Hundreds of Black Hills area residents converged on Rapid City yesterday to join protests from around the country
The area around Rapid City’s City Hall was crowded with protestors from throughout the Black Hills yesterday. The target of all the commotion? President Trump and his policies ranging from government downsizing, the economy, human rights, tariffs, and Ukraine, among other issues.
My phone doesn’t have a wide-angle lens, so the picture I took, seen above, doesn’t do justice to the size of the crowd, which was three or four people deep, spread out over a couple of blocks.There were easily several hundred people on hand. On my side of Omaha Street, facing the main crowd, there were more clusters of people, maybe another 50 or so.
The traffic on Omaha seemed generally supportive as the horn-honking, waving, and thumbs-ups were nonstop. I did see a couple of middle fingers raised into the air.
One guy stuck his hand out and configured the letter L (for “losers”) with his thumb and forefinger, which, I guess, was accurate in its way. Given the Trump-created battering that the markets have taken during the last couple of days, millions upon millions of us are losers when it comes to investments, retirement funds, college funds and other savings vehicles.
National news sources say similar demonstrations occurred at noon yesterday in 1300 cities across the country, many of them televised. On-scene reporters in the bigger venues said the numbers reached into the thousands. A friend who attended the rally in Denver said the crowd was estimated to be 8,000 and that it had a “party, tailgate atmosphere” with “a really hopeful vibe … there were lots of regular people who are really p.o.’d.”
Another friend in Colorado said, “we went to Boulder yesterday for the April 5 protest. There were a few thousand people with signs and a very receptive audience of people driving by.”
This local event marks the fourth, and by far the largest, Rapid City demonstration that I’ve covered since Trump was inaugurated in January, 76 days ago.
That comes out to one every 19 days.
John Tsitrian is a businessman and writer from the Black Hills. He was a weekly columnist for the Rapid City Journal for 20 years. His articles and commentary have also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Denver Post and The Omaha World-Herald. Tsitrian served in the Marines for three years (1966-69), including a 13-month tour of duty as a radioman in Vietnam. Republish with permission.
