New Orleans joins nationwide ‘Hands Off' anti-Trump protests

Yahoo

06-04-2025

Samara Smith, an organizer with Step Up Louisiana, speaks at a Hands Off rally April 5, 2025 at Lafayette Square in New Orleans. (Safura Syed/Verite News)
NEW ORLEANS – Hundreds of people gathered in Lafayette Square for a rally against the Trump administration Saturday afternoon. The protest was a part of a national mass mobilization effort, Hands Off, which advocates against cuts to government services like Social Security and loss of protections for marginalized groups.
The first three months of President Donald Trump's administration have been marked by uncertainty as the president and Elon Musk cut funding to various government agencies and laid off hundreds of workers. Around 20% of revenue in the New Orleans city budget for 2025 comes from federal funds. Statewide, the reliance on federal dollars is even larger, making up around 50% of the budget. Cuts have already put funds for HIV treatment and environmental projects in jeopardy.
Civic leaders including New Orleans City Council members JP Morrell and Helena Moreno spoke at the rally. Morrell compared the current state of the federal government to the Civil Rights era, citing the surveillance of activists.
'We are going to organize at our kitchen tables, at our bars, our restaurants, in the parks, like our forefathers did,' Morrell said during his speech. 'That's what's necessary.'
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Lisa Green, a resident of Bayou St. John, said she was worried about threats to public education. She drew connections to her mother's advocacy for civil rights during the sixties and seventies. Green attended the rally despite unfounded warnings she saw on social media about martial law being enacted on protestors.
'I'm just trying to keep her legacy going and keep things straight and safe for my grandkids,' Green said. 'If you're fighting for something that you believe in, that's just a chance you have to take.'
Attendees expressed their frustrations with the billionaire Musk's control over the federal government. Metairie resident Whitt Conner came to the rally with his family and strung a handmade Cybertruck pinata to a tree. Conner said Trump's policies have created a nation in which he and his family cannot survive, especially because members of his family are on Medicaid. After the speeches concluded, people flocked to the tree for a chance to hit the Cybertruck pinata.
Speeches emphasized community building, education and standing up to conservative agendas locally and nationally. Members of immigrant rights group Union Migrante implored elected officials to protect rights of undocumented migrants in the city and for the police to not collaborate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency that oversees deportations.
'If you're a person with privilege, if you're white and you have wealth and connections, it's the moment to use that for good — to take the risk, to talk to your friend who's a politician, to take to email, to stand up, to film ICE and tell them that this is shameful, what they're doing,' Union Migrante member Edith Romero said. 'We are taking a risk right now, being publicly, locally, fighting for our rights. If we can do it, you can do it.'
Union Migrante and other advocacy groups, like Step Up Louisiana and the Worker Justice Project, organized the New Orleans rally. Sue Mobley, a member of Indivisible NOLA, a progressive political advocacy group, was one of the organizers. Before the rally, she told Verite News that the peaceful protest would focus on calls to action, especially as voters express mounting frustration at the state of federal politics.
'Part of why it's important to get people out in the street and get people involved in the long term, is to reduce that feeling of helplessness and give it somewhere to go,' Mobley said. 'Not all of us are going to run for Congress tomorrow, but a lot more of us can show up at school board meetings and city council meetings and be engaged where we are most impacted.'
Samara Smith, an organizer at worker and racial justice group Step Up Louisiana called on elected officials to fight back.
'Our expectations from you, our elected officials, is that when they push the line, you push back harder,' Smith said in a speech. 'When they toe the line, you pull it tighter and make it clear you're willing to put your body and your career on the line to protect our liberties. Because I promise you, the ones you need to fear are not AIPAC, it's not Shell and it's not Lockheed Martin. It's us, the people, and we will remember.'
SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.