Pop-up protests have been all the rage each and every weekend of April in central Illinois and across America.

Hands Off! protesters stand ground at Peoria Stadium
BRIAN LUDWIG

National start-up organizations like Hands Off and 50501 have helped connect the necessary dots to pull off these protests: April 5, almost 3,000 lined War Memorial Drive in front of Peoria Stadium; April 19, thousands more marched on Downtown Peoria. These rallies have responded to a halcyon cry that’s sweeping the nation in harsh rebuke to President Trump and his Republican administration.

“So many reasons,” Susan Latta said from her post at the Hands Off rally near the diamond entrance to the Stadium. “For instance, (the president’s) anti-immigration stance — ‘ruining our blood, rapists, killers.’ ”

Hands Off 2025 called for a “Mass Motivation” and a “National Day of Resistance” on Aril 5. The impromptu Peoria rally was put together and permitted in three days. Hundreds of thousands demonstrated across the nation and thousands more around the world.

The Hands off 2025 website states, “Donald Trump and Elon Musk think this country belongs to them. They’re taking everything they can get their hands on, and daring the world to stop them. We’re taking to the streets nationwide to fight back with a clear message:

“Hands off!”

Hands Off! protest at Peoria Stadium
BRIAN LUDWIG

Two weeks later the 50501 Movement took the baton as the people in Peoria went back out onto the streets. This national organizer’s theme is “50 protests, 50 states, One Movement — Join us in the fight to uphold the Constitution and end executive overreach.”

President Trump has signed 137 executive orders in his first 100 days in office. By contrast, Joe Biden had just 77 executive actions in the first year of his administration. Trump had only 55 in the first year of his first term, Barack Obama, only 40.

More daunting this time over, is the brazen — almost vengeful — disregard for the separate branches of government, checks and balances and plain Constitutionality overall.

Trump’s controversial Department of Government Efficiency is being run by his biggest campaign donor in Musk, who has carelessly tried to cut and freeze and forestall scores of government agencies like the departments of Energy and Education and Health and Human Services with blatant disregard for government oversite.

The president has tried to end Birthright Citizenship, deny Due Process and block Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility efforts. He has created worldwide economic uncertainty in his trade wars with his (some say illegal) tempest of tariffs.

Most of those initiatives have been held up in the courts of the Judicial Branch, which has also had to issue motions to examine this administration’s immigration policy. The Feds have been rounding up people caught in immigration raids and disappearning them to El Salvador prisons at taxpayer expense. American soft power and influence around the planet is disintegrating.

Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been speaking to crowds of thousands across the U.S. on their “Fight Oligarchy” tour.

“They don’t have to dig, they just have to look,” Terry Kirland said at the Hands Off rally. She was spreading the word that Representative Darin LaHood has not held a public Town Hall meeting since 2017. “I called LaHood’s office and all I get is interns.”

The rallies/protests are sharpening their focus. The League Women Voters of Greater Peoria held a “Shine on Democracy” rally at Universalist Unitarian Church. The seminar of sorts had speakers discuss what the government is doing concerning voting rights, immigration, news media, food insecurity and the arts. More importantly, what we can do as citizens to promote voting, protect due process and freedom of the press, feed our population and preserve creativity.

Citizens for IL-16 packed the UAW Hall on Springfield Road in East Peoria in an impromptu Town Hall for LaHood to address the standing-room-only crowd. Our congressman did not show up in EP. He was politicking in northern Illinois.

Stay tuned, true believers. There are plenty of places to get your marching shoes on. Organizers encourage peaceful, non-violent events.

Fifty-Fifty-One is kicking off the month of May with a “National Day of Solidarity: Stop the Billionaire Takeover. We are the Many. They are the Few.”