Over 2,000 protestors lined the streets surrounding Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan Tuesday evening while President Donald Trump hosted his 100 days in office achievement rally. Several local and national political groups organized the protest, including the Michigan League of Conservation Voters, 50501 Michigan, Macomb Defenders Rising, Friends of Bernie Sanders, We the People Dissent, Michigan United Action, North Macomb Democratic Club and Michigan 10th District Democratic Party.
Named “I dissent” after the final words of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion in the 2024 Trump v. United States decision that expanded presidential immunity to any ‘official acts,’ the protest included signs expressing fears of democratic backsliding, autocracy and fascism. Some compared Trump to a dictator and Elon Musk to an oligarch. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Robert Johnson, 50501 Michigan member and one of the protest’s planners, said he sees parallels between the current U.S. government and fascist Germany during World War II.
“This is a disaster happening and people have to stand up to it,” Johnson said. “We don’t want to be part of history like in Germany, where people ask later on, ‘Why didn’t they stop it?’ Well, here we are trying to stop it.”
Rachael Rewitzer, League of Conservation Voters regional organizer, told The Daily she came to raise awareness on the effects of environmental federal actions.
“These past 100 days have been absolutely disastrous for the environment,” Rewitzer said. “All of these federal cuts to the EPA, the NOAA, all of these job losses, it’s just making it harder for us to protect our state specifically. It’s bad for our air, our land, our water … We’re out here to try and make it known that Trump is destroying our planet in more ways than just our democracy — but also our environment.”
MLCV regional organizer Keough Lemieux told The Daily he loved seeing people from all walks come together to protest.
“The turnout has been absolutely spectacular,” Lemieux said. “This is what coalition building looks like. You have us from the environmental movement, we have people from the immigration movement, people from the labor movement… People in Michigan (are) fighting back against fascism and making sure that they know that we’re not going to take it.”
In an interview with The Daily, LSA junior Ian Moore, co-chair of the College Democrats at the University of Michigan, said he hopes the support generated at protests like this one is channeled into political action.
“The thing that protests do is keep things in the news, which is really important,” Moore said. “But with that, we’ve got to be able to kind of deploy the power that we build up at protests towards actual action and actual policy. In the protest, we need to be saying, ‘Keep paying attention. Keep paying attention until next November, and get on campaigns, actually help them do the work to do this.’ Because protests are great for building up support, but we actually have to do something with that.”
Summer Managing News Editor Lyra Wilder can be reached at lyrawild@umich.edu.
