The Hands Off Protest in Portland was Galvanizing and Effective--and Much More than "Inchoate."

Image: “Hands Off” protest in downtown Portland, Oregon, April 5, 2025

This morning, I read a journalistic account of yesterday’s Hands Off protest in Washington, D.C., entitled, “The Cardboard-Carrying Opposition Arrives.” Published in The Atlantic and written by Elaine Godfrey, the article carried a slightly negative implication, reflected in its subtitle: “The ‘Hands Off’ protest in Washington, D.C., drew thousands of people with a lot of feelings–but as-yet-inchoate anger at the Trump administration.”  

To me, the article suggested that the protest was an emotionally satisfying expression of outrage for participants yet not much more, as if the main story of the protest was about the glass being half empty rather than half full. 

But my wife and I took part in the Hands Off rally and march in downtown Portland, and we had a different take on the protest than Ms. Godfrey’s impression of the rally in D.C. We came away with a glass half full, not half empty, feeling. The Portland protest, which attracted many thousands of people, struck us as not only an emotionally galvanizing experience but a well-formed part of a network of positive developments in a nationwide repudiation of Trumpism and fight for democratic ideals. 

I’d like to share five reasons why Portland’s protest, which I imagined was reasonably typical of others around the country, seemed to be important and effective and not merely a diffuse outlet for anger. 

The first reason was about the speakers, most of whom represented a new generation of leaders in our city. There’s so much talk in the Democratic party about the need for new faces with new energy and new ideas, especially those outside of Washington, D.C., and most of the speakers at the rally met these criteria inspiringly well. 

For example, one of the early speakers was Sandy Chung, the youthful, but broadly experienced Executive Director of ACLU Oregon. Sandy spoke of her own family’s fight for democracy in her native country, South Korea, in the 1980s, and what their reverence for democratic values meant to her immigrant family as they settled in Portland, created a small business, and found their footing in their adopted country. In a clear, strong, and energizing brief speech, Sandy showed that the Hands Off protest was about much more than releasing outrage. It was about acting upon our collective commitment to the ideals and institutions of our pluralist democracy. Yes, Sandy expressed anger at the Trump regime’s betrayal of our values. But her speech was also an invitation to join legislative initiatives and civic organizations that are strategically advancing those values. 

Another speaker I’ll mention was Tiffany Koyama Lane, one of two Asian Americans recently elected to serve on the Portland City Council, the first Asian Americans ever to hold that office. Tiffany spoke of what the American Dream meant to her Japanese-American family and what it meant to have that dream denied during World War II, when her grandparents were held in an internment camp for Japanese-Americans merely because they had a Japanese background. She spoke of the pride her family had in farming the land in Oregon before the war, and the threat to that pride when they were cast aside in the camp. But marginalization and indignity were not the end points of her family’s experience. Her grandparents and parents forged a new life, and Tiffany benefited from the resilience and perseverance that they showed and the opportunities that Oregon provided. She was a proud public school teacher and union organizer and a proud mother who saw promise in her children’s future. Her appearance at the Hands Off protest was not an isolated act of outrage at Trump but an expression of her long-term commitment to help make the world a better place.

I was not expecting to find such inspiration in the speakers’ words. I had come to the protest to show my support and to find solidarity in a collective show of resistance to Trumpism. But the speakers exceeded my original expectations by offering important substance, moving personal stories, and a tie-in to our city government and to organizations like ACLU Oregon that were building on the same wellspring of hope and dedication that was powering the protest.

The Democrats' search for authenticity is not so elusive. I’ve read many times since Kamala Harris’s defeat that one of the big problems facing the Democratic Party is that its leaders don’t seem to relate authentically to everyday Americans, that they often talk like they are mouthing words fed to them by political consultants and professional image-curators. What most people want, this line of thinking goes, is to see what truly matters to political leaders and to know with confidence what those leaders will stand on and fight for if they hold office. In other words, they want leaders who have integrity, who say and act on what they believe and don’t filter their message according to what polls or pundits say is politically attractive. The Democrats’ authenticity problem is that too many in leadership positions come across as phony and untrustworthy to a large number of voters. 

