Holding high a sign reading “Democracy Dies in Silence! Resist,” Janet Wolf said she fears for America’s future under President Donald Trump and a Republican Congress.
“I’m here because the Republican Congress is taking away our rights. Nobody’s going to do anything until they’re affected and then it’s too late,” Wolf said.
Wolf, 55, of La Grange Park, stood at the corner of Ogden and Spring avenues in La Grange around 1:30 p.m. Sunday. Many motorists honked horns in support.
She was among the thousands – organizers estimated 18,000 – who participated in Hands Across Chicagoland from noon to 2 p.m. Sunday along a 30-mile stretch from Aurora to Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood. They lined Ogden Avenue in the suburbs and 26th Street in the city. There were areas with no protesters, and areas with hundreds between Lisle and La Grange.
Wolf is especially “afraid of Elon Musk and the access he has to information.” Musk has been Trump’s right-hand man in charge of cutting alleged wasteful spending by the government.
One block east, at the corner of Kensington and Ogden avenues, La Grange resident Paul Miller listened as a Trump supporter stopped at a red light hurled insults at protestors, calling them “idiots.”
Miller, 71, called that reaction “overly aggressive,” but remained glad he came out to make a stand.
“My father is 100. He can’t be here today. I’m sending him videos of this,” he said.
A history major who graduated in 1975 from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Miller decried what he saw as “presidential incompetence.”
“What he’s doing is bullying. Everything he does is based on some kind of schoolyard tactic he’s managed to get away with. He’s got some kind of diamond coating on him,” he said.
His wife, Sally Miller, 73, and her friend Laureen Dunne, 71, of Westchester, held signs on the north side of Ogden.
“We are making an impact,” Sally Miller said, adding that she’s also participated in protests at Tesla dealerships.
Dunne said she protests weekly because “if you’re not resisting, you’re assisting.”
“Week by week, it’s growing and growing,” said Dunne, who protested the Vietnam War in her younger days.
Earlier Sunday, Bill Davis, 79, of Arlington Heights, was all smiles as he stood around noon near a 34-foot tall inflatable chicken at the corner of Yender and Ogden avenues in Lisle.
“The first time it ever went up was about two weeks ago up in Northbrook next to a Tesla dealer. We were by the Edens Expressway and (traffic) on the Edens slowed down to almost a stop,” Davis said. “It was really cool.”
He thinks protests like Hands Across Chicagoland “will impact the White House” and Congress.
“In two years, we’re going to change Congress. Slowly but surely, we’re changing things,” he said. “Trump is doing a fine job screwing up. Omaha got its first Democratic mayor ever. That’s been happening around the country. Big elections, like the Wisconsin Supreme Court, nobody thought the (Democratic candidate) would win by 17 points,” Davis said.
Contsance Cameron, retired from her job teaching English literature at Waukegan High School, held two signs. One read “Putin’s Puppet.” The other read “Honk for Democracy” and a long line of motorcyclists heading west did just that.
Cameron was at the protest because she is worried about the future for her “two wonderful grandchildren.”
“I don’t want them to grow up in a Donald Trump America,” the “70-something” Cameron said. “This is terrifying. It’s not the America I grew up in.
“He’s taking away all of the things that make America good. He’s taking away respect for institutions. He’s taking away our system of justice, the social safety net. He’s taking away being able to get along with each other,” she said.
Trump supporters have “been given permission slips to be terrible and disrespectful and obnoxious,” she said.
Moments later, as if on cue, a parade of vehicles — mostly pickup trucks and SUVs with Trump and MAGA placards and stickers and American flags waving – drove east on Ogden with drivers and passengers honking horns and shouting jeers at the protesters.
Several elected officials, including U.S. Reps. Bill Foster, D-11th, and Robin Kelly, D-2nd, spoke words of encouragement to those gathered near the inflatable chicken in Lisle.
Foster, who said he hears rumblings of dissatisfaction among some GOP lawmakers, wore a red tie with physics formulas that he called “a subversive message to Trump.”
Events like Sunday will impact independent voters, he said.
“Different sets of independent voters get upset for different reasons,” Foster said.
“When they saw the United States vote with Russia, with China, with Iran, with North Korea and against the freedom fighters of Ukraine, they just cannot understand where President Trump is leading the country,” he said.
Those running small businesses damaged by tariffs and those angry that grocery prices remain high may turn on Trump, he said.
Sunday’s event had 23 sponsors including the Illinois Federation of Teachers and Indivisible Illinois, said Reid McCollum, chair of the Democratic Party of DuPage County, one of the sponsors.
“The goal is to make it clear there’s a growing movement to oppose, through peaceful protests, the authoritarian actions that our president keeps taking,” he said.
McCollum was pleased with the turnout.
“This was purely Chicago. I hope other cities do something like this,” he said around 5 p.m. Sunday.
Grassroots organizations including Indivisible Naperville are planning protests for June 14, he said.
That’s been dubbed “No Kings Day,” a thinly veiled shot at Trump’s plan for a military parade in Washington D.C. on his 79th birthday. According to indivisible.org, more than 100 events are already planned nationwide on June 14.
Sunday was peaceful with no reported violence, McCollum said.
However, a small skirmish did break out around 2 p.m. at Ogden and Kensington avenues in La Grange.
A man wearing a bright red T-shirt began yelling at protestors as they left, telling them to “go protest somewhere else” and “this is a residential neighborhood.”
He began arguing with a Tinley Park man. They shoved each other before cooler heads prevailed.
Steve Metsch is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.