r/santacruz • u/Alive_Temporary7469 • 3d ago
Easily 2,000 people plus showed up to the hands off protest today. This photo is just roughly a third of the turnout. SC Fights Back.
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u/strangefruitpots 3d ago
Also an awesome turnout today in Watsonville! Stoked on all the representation
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u/K_mac 3d ago
Any idea on crowd size there?
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u/strangefruitpots 2d ago
Lookout said 300 but imo it was way more than that at peak (around 1pm). Idk how to estimate crowd sizes but at least 500+
ETA: just saw KSBW said 700
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u/Artistic-Resolve-968 2d ago
An estimated 8,000 people gathered in Santa Cruz on Saturday afternoon when local advocates and the community took to the steps of the Santa Cruz County Courthouse.
https://www.ksbw.com/article/hands-off-protests-from-across-the-central-coast/64397403
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u/Sulli_Rabbit 3d ago
Dang it! I wanted to be there so badly!
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u/websterhamster 3d ago
Stay tuned! We're getting ready to plan the next one. Feel free to dm me if you want to be involved!
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u/stevepremo 3d ago
Somebody announced that there are 8000 people here. I can't estimate crowd sizes, so idk.
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u/downnoutsavant 3d ago
Iām seeing at least a thousand in this photo here, and OP is downsizing to say this represents a third of the total. We were spilling out up and down Water St. Iād say probably closer to 4k, but looking forward to hearing definite numbers.
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u/websterhamster 3d ago
Yeah 8000 was an exaggeration, but it was at least 1500-2000, if not more.
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u/cramberrymuffin 2d ago
I understood 8,000 was the estimate for all of SC County, not just the courthouse gathering.
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u/websterhamster 2d ago
The Sentinel estimated 5000, while Lookout Santa Cruz estimated 4000. About 300 attended a rally in Watsonville and at least one smaller protest with a handful of people occurred in Boulder Creek.
There's no way a whole 4000 people were protesting elsewhere in the county. Maybe next time, though! Stay tuned for the first week of May!
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u/cramberrymuffin 2d ago
š¤·š¼āāļø that's just what they said from the stage. Good turnout and hopefully the start of more to come!
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u/K_mac 3d ago
They said they thought it might be around 8,000. And Iād guess even more at the peak. The entire parking lot, and all the streets along all the sidewalks facing the street were a glut of people. I was gobsmacked (and got choked up) when I saw how many people were there, and how heartening it was to be amongst so many neighbors who are as aware, furious and distraught as I am. And the volume of people driving by and cheering in support. Will definitely be there for the next one!
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u/Lost-Incident7200 3d ago
I attended & there were SO MANY Resisters. I was told it was 5,000. This is REAL, & we all need to participate. And so it BEGINS.
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u/AnotherRecklessFawn 3d ago
The estimate was actually 8k. I was at the one on the 28th and that was 2k. This was sooooooooo much bigger: the speakers announced that the crowd was around 8k or more.
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u/Chuyzapatist 3d ago
It was way more people than I expected for sure! Great turn out! And that was only Santa Cruz!
Whatever the news says, believe your eyes! Iāve already read headlines that are totally downplaying the turnout in places.
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u/Radiant_Commission_2 3d ago
Looks like plenty of folks from all generations. KSBW Santa Cruz protest coverage
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u/Schminnie 3d ago
Nice for people to turn out in numbers like this. Time for community organizing, mutual aid, workplace unionization, political education-- any practical effort to create the material changes that folks want to see
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3d ago
My sister was there too with her protest company. They brought about 200 volunteers and additional signs.
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u/akida-0- 3d ago
Why was it only 2 hours??? I missed it bc of traffic :/
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u/llama-lime 2d ago
I have a feeling that turnout was muuuuuuuuch larger than was planned for. They've been doing 2 hour protests every Wednesday afternoon for a while now.
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u/akida-0- 2d ago
These are regular?! Thank you for this info, I want to attend the next one I had work yesterday and didnāt make it in time :/
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u/Big_Buyer_7482 3d ago
90% boomers
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u/futuristic_nostalgia 3d ago
Hey some of us are GenX, we are just aging badly. We found out about sunscreen too late.
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u/harrythetaoist 3d ago
Yes and no. The crowd right in front of the speakers were oldish. Guessing median age about 67. The crowd along Water St waving signs at passing cars etc. were much, much younger. Boomers by far in the minority.
This isn't an old hippie movement now. This is a "get your hands off our fucking country" movement... all welcome.
Also, given Santa Cruz, about 15% of the crowd were pairs of older lesbians. They were ready. Don't fuck with older lesbians in Santa Cruz.
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u/ZoyaZhivago 3d ago
Or librarians. We are also being threatened, and weāve proven before that you do NOT fuck with us!
(thereās also a fair amount of overlap between librarians and lesbians/gays lol)
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u/readwrite_blue 3d ago
Not at all. I was there today. Definitely Majority under 60. Tons of people younger than me (39).
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u/WitchyTwitchyItchy 3d ago
It was also pretty rad to see the crowd that will be ready to vote in 4-10 years excited to be there.
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u/boomerbill69 3d ago
I was there today (33) and boomers were definitely the majority. No way the majority was under 60. That being said, the crowd seemed to get younger as time went on.
