Tolkkinen: Rural Minnesota showed up for Hands Off protests on Saturday. What does it mean?

ALEXANDRIA, Minn. - They had the numbers.

Nearly half a mile of protesters lined one of Alexandria’s busiest streets, carrying signs supporting parks and forests, Social Security and veterans, the Constitution and democracy and Medicaid and Ukraine and trans rights.

They were from Alexandria and Forada, Fergus Falls and Wadena and Morris and at least one all the way from Browns Valley next to South Dakota. Some had carpooled. Some met up with people they only knew from social media. They marched as similar marches took place in Duluth and St. Cloud, in Willmar and Moorhead and Bemidji, at the Minnesota Capitol and nationwide.

Social media trolls claimed they had been bused in but I saw no buses, just cars with bumper stickers saying things like “Morons are governing America.”

Event organizers said at least 750 attended, based on the number of pins they gave out. I can’t confirm that number, but neither can I dispute it. I can say it was a pretty darn big group of people, starting near the red Counselor Real Estate building at the corner, running past Goodwill and Snap Fitness and wrapping around the corner near Elden’s Fresh Foods.

It was the biggest protest turnout that I or anybody I talked to could remember seeing in this religious, conservative lake town in west-central Minnesota. And numbers matter. It’s easy to drive by a handful of diehards waving signs but you fill up nearly half a mile of road, you’re hard to ignore. Politicians from this area might not change their votes or their rhetoric but they had to have taken note of the crowd size.

Rachel Savageau, who retired after a lengthy career teaching at Alexandria Technical & Community College, said she is a political independent who has voted for both Republican and Democratic candidates and that she and her husband were attending her first protest ever.

“And we grew up in the 1960s,” she said.

It takes a lot to get them up off their couch, she said, but her husband is a veteran and they both live on Social Security. The Alexandria Social Security office is downsizing after losing half its employees to buyouts. Savageau said she is upset that the Trump administration has gutted the U.S. Department of Education “and put in charge someone who — I don’t know, ran the world wrestling championship or something and decided they had some expertise in education.”

Numbers are one of the things protest scholars point to as boosting the odds of a movement’s success. Scholarly studies have found that the size of a protest movement can help predict voting behavior. One study published in March in the journal Political Behavior determined that a 0.1 percentage point increase in the fraction of a county’s population that joined the Black Lives Matter protest after George Floyd’s death in 2020 raised the Democratic vote share in that county by 0.33 percentage points. The size of Tea Party protests had a similar effect on Republican fortunes, according to a 2013 study published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Study authors advise using caution when interpreting protest crowd size on political futures. Still, Saturday’s protesters had another thing in their favor. They were peaceful, and that’s another factor that can influence voting behavior. Violence turns people off. No surprise.

In Alexandria, the only hint of trouble came from a big dark pickup truck that made at least two passes, revving its engine and blowing dark smoke out its tailpipe at the protesters.

If public sentiment turns against President Trump, candidates and Twin Cities residents should remember that greater Minnesota is still fairly conservative. Speak out against Christian Nationalism, yes, but also respect the right of all to worship as they choose. Speak out for trans rights, yes, but remember that many here don’t think it’s fair for trans female athletes to compete in female sports. There are plenty of gun owners in greater Minnesota, and they are, by and large, safe and responsible with their firearms. Minnesotans love the natural beauty of our state, but rural Minnesotans also need the good pay of mining and logging jobs, and most of us need the lumber and wiring they provide, so we need to balance industry with environment.

And while it’s true that a surprising number of people showed up to protest around the state, vast numbers stayed home.

The future is full of tasks for those who care about our country and about each other. The more we can maintain ties to each other, despite political differences, the better. The more we can invite someone to a nonpartisan Braver Angels event designed to restore respect in politics or respond to trolls with hug emojis instead of vitriol, the better. With luck and sanity, the Republican party will be restored, and the Democrats, please God, will find their spines if ever a demagogue should threaten theirs.