Thousands of activists are gearing up in plazas and on street corners around the Bay Area and across the country today to support the impeachment of President Trump.
Just how many will show up remains uncertain, but signups for the 5:30 p.m. rally at Lytton Plaza in Palo Alto were cut off at 700 because “I didn’t want this to be so large it would spill out into the street” at rush hour, organizer Steve Rosenblum said.
Protesters are hoping Trump will be held accountable for asking the Ukrainian president to investigate political rival Joe Biden and his son when the House of Representatives votes on articles of impeachment Wednesday evening. Many are also hoping to turn out in force to rebuke Trump’s recent suggestions that Americans don’t care about the issue, scoffing at low TV ratings during the impeachment hearings and ridiculing congressional efforts as “impeachment light.”
“We know Trump has a fragile ego and cares about numbers,” said Heather Valentine, 40, who is organizing the San Jose rally at the corner of Stevens Creek and Winchester boulevards where Santana Row and Valley Fair shopping centers meet. “It’s the height of Christmas shopping and at rush hour, so it should attract a lot of attention.”
Across the country, more than 600 demonstrations, organized in part by MoveOn.org, were planned for this evening, with more than 200,000 signed up by mid-morning. In the greater Bay Area, from Hollister to Napa, more than two dozen rallies were planned. In San Francisco alone, more than 3,000 people have registered for the event in front of the Federal Building on 7th Street.
Along with rallies in Berkeley, Emeryville, Lafayette and Livermore, more than 1,000 have signed up for a demonstration at the Grand Lake Theater intersection in Oakland. A list of local protests can be found at MoveOn.org.
“We’ve had rule of law in this country for centuries and if we don’t insist that the president is not above the law, I think our Republic is doomed,” Rosenblum, a 65-year-old retired chemist from Palo Alto, said. “That’s why people are turning out.”
The rallies come after a sharp decline in take-it-to-the-streets activism sparked by Trump’s first year in office. This news organization on Tuesday highlighted the drop off in Trump-inspired protests: A survey of news clips found the number of organized Trump protests that brought at least hundreds of people to the streets has plummeted from 32 in 2017 to six in 2018 to just two this year.
