Highway bridge protests are popping up across the Twin Cities. Who’s putting them on?

A group of residents from Minneapolis’ Kingfield neighborhood, fed up with President Donald Trump, are meeting on the 42nd Street pedestrian bridge over I-35W every Thursday at rush hour for a good old-fashioned primal scream.

Every Saturday at 10 a.m., there’s a protest on the Rosland Park pedestrian bridge in Edina. Sundays at 1 p.m., another group does it on the Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge between Loring Park and the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

These are the latest incarnations of highway overpass protests, which are legal as long as you don’t affix things to the bridge itself, according to the State Patrol. Drivers in the fall were slowed by banners held from spans that decried Israel’s bombing of Gaza, supported Trump or hyped former Vice President Kamala Harris. The latest crop has the feel of Resistance 2.0 to Trump 2.0.

The Kingfield neighbors have been gathering and multiplying for three weeks now, waving spicy homemade signs and recruiting passersby to their cause, which they’re calling “Democracy Bridge.” Cars honk in support as they roll beneath the group’s banner message, which changes each week from “Stop Elon’s Coup” to “Protect 1st Amendment” and “U.S. Mail Not for Sale.”

It feels like a party because many of the protesters live just a few houses apart and know each other well. But Kathy Magne came all the way from St. Paul to join the south Minneapolis neighborhood last week.

Toting a miniature American flag, Magne said it was the first protest she had ever attended. Her father worked for 35 years in the Postal Service and “would have been just sick” about Trump’s talk of privatizing it, she said.

“It just seems like they’re trying to break everything so they can privatize everything and deregulate,” said Magne.

Nearby, a group of teachers were talking about Trump’s executive order this week to start dismantling the U.S. Department of Education, and what that would do to class sizes in their already cash-strapped schools.

Minneapolis resident Sara Strzok, who started the Democracy Bridge protests, said endless doom-scrolling seemed only to isolate and agitate her friends and neighbors. So they decided to take action in the hope that coming together on a bridge and flying American flags would tell commuters heading to Eagan or Lakeville that they aren’t as alone as they may feel, she said.

“I remember how things were in 2016, when there were a lot of street protests. I think they’re kind of happening more spontaneously and less under the umbrella of bigger organizations,” Strzok said. “People are just feeling like they’ve got to do something ... no one’s gonna lead the charge for them.”

On Friday, a St. Paul group is organizing a “No Kings” protest with the goal of filling the city’s three main pedestrian bridges over I-94 during rush hour.