Vermont activist Nancy Braus recalls standing up and speaking out ever since she opposed the Vietnam War as a high schooler a half-century ago. But when Donald Trump won the presidency last fall, the now 71-year-old Guilford resident wondered if she should hit mute and move on.
“If it looks like people like me are being sent to prison camps,” the retired alternative bookseller wrote in a November Substack post, “I will leave the country, with great regrets.”
Braus was recently spotted waving to northbound drivers speeding up Interstate 91 at Brattleboro’s Exit 2. She wasn’t hitchhiking to Canada, however. Instead, she was joining a growing group of Vermonters demonstrating against the president and his policies in advance of roughly 1,000 local, state and national “Hands Off!” rallies set for Saturday.
“People are scared, people are angry, and people want to have a voice,” said Braus, holding a sign amid a steady stream of honking horns and an occasional hollered expletive. “Often when you’re protesting, the usual suspects show up. Here, there’s an incredible amount of people coming out of the woodwork.”
Braus is used to meeting up with 10 to 20 locals to push an occasional cause. Now she’s rallying with 100 to 200 others along the interstate and downtown streets two to three times a week.
“So many people I’ve never known to protest before are coming up to me and saying, ‘How do I get involved?’” Braus said. “That’s a sign of a real movement.”
That sentiment is echoed statewide. In Rutland, David Coppock typically demonstrates with 25 to 50 neighbors. On the last day of February, he stood amid a “Rutland Resists” crowd of more than 200.
“I’ve never seen people so motivated to make their voices heard,” the 69-year-old retiree said.
In Manchester, some 300 people held signs last month at a central Route 30 roundabout.
“This is democracy in action,” resident Jonathan Goldsmith, the Dos Equis beer spokesperson billed as “The Most Interesting Man in the World,” told the Manchester Journal.
In Wallingford, a bedroom community between Rutland and Manchester, people can’t remember any past local protests. Then resident Carol Tashie, spurred by a February telephone town hall featuring the state’s congressional delegation, launched weekly “Stand Up for Democracy” gatherings Saturdays at noon along Route 7.
“The first week, it was four of us,” Tashie said. “Now we have as many as almost 100.”
Organizers of Saturday’s “Hands Off!” rallies hope to generate participation rivaling the more than 1,000 Vermonters who protested Vice President JD Vance’s visit to the Sugarbush ski resort March 1 or the 34,000 people who listened to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., oppose Trump in Denver, Colorado, March 21.
But because scheduled protests in at least two dozen Green Mountain communities aren’t advertising on the same platform — they’re scattered on websites including handsoff2025.com, 50501vermont.com, indivisible.org and mobilize.us — organizers can’t easily report the exact number of local events, state attendance estimates or the number of Vermonters traveling to the national rally in Washington, D.C.
(They are united in expressing “a commitment to nonviolent action,” noting online that “we expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values, and to act lawfully.”)
A Montpelier event Saturday at noon on the Statehouse lawn is promoting speakers including U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-VT, former Gov. Madeleine Kunin, Lt. Gov. John Rodgers and state Treasurer Mike Pieciak.
A Burlington event Saturday at noon outside City Hall isn’t offering a formal program but instead a place for locals who can’t travel to the state or national capitals, organizers said.
A Brattleboro event Saturday at 11:30 a.m. at the Centre Congregational Church and noon at the Common is promising hometown U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-VT.
Braus, for her part, is set to travel up the interstate to join fellow “people like me” in Montpelier. But she plans on returning to Brattleboro rather than continue northward to Canada.
“I think April 5 has a lot of potential,” Braus said of the day’s rallies. “I’m going to stay here and fight.”
