I saw a TV news report that said FiftyFiftyOne and Indivisible Twin Cities, organizers of the April 5, 2025 Hands Off protest rally, estimated the crowd size at 14,000. That estimate feels accurate to me. I was there, handing out business cards with a QR code pointing to a link to my blog post about why I was there.
The business card idea hit me early that morning. I had read that the organizers wanted attendees to think about their reasons for attending. This sounded like a good idea to me. So, the evening before the rally, I made a blog post with my reasons. Since I had the blog post, why not share it? Maybe I could make a few flyers with a link and hand them out. But flyers are bulky. Nobody wants to carry pieces of paper around at a protest rally. Well, what about a custom business card with a QR code? So I found a website that made a free QR code, grabbed the image, whipped up a custom business card, and brought my PDF to FedEx Kinkos. I returned home about half an hour later with ninety-six business cards. And then I grabbed breakfast and headed to the protest rally.
People deal with anxiety differently. I try to use that fight-or-flight adrenaline to make me sharp and take action. If I’m honest, anxiety really drove my business card adventure this morning, not any wise grand vision. But still, the cards turned out nicely. And I passed out a bunch of them.
Going in, I wasn’t sure where to park. Five years after George Floyd, would this rally turn ugly? Should I expose my car to a wave of vandalism? So, in the days leading up to the rally, I spent hours scouring ideas for parking far away and riding in on the LRT. Or maybe parking a couple miles away and walking. I also emptied my wallet before leaving home, so if anyone mugged me, I wouldn’t have much to steal. At the last minute driving in, I decided to just park in a nearby parking lot that had room but was filling fast. Good call. The walk to and from my car was not a big deal.
I parked and headed toward the Capitol, a couple blocks away. The first people I met brought two black Labrador Retrievers with them. The dogs gave me a bunch of kisses, which soothed my nerves. Nothing like happy dogs at a protest rally to make humans feel better. I was more than an hour early and watched people of all sizes and shapes stream in. Some carried babies, some were not much older than babies, some sat in wheelchairs, some needed walkers, some brought their pets, many carried signs. I snapped a bunch of sign pictures.
Somebody at a table on the way in worked furiously with spray-paint, a stencil, and paper to make and hand out free signs. People lined up for the free signs. Volunteers wearing orange vests helped guide people in. Others in green vests mingled. Some carried megaphones. Banks of porta-potties lined the perimeter.
I walked around all over the site as people filled the space and the program got underway. And that’s why I found myself half-way up the Capitol stairs and was unable to hear the speeches at first – because I was behind the human and audio speakers, facing the crowd in front. Here is a video showing the crowd size.
I didn’t care about listening to speeches. I wanted to find out how the rally felt. The rally felt just fine. Everyone was friendly and polite. The temperature was in the low 40s. It was windy and sunny. I’m bald and sunburns hurt, so I wear caps on sunny days. I have a bunch of red hats that say Red Hat on the front. But MAGA hats are red, and wearing a red hat to this rally seemed like a bad idea, so I wore my grandson’s white hat that said, “God loves everyone” on the front. A few people complemented it. One lady asked if my business card had anything religious on it. No. Just a QR code with a link to my reasons for being here.
During and after Senator Amy Klobuchar’s speech, I worked my way down the Capitol steps to a position to the right of the speakers and caught some of the speeches. A teacher talked about cuts to children’s education, a biologist talked about cuts to graduate science programs, a speaker talked about a Chilean company polluting the Boundary Waters. There were others.
I liked St. Paul Mayor, Melvin Carter’s, message the best. He said not to meet MAGA hate with hate. Know your reasons for being here, be angry about it, but meet hate with courtesy. After a couple more speakers, they closed with a singalong. At a protest rally. Thousands of people locked arms and sang a song together. I captured part of it.
I’m glad I attended. But we have work to do. That evening, a Facebook friend and I jousted. Jeff’s attitude is typical from the MAGA crowd, even though he claims he’s not part of it. Follow the dialog if you want in my public Facebook thread about the Hands Off protest rally. I’ll post a link to this blog post in the Facebook thread.
I need to work on following St. Paul Mayor, Melvin Carter’s, advice about always staying cordial.
Jeff called rally attenders and me communists. He’s wrong, but he forced me to think about how the Hands Off movement should appeal to people like me. I first added my thoughts here, but they grew into their own blog post. So, thanks, Jeff. See what I did there? Meet snark with courtesy and try to make it productive. Follow Melvin Carter’s advice.
In this Trump era, let’s make America great again by making America, America again.
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