Over 1000 demonstrators attend anti-Trump, Musk rally in Boston Common

Boston Globe

15-03-2025

Joshua Rand, 18, a student at UMass Amherst and member of the Sunrise Movement, a progressive climate activist organization, said nearly every executive order Trump has signed is unconstitutional to some degree.
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'I think he's engaged in a broad overreach of executive power, and there's basically nobody in the federal government who has either the influence or the care to actually stop that,' Rand said.
The protest is part of a national effort to peacefully oppose President Trump, according to Rebecca Winter, a press representative for 50501 Massachusetts, a state chapter of a grassroots movement to stage anti-Trump protests in every US state.
People listen to a speech at anti-Musk rally.
John Tlumacki/Globe Staff
While the rallies have not been as large as those from his first term eight years ago, protests against Trump have become a common occurrence nationwide. Rather than opposing one of the Trump administration's policies, most demonstrations oppose multiple initiatives he's put in place since taking office including
So far this month,
Many have taken aim at Musk, a senior adviser to the president and leader of the
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Trump and Musk are trying to change what they say is a corrupt federal bureaucracy that benefits liberals and wastes money.
'We feel that the billionaires at the top are trying to take advantage of the American people and the policies that they're putting in place are destroying our social safety nets and also destroying our relationship with our allied countries all over the globe,' Winter said.
Mary Bickerton from Medford dressed as The Statue of Liberty as she attended an anti-Trump and anti-Musk rally.
John Tlumacki/Globe Staff
Jessica Tang, the president of the American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts and one of the speakers at the rally,
said in her speech that the Education Department's announcement on Tuesday of plans to lay off more than 1,300 people will put Massachusetts programs on the chopping block.
Some of the services threatened by the layoffs are Title I-funded afterschool programs for low-income children and disability accommodations under the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act, Tang said.
'What happens is that there's no oversight of how the funding is used,' she said. 'There's no guarantee that the money that is supposed to go to our lower income, our special education, our multiple-language learners, our most vulnerable students is actually going to them,' she said.
Bryan Winter, a retired US Army sergeant and the 50501 veteran representative, said in his speech he was ashamed he did not recognize Trump's character sooner.
'It only took a minute of real attention for me to realize that the president of the United States was a spiritual traitor for the American idea and ideal,' he said.
Winter condemned
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'He has literally ordered that we burn billions of dollars on the pyre of an un-American purity test to mollify a political base that wants spectacle and theater, not greatness and strength,' he said.
Around 2 p.m., the emcee led the crowd in one last chant to end the rally.
'This is what democracy looks like,' attendees shouted.
People lingered after the event to chat and lined up at the press table to sign themselves up for the organization's email list. The group said they are planning a large-scale protest in the coming weeks.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
Talia Lissauer can be reached at