{"id":7610,"date":"2025-04-07T20:49:21","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T20:49:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/princetonillinois.com\/?p=7610"},"modified":"2025-04-07T20:49:21","modified_gmt":"2025-04-07T20:49:21","slug":"were-not-going-to-back-down-hundreds-in-ottawa-rally-against-government-overreach-shaw-local","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/princetonillinois.com\/?p=7610","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We\u2019re not going to back down,\u2019 hundreds in Ottawa rally against government overreach – Shaw Local"},"content":{"rendered":"


Members of Illinois Valley Indivisible participated in a Hands Off! march Saturday at Washington Square in Ottawa. Hundreds voiced their concerns about Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and veterans benefits. Similar protests took place through out the country as well. <\/span>(Tom Sistak For Shaw Media)
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<\/a>, all opposed to one form of government overreach or another.
\u201cWe\u2019re not going to back down. We\u2019re not going to stop. We found our voices and we\u2019re just going to keep going.\u201d
\u201cIt\u2019s hard to narrow down what I\u2019m most concerned with,\u201d said Kegan Pakula of Ottawa. \u201cI\u2019m seeing what looks like our democracy dying. I\u2019m seeing history being erased.\u201d
\u201cIt\u2019s so hard to pinpoint what\u2019s most frightening about what\u2019s going on right now.\u201d
The \u201cHands Off!\u201d event drew at least 200 protesters to Bold and Curvy Boutique in downtown Ottawa, the launching point in La Salle County<\/a> 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\u2019s 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 \u2013 a sentiment, she said, shared by other groups opposed to the current government thrust.
\u201cWe\u2019re not going to back down,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to stop. We found our voices and we\u2019re just going to keep going.\u201d
Andrea <\/span>Andrea Poole-Sugg discusses the issues the drew hundreds to a demonstration Saturday at Washington Square, Ottawa. <\/span>(Tom Collins)
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<\/a> is president of Illinois Valley Indivisible. She explained the elderly and infirm are especially concerned about proposed cutbacks to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
\u201cYou have 60% of Social Security residents across this nation that are one or two checks away from losing their homes,\u201d Henry said. \u201cYou 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?\u201d
Though Saturday\u2019s 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<\/a> 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.
\u201cThis 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\u2019ve carried out,\u201d Brooks said. \u201cI 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\u2019ve got a lot of power.\u201d
Saturday\u2019s crowd might have been enhanced by the cancellation of a Grundy County<\/a> event that brought Michael Nowotnik of Morris<\/a> into Ottawa to share his concerns. Nowotnik said he was concerned generally about the \u201cattack on our citizens\u201d and their financial security but foremost on his mind was government exceeding
\u201cI\u2019m really worried about the separation of powers,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s honestly scary.\u201d
And Mike Gallagher of Morris said he was tired of government workers not only being fired en masse but also being unfairly denigrated.
\u201cPublic servants are being called parasites,\u201d Gallagher said. \u201cI think these are good, hard-working people. I hate to see them fired for just no real reason.\u201d
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. <\/span>(Tom Sistak For Shaw Media)
 
Copyright \u00a9 2023 Shaw Local News Network
Copyright \u00a9 2023 Shaw Local News Network<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Members of Illinois Valley Indivisible participated in a Hands Off! march Saturday at Washington Square in Ottawa. Hundreds voiced their concerns about Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and veterans benefits. Similar protests took place through out the country as well. (Tom Sistak For Shaw Media)Hands off my healthcare. Hands off Social Security. Off Greenland. Off Medicare. The national parks. Disease research.Those<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t