Today, people across Atlanta gathered in Walton Spring Park to speak out against the agenda of President Donald Trump during his inauguration. This Atlanta-based rally eventually merged with the annual Martin Luther King Day Parade.
“We organized this event today because we wanted to initiate the fight back against Trump’s white ring campaign,” organizer Jasmine Williams said. “Trump is a billionaire. He was elected and funded by billionaires, and his whole administration is billionaires, so that’s exactly who he’s going to fight for. We want to show everyday working-class people that our fight is in the streets. Our fight isn’t in the voting booth alone, our fight is with our class and with our people.”
Zachary Paz was also involved with the preparation for the event. He believes that inauguration day is a crucial date to protest because of executive orders that Trump has promised to issue his first day in office.
“The people will fight back,” Paz said. “That’s really the message we’re trying to send. Trump is supposed to sign hundreds of executive orders today, starting to implement this extreme right-wing agenda and starting his attacks on immigrants. We want to show that people will resist throughout the whole term. And if there’s gonna be an attack on immigrants, people will try to oppose it any way they can.”
The 2025 Presidential Inauguration fell on Martin Luther King (MLK) day. Paz said the rally was created with similar goals as the Civil Rights Movement.
“We firmly believe that a mass movement, a street movement, can create serious political change,” Paz said. “I think we see ourselves in a lot of ways in the continued history of the civil rights movement. We saw that a movement that was rejected by both major parties at the time, was able to create so much change because of how organized they were. They refused to let their demands be watered down by the two major parties and continued to fight until they were free.”
The overlapping of the inauguration and MLK Day created a powerful call to action for the rally, according to Williams.
“With today being Martin Luther King Day, I think it’s also important for us to borrow from our history, from our working class, fight back history, and we’re in Atlanta,” Williams said. “I think it’s also like calling on that history and realizing and remembering where our true power comes from.”
Emory University freshman Landon Diaz attended the rally due to Trump’s policies on immigration.
“I’m a child of immigrants,” Diaz said. “Trump has always talked bad about my family. He has talked bad about millions of families that he knows nothing about. He sees us as criminals, as rapists, as pedophiles, when he’s all of those things put together. The hypocrisy in it just doesn’t sit right with me at all.”
Madison Nicolai went to the rally with her sister. She said she disagrees with a number of Trump’s policies, particularly immigration and abortion rights.
“We are not happy with Trump being in office and taking rights of millions of people away, and for women, especially,” Madison Nicolai said. “Once he’s inaugurated, he’s going to get immigrants out of the U.S. with the [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement], which is obviously not okay. Neither is how he treats abortion and his policies with Roe V. Wade.”
Nicolai believes the high attendance to the rally despite low temperatures reflects attendees’ commitment.
“[We came to this rally] just to show that we’re not just gonna sit and watch someone who is almost a dictator take over our country and spread hate,” Nicolai said. “So it’s just showing that we’re not gonna just sit around and let him do that. It also shows how dedicated people are that they’re willing to be cold. It doesn’t matter the weather, people are still gonna rally together.”
Rally attendee Brian Dixon has growing concerns about the unequal distribution of power.
“I’m fed up with the way the government is or how Trump behaves, and that he’s going back in power really, really disturbs me,” Dixon said. “His rhetoric really disturbs me as well. Power should be with the people, the workers, and not just a few billionaires.”
Paz hopes the rally acts as a building block to show people alternatives to Trump’s agenda.
“Right here in the present, what we’re doing is trying to build a new mass movement and create a political alternative for people to show that we don’t have to embrace this hard right, anti-immigrant agenda that both parties have rallied behind,” Paz said. “There is an alternative and a better world is possible.”
