Every Friday since early April I have been joining a group of mostly older (like me) Portland residents at peaceful protests on Portland’s Sellwood Bridge during the Friday night, after-work rush hour.

The local organizers live in southeast Portland, like me, not far from Sellwood Bridge. The bridge is found on the south side of Portland, straddling the Willamette River. It’s a busy corridor for traffic heading from mostly Democratic and left-of-center leaning Multnomah County to a more evenly split jurisdiction politically, Clackamas County, which lies the south.

The organizers call their weekly civic event “Friday protests on the Sellwood Bridge.” It is an apt name. Their mission is simple too: “Our goal is to encourage our community to stay engaged and to use our voices and First Amendment rights to protest any erosion of our Constitutional freedoms or functioning government.” 

The last event took place on Friday, May 30, 2025. My photos, all intentionally hiding most of the faces of the participants, were taken at the protest under sunny, warm skies.

That night, from about 5:30-7 p.m., over 75 folks assembled on the Sellwood Bridge to defend our country, exercise protected speech, and engage hundreds and hundreds of rush-hour commuters. We come with our own signs—painted, drawn, or marked out with Sharpies. Participants can also use the many more professional signs and repurposed but evergreen cardboard signs brought by the organizers.

On the last Friday of May 2025, the horn energy was righteous under the early summer sun.

Supporters in the passing rush hour cars, and also cyclists, outnumbered the few angry white male bird flippers by about a ratio of 25-1. That was encouraging.

Like previous weeks, I saw the outrage and solidarity in people’s faces. They showed with their expressions they were all in on the resistance themes. I observed how they leaned into their horns, giving protesters  a thumbs ups, pumping their fists, and even yelling in support.

For the commuters, they see people engaged. They see protest happening. They see the signs focusing on: cuts to Medicaid, violations of due process, cuts to our federal health system, illegal firings of tens of thousands of federal workers, threats to the environment and education, the gutting of our federal bureaucracy, the illegal disappearance of lawful residents to gulags out of the United States, and more.

The drivers recognize that their frustration and outrage at the ongoing coup to the U.S. Constitution is not a personal assault, but one shared by their neighbors and our country. And man, were they laying in on the horns on May 30, 2025.

The importance of showing up, week after week

The protests each Friday on the Sellwood Bridge are all organic, with almost no coordination, outside of weekly email reminders.

A few people started the civil actions in February 2025, and they have grown. The entire purpose is to keep showing up, to keep calling out the violations of law by the current president, and to demand a restoration of law and the end of corruption and lawbreaking by the current administration of President Donald Trump, a convicted felon.

What’s important about the events each week is the consistency of civil disobedience and the act of protest.

Renown historian of 20^th century tyranny, Professor Timothy Snyder of the University of Toronto, in an interview on May 31, 2025, with MSNBC’s host Ali Velshi, said, “Democracy is a verb.” It’s not a static thing. It’s action. When there is action, others engage, and the acts themselves become part of a system that is vital to human goodness.

I think Snyder described the value of action so perfectly: “But we also have to recognize that it’s not on any one of us to solve the whole thing. Right. So each of us does a little bit, and together that changes the whole landscape.”

I plan to keep going to these events as long as my democracy is under siege, and it looks like it will be a long and painful four years, at least.