On Feb. 5, people opposed to the Trump-Musk agenda—as outlined in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025—held protest rallies at every state capitol across the U.S. Since taking office, Trump has issued dozens of executive orders revoking basic human and civil rights, attempted to freeze all government grants and loans, and enlisted his largest campaign contributor tech billionaire Elon Musk to direct illegal operations to eliminate several federal agencies and fire hundreds of thousands of civil servants.
The nationwide action called 50501, initially generated questions from some political activists, who didn’t know the organizers or groups behind it and were hesitant to participate. But that didn’t stop thousands of concerned individuals from coming out to protest actions in more than 80 cities and towns across America.
In Connecticut, a 40-something single mom with a full-time job was the key organizer of the protest rally at the state Capitol in Hartford, which drew hundreds of people to demonstrate with creative signs facing a major thoroughfare. Motorists drove by for at least two hours, with many honking their horns in support. Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with that Connecticut organizer, Praisely McNamara, who said she was motivated to take action after Donald Trump’s second inauguration on Jan. 20.
[Web editor’s note: Due to broadcast time constraints, this transcript varies slightly from the audio version of this interview.]
PRAISELY MCNAMARA: After the inauguration, I really started to feel overwhelmed with the obviously “flood the zone” plan that Project 2025 and even Steve Bannon has talked about multiple times, where so many things are changing, so many things are being dismantled, leaving so many questions in everyone’s mind, right?
I was feeling very panicked and doing a lot of hand-wringing, just, what can I do? How can I release some of this nervous, pent-up, but motivated energy? So, when I saw on Reddit that there was a #50501, basically a trending group, and I looked it up immediately and it was 50 protests across 50 states in one day.
And I just want to say to begin this, I’m so excited and proud that it actually happened, so every single state had one in every single Capitol, sometimes multiple. My sister said to me, You should try Meet-Up. So I created a Meet-Up group and people started jumping in, then I created the event – this was like Jan. 30th, maybe 31st. Seventy-nine people checked off that they were going in a matter of four or five days. I started talking about making protest signs. I just said we’ll figure out where to be when we get there.
A lot of misinformation was coming into the group in the comments section, of people saying, There’s no central organizer here. It could be a false flag; it could be a honeypot. To which I just said, Guys, if they’re going to do anything else to us besides what they’re already doing, which is freezing federal funding, taking away women’s rights to reproductive health, I mean I could go on and on – and it’s going to take place on the steps of the Capitol in Hartford, okay, I’ll be there, you know what I mean? And luckily, and you two ladies both can attest to this, it was actually wonderful.
I don’t know a soul, personally, that was at that rally on Wednesday, but knowing that those are the people that believe in the democracy that I was raised in for 40 years, that I’ve studied – I have a minor in political science, not saying I’m an expert – but it felt really reassuring to have that intentional community.
MELINDA TUHUS: The media is a big problem in all this. Some outlets on the left are calling this a coup in the making. Mainstream corporate media are covering what’s happening but not drawing any conclusions about what it means. And of course, the public media like NPR and PBS, which still get some federal funding, are in the crosshairs of losing all of it.
PRAISELY MCNAMARA: It’s almost like the news is watching what’s happening as a fishbowl or a terrarium – just kind of commenting on it – as opposed to using the fact that they’re the media to take a stand and call to action.
No media – and I don’t mean social media and I don’t mean y’all – I mean Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS. No one is calling this what it is. If you look at the steps that were taken in the late ‘30s, early ‘40s in Germany – and you were to side-by-side it like that gentleman did with that huge poster at the rally – they’re almost lockstep with Project 2025. Russell Vought was confirmed last night by every single Republican senator, including Susan Collins, including people we thought were moderate, that they’re going to recognize the crisis status and do the right thing. That’s not the case. We are in this together.
MELINDA TUHUS: That was a fantastic event, and it was such a morale booster after feeling so negative about everything for so long, it was just great to be out in that crowd of people, but now what?
PRAISELY MCNAMARA: What is next for me is, I need to urge people to look upward at the 1 percent. We’ve been taught to look left and right at each other; to finger point, blame, degrade, judge, butt up against left and right. We’ve been taught that on purpose by the 1 percent, by the “leaders,” by the people in charge, because if we’re fighting each other, we won’t fight upwards. We have to find a unifying theme. I want people to try to rally across our whole 98 or 99 percent and start looking upward, because that’s where the problem is.
Another nationwide 50-state anti-Trump protest, “Not My President’s Day,” is being organized on Presidents Day, Feb. 17.
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