Waving American flags and chanting “Trump and Musk have got to go,’’ over a thousand people gathered at the Carty Parade Ground in Boston Common on Saturday afternoon to protest a slew of recent actions and policies by the Trump administration.
Speakers at the rally denounced a range of President Trump’s policies, including mass layoffs at the federal Department of Education, executive directives to universities to tighten campus speech, and funding cuts to federal agencies by Elon Musk’s DOGE committee.
Some attendees carried signs reading “Protect Social Security,’’ “Resist fascism,’’ and “Beware Ides of March.’’ Between speeches given by advocates, the crowd chanted, “Hey hey, ho ho, Trump and Musk have got to go.’’
Joshua Rand, 18, a student at the University of Massachusetts 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.
“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 Trump, according to Rebecca Winter, a press representative for 50501 Massachusetts, the state chapter of a grass-roots movement to stage anti-Trump protests in every state.
While the rallies have not been as large as those from his first term, protests against Trump have become a common occurrence nationwide. Rather than opposing one of the administration’s policies, most demonstrations take aim at multiple initiatives put in place since he took office, including what they see as presidential overreach, as well as funding cuts and Musk’s involvement in the highest office.
So far this month, thousands marched on International Women’s Day and on Presidents Day, and hundreds gathered to “stand up for science’’ and to support Mayor Michelle Wu while she defended the city’s policies on immigration to Congress.
Many have taken aim at Musk, a senior adviser to the president and leader of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency. Musk’s DOGE has laid off thousands of federal workers, slashed federal diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and gained access to the sensitive data of millions of Americans since Trump’s inauguration.
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.
In her speech at the rally, Jessica Tang, the president of the American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts, said that the Education Department’s announcement last week 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 Trump’s order to ban transgender troops on the basis of their gender identity.
“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 to chat and lined up at the press table to sign up for the organization’s email list.
The group said it is 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 talia.lissauer@globe.com. Follow her on Instgram @_ttphotos.
