‘We’re not going to back down,’ hundreds in Ottawa rally against government overreach

Hands off my healthcare. Hands off Social Security. Off Greenland. Off Medicare. The national parks. Disease research.

Those were some of the picket signs observed Saturday when protesters marched onto Washington Square in downtown Ottawa, all opposed to one form of government overreach or another.

“We’re not going to back down. We’re not going to stop. We found our voices and we’re just going to keep going.”

—  Andrea Poole-Sugg, event organizer

“It’s hard to narrow down what I’m most concerned with,” said Kegan Pakula of Ottawa. “I’m seeing what looks like our democracy dying. I’m seeing history being erased.”

“It’s so hard to pinpoint what’s most frightening about what’s going on right now.”

The “Hands Off!” event drew at least 200 protesters to Bold and Curvy Boutique in downtown Ottawa, the launching point in La Salle County for one of the more than 1,200 demonstrations have been planned by more than 150 groups staging demonstrations across the United States. Those individuals met hundreds more at Washington Square, including United Auto Workers members, bringing the total number of participants at about 800.

Though the issues raised were as diverse as the crowd, Saturday’s event could be loosely described as a pushback to initiatives by the White House and the GOP-controlled Congress.

Andrea Poole-Sugg, owner of Bold and Curvy in Ottawa, helped organize the event, which she described as a stand for human rights – a sentiment, she said, shared by other groups opposed to the current government thrust.

“We’re not going to back down,” she said. “We’re not going to stop. We found our voices and we’re just going to keep going.”

While the throng that marched to Washington Square numbered at least 200, waiting at the park were less ambulatory protesters concerned with government aid and the impact on their personal welfare.

Heidi Henry of Marseilles is president of Illinois Valley Indivisible. She explained the elderly and infirm are especially concerned about proposed cutbacks to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

“You have 60% of Social Security residents across this nation that are one or two checks away from losing their homes,” Henry said. “You have 72% of La Salle County nursing home residents that are dependent on Medicaid who have nowhere to go. So if we cut these programs, where do these people go?”

Though Saturday’s event comes on the heels of an election that suggested a pushback from the left - and a violent market reaction to tariffs - Dan Brooks, a retired Peru schoolteacher, said the current government agenda was actually decades in the making.

Conservatives in the 1980s, he explained, set about controlling organized labor, public education and the news media to advance an agenda currently being executed at a whirlwind pace.

“This is a strategy for quite a while and, as much as I hate to say it, the right has been very successful in what they’ve carried out,” Brooks said. “I think their long-term plan was to undermine unions, to trash American education and the last thing was the press. You take control of those three things and you’ve got a lot of power.”

Saturday’s crowd might have been enhanced by the cancellation of a Grundy County event that brought Michael Nowotnik of Morris into Ottawa to share his concerns. Nowotnik said he was concerned generally about the “attack on our citizens” and their financial security but foremost on his mind was government exceeding

“I’m really worried about the separation of powers,” he said. “It’s honestly scary.”

And Mike Gallagher of Morris said he was tired of government workers not only being fired en masse but also being unfairly denigrated.

“Public servants are being called parasites,” Gallagher said. “I think these are good, hard-working people. I hate to see them fired for just no real reason.”

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Hundreds of people voiced their concerns Saturday, April 5, 2025, about Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and veterans benefits along La Salle Street in Ottawa. Similar protests took place through out the country as well. (Tom Sistak For Shaw Media)