None of the speakers at the protest suffered in the slightest from an authenticity problem. I didn’t agree with every position that the speakers gave voice to, but the Democratic Party and the resistance to Trump need not be a pure block of unanimity on all the issues of the day. What seems more important is that leaders are clear about what they believe in and embody those beliefs in their words and actions. The leaders who spoke at the Portland rally did just that. 

Yes, there were signs showing resistance on multiple fronts, but that didn’t mean that the resistance was too diffuse. In her piece in The Atlantic, Godfrey wrote, “On the Mall, it was difficult to pinpoint a chief complaint or singular demand. Hands off what, exactly? I asked.”

In Portland, I took several photos of the colorful and often creative signs that were everywhere to be seen and in which ranged in focus from opposition to DOGE attacks on the Civil Service, the gutting of federal agencies, the abandonment of our veterans, the threats to Social Security and Medicaid, the bullying of universities, law firms, and the media, the betrayal of Ukraine and our Western allies, the oligarchic corruption that is running wild under Trump’s dominion, the imperialist designs on Greenland and Panama, the reversing of longstanding efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption and safeguard the future of our planet, to say nothing of the chaotic tariff spasms that are producing the single most alarming economic moment in modern American history.

But I didn’t find myself looking for a “chief complaint or singular demand” because, to me, the Trump regime is a total disaster. It’s not just a bad approach to one or two facets of life. It’s bad across the board, to people, institutions, and alliances, and is crushing long-held democratic norms and widely shared ethical values. It seemed to me completely appropriate to witness at the protest a wide range of fears and concerns about Trump’s rule. 

We don’t need to coalesce as a movement or a political party around just one or two problems. We have organizations that zero in on particular sets of issues, as they should. But we needn’t expect such a narrowing of focus in mass protests at Trump’s all-encompassing destruction agenda.

Hands Off was not a one-off event. The protest might appear at first glance to have been a singular event disconnected from a larger resistance movement.  But I think it’s noteworthy that the rallies took place about the same time that other organized efforts to oppose the Trump regime were moving forward, especially in the courts. For example, as reported in the NY Times, federal judges recently barred the Trump administration from carrying out a retaliation campaign against law firms that participated in investigations of him. More broadly, Vox reported that nearly 140 lawsuits have challenged Trump’s executive actions so far, and the courts have already blocked, in whole or in part, many of those actions, including his ban on transgender military service members, his executive order ending birthright citizenship, and his attempts to deport people without due process of law. 

While the Hands Off protests were not focused on specific legal actions or concrete policy objectives, this didn’t seem to be a weakness of the protests. I don’t think that was their purpose. I believe the rallies reinforced and complemented other acts of opposition even if they weren’t directly coordinated with them.

Further, Hands Off helped show that Trump cannot bully the populace into submission. Just as Cory Booker carried the fire of Democratic opposition in his unprecedented 25-hour speech on the Senate floor, so, too, did the Hands Off rallies demonstrate that a huge swath of the American electorate is willing to stand up and be counted in this historical fight to preserve what is most precious in our public and civic life.

Finally, the gathering of communities of protest after the big rally may have expanded the resistance even further. One of our dear friends, an especially generous soul and lifelong educator, reserved a suite in a hotel very close to the site of the protest in Portland. The suite served as a staging ground for her friends and associates who were participating in the rally and a gathering spot after the rally, with ample refreshments to recharge after hours of political engagement. Of course, I don’t know if people like our friend showed up at other protests around the country to sponsor post-rally meetings. But I hope that this was the case, because my wife and I benefited from the meeting in the post-protest group that we were a part of. We met new people from different walks of life and with different life experiences from our own but who held common social and political values. They also happened to be notably friendly, gracious, and interested in making connections that might further our collective commitments. 

For my wife and me, the big protest paved the way nicely for this more intimate engagement with political ideas and possibilities. The small gathering was another illustration of the meaning the Hands Off protest held beyond what might have been immediately obvious.  

I hope that readers who also participated in Hands Off protests on April 5, either in the Portland metro region or elsewhere in the country, will share in the Comments section their own perspective on the protest.