50501 Protests

The 50501 movement is one of the many recent mass protests that’s been actively happening due to Trump’s tariffs and their consequences. More specifically, the 50501 movement is a grassroots organization that is protesting the policies of the second Trump Administration, and its name stands for “50 protests, 50 states, 1 movement”. Its origins come from an idea on Reddit that grew into massive popularity, and its organization has somehow managed to form without any backing or budget. Ever since this witty movement has rapidly formed, it’s managed to pull off 80 protests around the days of February 17th, March 4th, and April 5th and 19th.

Thousands of people, mostly working or middle class, who participate in these protests commonly form around Tesla or federal government associated buildings. The reason for this is because of the recent actions of an agency called “DOGE” and their actions of gutting employment and funding of several significant federal agencies, mainly the Department of Education, USAID, CFPB, Department of Agriculture, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, CDC, FDA, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Department of Housing and Urban Development, FHA, Department of Interior, Department of the Treasury, Bullion Depository, IRS, Department of Veteran Affairs, EPA, FAA, and many more. 

This countless targeting of numerous agencies has led to the layoffs of thousands of federal employees, which would lead to major disruptions of social services that many people rely on to live. Furthermore, Trump’s policies of putting tariffs to encourage the consumption and production of American-made goods has had a major backfire on the country as the economy has started to significantly suffer, which hasn’t put us in a recession yet, but it might soon enough if things haven’t improved. Besides that, many other countries throughout the world have been suffering from the tariffs too as most export products into America, and paying those tariffs basically hurts the economic profit that they make. So with the combination of major economic damage by Trump’s tariffs and DOGE/Elon’s reckless gutting of the federal government has made people quite upset, and thus the 50501 movement has started because of it. 

There were even some near Mayfair High School on the April 19th protest on South and Woodruff. This mainly lasted from around 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM, as around 50-100 people were seen holding up signs and waving flags in an attempt to gain support to the movement. It’s especially fascinating to me, as a history intellectual myself, to see a historic event like this happen near us. In addition, I want to get involved in more of these movements ever since I worked in one of the most talked about elections during 2024 besides the presidential election, that being District 45 seat that Derek Tran won by about a few hundred votes since the difference is 50.1% to 49.9%. I honestly hope that the 50501 movement keeps going in order to inspire some change since we need someone or something to stand against the insanity that’s surfaced as a result of the policies and decisions of the second Trump Administration during these few months.

Image Courtesy of Geoff Livingston on Flickr.