DAVIE — South Floridians joined thousands of people Thursday at more than 1,600 locations across the country to protest against President Donald Trump’s controversial policies that include mass deportations, cuts to Medicaid and SNAP and actions that activists say will restrict voting rights.
The “Good Trouble Lives On” national day of action honors the late congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis. Protests were expected to be held along streets, at court houses and other public spaces. Organizers called for them to be peaceful.
Donna Gans and her neighbors Cathy and John Jacobs, all from Hollywood, were among nearly 100 people at the corner of University Drive and Southwest 33rd Street near the entrance to Nova Southeastern University about 4:30 p.m. Thursday.
John Jacobs said he worries that “if we don’t stand up,” things like protesting the government will no longer be a right.
Gans said her main motivation for protesting on the fifth anniversary of Lewis’ death is that she doesn’t want “a king as a president” and the Trump administration’s approach to immigration.
“He should not have all the power that he has. The Supreme Court is just right in his corner,” she said.
Joan Bechard, of Pembroke Pines, wore a poster board sign over her chest and neck, the message in the back a photo of Trump taking a swing with his golf club at a golf ball of the world. The front said: “He doesn’t care about you,” with a caricature of Trump spinning a globe with a frowning face on his finger.
She said the protest on Thursday specifically was important as someone who has long been inspired by Lewis. Her husband next to her wore a “good trouble” shirt that she had bought him in 2020.
Bechard works part-time at a pediatric ER in Broward and started choking up when talking about how she has lately seen immigrants dropping off young children at the ER door alone or communicating only by written notes when coming in for help, chilled by Trump’s immigration enforcements.
“It’s probably easier to name things I’m not concerned about,” Bechard said. “Women’s rights, immigrants being taken off the street. … No one’s checking him; he’s doing whatever he wants and there’s no balance. The executive power is getting stronger every day and there’s people that could be standing up that aren’t. People that know better.”
Passing drivers honked horns and one woman hung out of a passenger’s side window giving the thumbs-up sign.
State Rep. Robin Bartleman, a Democrat whose district includes southwestern Broward, addressed the crowd about the issue of voting rights in Florida, an issue Lewis staunchly protected.
“It’s going to be so difficult for us as everyday people to get our voices heard,” Bartleman said, citing new rules that require those who want to vote by mail to reapply each election cycle and efforts to change how amendments get on Florida ballots.
The Jacobses stood along the grassy swale holding signs similarly calling Trump a king. Both had careers in the Broward County school system and said the erosion of the education department were among their main concerns.
John Jacobs is a retired Miramar High School government teacher. He compared what he is seeing the Trump administration do with attacking media and in detaining immigrants to Hitler in Nazi Germany.
“The detentions with no due process for law. That’s just unheard of,” John Jacobs said.
says press is enemy of the people,” he said. “He’s gonna be eliminating certain broadcasts. I don’t think he’ll stop there.””]
Other South Florida events were planned in Boynton Beach, Coral Springs, Delray Beach, West Palm Beach and at Florida International University in Miami-Dade County.
Debbie Ledley and Monica Piasecki, both neighbors in Cooper City, made the signs they were holding together the night before. The signs were a collage of words that they brainstormed together: due process, fairness, compassion, decency, equality.
Both women spoke of concerns about Trump’s power given the Supreme Court’s rulings and said they’ve seen firsthand impacts of immigrants’ fear of ICE.
Major protests were planned in Chicago, Atlanta, St. Louis and Oakland, California.
Lewis first was elected to Congress in 1986. He died in 2020 at the age of 80 following an advanced pancreatic cancer diagnosis.
He was the youngest and last survivor of the Big Six civil rights activists, a group led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. In 1965, a 25-year-old Lewis led some 600 protesters in the Bloody Sunday march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Lewis was beaten by police, suffering a skull fracture.
Within days, King led more marches in the state, and President Lyndon Johnson pressed Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act that later became law.
“Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and redeem the soul of America,” Lewis said in 2020 while commemorating the 1965 voting rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.