By Sunayana Prabhu
RED BANK – Undeterred by the rainy and chilly Saturday afternoon, nearly 2,000 protesters flooded Riverside Gardens Park to participate in the Hands Off! Red Bank, NJ Fight Back! rally, part of a nationwide protest April 5. Protestors condemned several federal policies initiated by President Donald Trump and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla.
The weather hovered between low- to mid-40 degrees with a steady rain as a diverse crowd – from seniors to children – assembled peacefully at the park while displaying an array of signs expressing issues of concern to them.
“I would rather have stayed home in my warm house, but it was important to show up and be counted,” said Suzanne Shur, a retired nurse and resident of Middletown. “It was important to show up and be counted.”
Participants raised their voices to condemn the current administration’s policies on women’s rights, Medicaid, immigrant rights, education, tariffs and several constitutional concerns, standing up against nearly “all of the president’s executive orders,” Shur said. Noting recent federal layoffs, she added that the administration has been “firing people who are experienced and hiring people who are not even qualified for positions and making policy decisions that really don’t make any sense for us. I just don’t agree with any of that.”
She also called out Trump’s appointees for cabinet positions, a feeling echoed by at least one other protester at the event whose sign read: “Ikea Has Better Cabinets.”
Hundreds of signs addressed the scope of issues important to protestors, like “Hands Off Public Education,” “Hands Off Diversity” and “Stop The Billionaire Agenda,” while others poked fun at Musk (“Beware of the DOGe,” seen hanging on a dog) and Trump’s charitable dealings with Vladimir Putin (“I Can See Russia From The White House”).
While individual citizens might “feel powerless,” Shur said, collective action sends a powerful message to elected representatives. “We need the congressmen and the representatives and the senators to know because we elected them, Democrat or Republican.”
Shur said she wanted to “encourage anybody that voted for Trump to wake up and see that he does not have our best interests at heart.”
According to the numbers reported by Hand Off! organizers on their website, “Millions of people flooded the streets” worldwide April 5. More than 1,300 peaceful Hands Off! protests were held across the U.S. (at least one in all 50 states) and some globally.
Amid a lively scene of honking car horns, colorful post-ers and calls-for-action from nurses, students, teachers, parents, veterans and others, a 16-year-old student from Red Bank Regional High School shared his personal story.
In addition to his own family, Victor said “approximately 42.1 million people nationwide” will be impacted by budget cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a federal nutrition assistance program that provides food benefits to low-income families to purchase groceries and access free school meals. He said the recent federal cuts to SNAP reduced his family’s monthly benefits from $300 to $25. “I could see the worry on my mom’s face.”
Victor is now working with U.S. Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) to oppose federal cuts to SNAP for everyone who had to choose “between a meal and medication, for all the kids that grew up well fed while their malnourished parents ignored their own needs.”
“Do not let anyone take away your voice. It is the most powerful thing you have, and you need to use it,” he said.
Several elected officials who attended the rally called for continued public engagement in politics. Hands Off! is the second rally in Red Bank this year, following the International Women’s Day march last month organized by Red Bank Deputy Mayor Kate Triggiano. Almost 1,500 people showed up for that event.
Triggiano, megaphone in hand, attended the Saturday rally, along with U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-6), Assemblywoman Luanne Peterpaul (D-11) and many social and climate activists.
“Trump is a criminal,” Pallone said while addressing the rally, arguing that the president’s primary motivation is financial gain. “The only thing he exists for day to day is to make more money to monetize everything, to monetize the federal government, so we can put more money in his pocket.”
The economy “is falling apart. We’re almost in a recession. There’s a possibility of a depression because of his Americans,” Pallone told protestors.
The League of Women Voters was one of the national co-sponsors of the Hands Off! Rally, among almost 200 advocacy groups such as Planned Parenthood, National Education Society, New York Jewish Agenda, National Treasury Employees Union, Win Without War, Women’s March. There were “more than 20 Hands Off! rallies” happening simultaneously across New Jersey, said Evelyn Murphy, president of the League of Women Voters Monmouth County, during the rally.
“We’re here because we’re facing a national crisis. Our democracy is under attack. Our Constitution is under attack,” Murphy said. The administration in Washington has launched an “unprecedented power grab,” she claimed, “led by a president and his unelected co-president.”
In “just 75 days,” Murphy said, the current administration has torn “the fabric of our country.” “They’re terrorizing our immigrant communities, attacking trans people… They’re undermining our economy with worldwide tariffs… They’re taking a chainsaw to our infrastructure and battering down the doors of actual agencies to get inside. They’re exposing our military, our national intelligence community to enemy attack.”
“They’re putting all of us at risk,” she said.
Allison McLeod, deputy director of the New Jersey League of Conservation, an organization that advocates for a clean energy future, told the gathering to “keep speaking up. Keep standing up for our democracy, for our neighbors, for our health care, for our climate and for our future because when we fight, we win, and we have to tell Donald Trump, Elon Musk and all of his cronies, ‘Hands Off!’ ”
The article originally appeared in the April 10 – 16, 2025 print edition of The Two River Times.
