Scenes from the Concord and Nashua protests.
Across New Hampshire, tens of thousands of citizens took to the streets on June 14 in over two dozen communities to demonstrate their dismay with the second Trump administration. In Concord, the first protest organized in February attracted about 200 people. On Saturday, an estimated 8 to 10 thousand people protested.
In Nashua, a crowd of more than 3,000 covered the Soldiers and Sailors Monument Park and lined Amherst, Concord, and Main streets for blocks in each direction. The protesters waved to the passing traffic and engaged with each other for two hours under cloudy skies.
The crowds displayed a range of homemade signs and placards presenting a variety of concerns and issues, some with humor and many quite somber. The mood was serious, determined, and tinged with a trace of fear.
Chris Buckley from Loudon was quite emotional when she described her motivation for protesting in Concord, saying. “I’m pretty angry. It’s not so much what he’s doing; it’s how quickly and how savagely he’s doing it. He needs to respect people. He doesn’t have respect for us. And we matter.”
Also in Concord, a woman from Danville was afraid to provide her name for fear of repercussions from Trump followers. She said she had never been a protester until Trump returned to office. She has come to each of the 50501 events in Concord since then. Her concerns are for the democracy and her Medicaid-dependent disabled sibling.
“I believe that Trump is destroying this country. I believe that he doesn’t care about anybody but himself, and that the people that he has in office are just a bunch of ‘yes’ robots, and they’re made of ice themselves, the way they carry on,” she said.
Another protester, also reluctant to be identified, said, “Honestly, right now, I’m afraid. I read something by Elie Wiesel years ago. And he said, it’s not the people that stood up. It’s not the people who did bad things. It’s the people in the middle who did nothing. So I don’t want to live with the fact that I did nothing. And that’s what’s keeping me coming out here. Because I have to stand up for my country and my child and her freedom.”
Congressman Chris Pappas (NH-01) stopped into the Nashua protest. Commenting on the events occurring across the country, he said, “They want an opportunity to show what this country is truly all about. Today is Flag Day; that flag represents all Americans. It represents our deeply held values about democracy of, by, and for the people. And they see ways that the Trump administration is amassing power, corrupting power for his own purposes. We’ve got to stand up for what’s right and remember what this country was founded on.”
In Nashua, a self-identified transgender schoolteacher also afraid to be photographed and identified, said, “I see the way that the laws that are being passed right now affect my students, their privacy, their rights every day. And I also see the way that it’s affecting not just my queer students, but my students who are immigrants who have a right to an education in this country and should not have to go to school in fear every day that they are there”
Nashua neighbors Gale Gibyb and Alice McRae were first-time protestors. McRae said she attended because, “The rights of our people and for everything that’s going on in this world right now that we don’t understand. And it’s going to get worse, not better.”
“I’m a Gold Star family member. And I had two parents in the Navy. They’re both gone now. And I have a brother, M-I-A-P-O-W, Vietnam. And I worked for the VA most of my life. So, for me, what was happening in L.A. with the military and the parade today, it just something snapped,” said Gibyb, “It broke my heart. If I don’t get up now, when will I ever? I’ve been knocked down for a long time and kept silent about a lot of stuff because I’ve gotten nowhere with finding out about things with the government. But this, I just couldn’t stay silent anymore.”
Local activist Keith Thompson helped organize the Nashua “NO KINGS” event. Surveying the crowd covering the memorial park and on the streets, he expressed his satisfaction with the organizing effort, saying, “I am happy about how many people of all ages came out in Nashua today to protest peacefully.”
