'We're not what Vance said we are': Middletown protests VP, Trump
MIDDLETOWN, Ohio ‒ "Hands Off" protesters gathered across the country Saturday, including in Vice President JD Vance's hometown.
Despite pouring rain, more than 200 people gathered at a park in Middletown, Ohio, on Saturday for speeches and chants, part of the coordinated "Hands Off" nationwide protests.
Demonstrators held signs along Verity Parkway while cars honked. Some yelled "Hands off" chants and rattled cow bells. Speakers, including a pastor and a Middletown Pride organizer, criticized President Donald Trump, cuts to the federal government and mass deportations.
Others, while standing in a city dotted with "Hometown of JD Vance" signs, took aim at the vice president.
Around 62% of voters in Middletown, a city of approximately 51,000 people, voted for Vance in 2024. But the city's "Hands Off" protest organizer, Constance Miller, wants residents who didn't vote for Vance and Trump to not feel alone.
"We're not all like him. I want the world to see that he doesn't represent us," said the 43-year-old Miller, who lives in Middletown.
"We're not what Vance said we are," she added, referring to Vance's memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy."
Protesters came from nearby suburbs such as Oxford, Fairfield and Loveland. Others work and live in Middletown.
John Wagner, a Middletown pastor, said immigrants in the city are afraid of mass deportations. The Butler County Sheriff's Office in Hamilton, Ohio, 20 minutes south of Middletown, is working with ICE to carry those out.
"One person was arrested right in front of me. In front of his family," the pastor said. "They had to go to Mexico to find him."
Duane Gordon, an organizer for Middletown Pride, said falsehoods about immigrants spread by Trump and Vance, including debunked rumors about Haitian migrants, have fueled Americans' fear of immigrants. He called the vice president "Middletown's biggest embarrassment."
Amy Keller works in health care in Middletown and said many of the people she helps rely on Medicaid. She's worried Medicaid will be cut under Trump.
"We're also a safe haven for LGBTQIA+ people, so we have some serious concerns about what's happening to them as well," she said. "The difference between now and then (during Trump's first term) was we could always count on the courts and we could always count on Congress. But these days, it doesn't seem like we can."
More than 500,000 people RSVP'd to "Hands Off" protests across the country, USA TODAY reports, making it the largest coordinated effort to protest Trump during his second term. This includes one with a crowd of over 2,000 in the Cincinnati neighborhood of Over-the-Rhine, a 45-minute drive from Middletown and just a stone's throw away from Vance's home in East Walnut Hills.
"We've been frustrated. Especially people who are LGBTQ+, minorities ... I have a lot of friends that I really care about that are going to be stepped on by this new administration," said 21-year-old Middletown resident Jason Campbell. "Even if it's just one person (who shows up), you add to the larger line of people and help show ‒ especially in the rain ‒ that we mean what we're saying. We want change."
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Hands Off protesters rally in JD Vance's hometown Saturday
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