‘Not my president’: Hundreds swarm to Concord to protest Trump (again)

Harry Seidel (left), from Warner and Lauren Winterholer of Rollinsford joined the hundreds of people by climbing up a snow mound at City Plaza in front of the State House on Monday.

Harry Seidel (left), from Warner and Lauren Winterholer of Rollinsford joined the hundreds of people by climbing up a snow mound at City Plaza in front of the State House on Monday. GEOFF FORESTER / Monitor staff

Lauren Winterholer of Rollinsford joined the hundreds of people by climbing up a snow mound at City Plaza in front of the State House on Monday.

Lauren Winterholer of Rollinsford joined the hundreds of people by climbing up a snow mound at City Plaza in front of the State House on Monday. GEOFF FORESTER / Monitor staff

By CHARLOTTE MATHERLY

Monitor staff

Published: 02-17-2025 4:54 PM

This Presidents’ Day, several hundred people shouting on Concord’s City Plaza in front of the New Hampshire State House had a message for the nation’s current commander-in-chief: Donald Trump is “not my president.”

Protests like this one happened across the country on Monday, the second installment by a new organizing group called 50501, which organized a similar effort earlier this month called 50 Protests, 50 States, 1 day. They are advocating for democracy and against what several people called illegal actions by the new administration.

Annie Kutenplon and Claire Provencher, both from Manchester, said they showed up because Trump isn’t the kind of president they want. They said they’ve felt alarmed and scared by the administration’s actions in recent weeks.

While most of the demonstrators said they were Democrats, Provencher described herself as a former Libertarian-turned-centrist. She’s an artist and educator, she said, but she also owns guns and rides motorcycles. She said she felt driven to speak out not because of politics but because of Trump himself.

“It’s not about the party,” Provencher said. “It’s the person.”

A local organizer for the group 50501, said they hope to attract people from all over the political spectrum.

The crowd held up signs and waved to passing cars on Main Street on Monday afternoon, to which they received lots of honks and cheers back.

One man who declined to share his name because he’s a federal employee, said he takes issue with the executive “overreach” by Elon Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency has most recently requested access to sensitive taxpayer information in the Internal Revenue Service. In his view, there’s no reason Musk or DOGE should be looking at people’s tax records.

“It is a coup,” he said.

 

 

Charlotte Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X at @charmatherly, subscribe to her Capital Beat newsletter and send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.