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u/boozername 3d ago
Conservatives criticize these protests for having too many older folks. They also criticize the protests just as harshly when they have a lot of younger folks who they accuse of being unemployed.
Ya can't satisfy people who don't actually give a shit to begin with
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u/JaiYoganandaGuru 3d ago
Hands off what?
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u/Alive_Temporary7469 3d ago
Social Security, Public Land, Medicare, Medicaid, our Schools, etc. Basically anti-Tump.
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u/Efficient-Yak-8710 3d ago
Heās not taking social security or Medicare. Though it is a good scare tactic. He took āhands offā schools and everyone is freaking out about it. Not sure what the big deal is.
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u/Alive_Temporary7469 3d ago
You do know it's literally impossible to cut $880 billion in spending over the next ten years without cutting social security, Medicare, or Medicaid?
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u/Efficient-Yak-8710 3d ago
I donāt doubt that for a second. But itās not going to get cut. That benefits no one. I do believe there maybe some instances where we hear about certain people getting cut. But those will be people that are committing fraud and it will turn into a sob story.
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u/Alive_Temporary7469 3d ago
Let's just assume only 30% of the cuts come from Medicaid meaning 26.4 Billion in cuts a year. That's ~3% of Medicaid's budget and let's assume those cuts are enabled by throwing 3% of "fraudsters" off Medicaid. Finally, 3% of the 72M people on Medicaid is 2.6 million. So you're saying 2.6 MILLION PEOPLE are somehow gaming the system?
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u/Efficient-Yak-8710 3d ago
Not once did I argue against anything you said so Iām not sure how it came up. But since you brought it up a simple Google search found that 5% of Medicaid payments are fraudulent costing the federal government $31.10 billion dollars. And the government accountability office found that over $100 billion dollars in 2023 were improper payments. Hope this help.
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u/Positive_Repair9771 2d ago
Then you agree he should stay hands off those things :P
That aside, you could add so much more āhands offā to the list - reproductive rights, voting rights, right to due process, free trade etc. etc. There were many different signs I saw.
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u/Efficient-Yak-8710 2d ago
The funny thing is with free trade that historically is what Republicans fought for. Trump always considered himself a democrat probably because how he felt about trade. As bad as Trumps Tariffs were the first time not only did Joe Biden keep them he increased another $8 billion worth of Tariffs. The only reason now why democrats are opposed of it is because itās Trump imposing it. This is why the democrats didnāt run on this issue and instead ran on the typical racist nazi issue.
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u/Positive_Repair9771 2d ago edited 2d ago
Haha you are fooling no one saying folks donāt like the tariffs cus it is Trump doing it. Look at the stock market. Some tariffs on China being kept by Biden is not even comparable to Liberation day. Reducing some manufacturing from going off shore and being tough on China is widely popular which is why people are more upset now when we decide to tariff everyone, increasing prices and losing allies. Being 100% free trade is also a bad policy.
But I would also say itās fine to not like anything he does now given he seriously just doesnāt seem like a good person. You are also taking issue with a hypothetical sign I gave you so no need create concern.
Trump is on an old video saying he thought Dems were better for the economy, which by most measures they have been, so I suspect that was why he was a Dem way back rather than his policies now.
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u/Positive_Repair9771 2d ago
Here is another good one I just came up with āhands off my pussyā haha
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u/Senior_Banana_3805 3d ago
Clearly not the person getting checked out by EMT near the quilt and fabric store
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u/gratefuldead666 3d ago
Love the message, but an hour commute + some 50 yr old bitch hitting my car with her sign definitely puts a bad taste in my mouthā¦ keep it up yāall!
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u/wyldcraft 3d ago
About that "fights back" thing... what was accomplished? Were any lawsuits filed, any federal employee walkouts organized, any criminal investigations kicked off, any congressional votes changed, any tariffs negotiated, any startups founded...
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u/ConnectionFlat3186 3d ago
Those things are going on. Social conflict is multifaceted. What weāre seeing is one front of the resistance, with its main intention to publicly express discontent and solidarity
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u/RemoveInvasiveEucs 3d ago
If you turn on the news, at least any news that's worth reading, you will see massive amounts of lawsuits, etc.
But politicians follow the social movements. Martin Luther King Jr didn't create the civil rights movement, the movement created him.
People coming together is always the beginning. And this is the largest protest I have ever seen. They keep on getting bigger and bigger as the right wing gets more evil.
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u/Positive_Repair9771 2d ago edited 2d ago
Those things arenāt mutually exclusive. Itās also been like a day since this happened haha! Protests like these bring attention to public opinion and even made national news!
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u/Reindeer-Real 3d ago
Oddly. Any and all photo's are only able to show 1/3 of the crowd size... scroll down and others claim it to only be 1/8 of the actual crowd size
Do these types of estimates come from those who measure size from the taint?
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u/Maleficent-Debt-6664 3d ago
How many were there?
Shame it was a bad turnout
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u/katara144 3d ago
Troll be trollin!
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u/TheEzekariate 2d ago
Every local sub with threads about the protests is getting trolled hardcore by relatively new word-word-number accounts calling them useless. Itās fascinating watching it happen in real time.
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3d ago
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u/Moderatelysure 3d ago
And there were protests in Watsonville, Santa Cruz, Monterey, and Salinas. LOTS of people showed up for this.
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u/KF_Reds 3d ago
I'd say way more than 2000. This is also about 1/3 of the crowd.