick of this fascist shit.”

_Kira Lerner is democracy editor for Guardian US, based in Washington,
DC.  George Chidi is a politics and democracy reporter for Guardian
US based in the south-east.  Rachel Leingang is a democracy reporter
focused on misinformation for Guardian US. She is based in
Minneapolis, Minnesota. Signal rachelleingang.241_

* Good Trouble
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* Protest
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* Democratic Party
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* fight back
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