Photography by Ananya Mishra

Seattle lefties gathered at the Space Needle this weekend to hype themselves up for what promises to be a rough four years under a second Trump administration. Speakers acknowledged that the future feels foggy, and that it's unclear what the first fights will be.

Unlike many of the protests around the country, Seattle’s wasn’t organized by the Women’s March or driven by Trump’s attacks on abortion, women, and LGBTQ rights. But it was an important opportunity for local activists to start saying some of our new realities out loud: that we’re about to have a president that seems determined to level Gaza, deport both documented and undocumented immigrants, undermine worker power, and continue to allow cops to kill with impunity. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, though, not everyone left feeling hyped. The protest lacked the same energy that they harnessed in the wake of Trump’s election eight years ago, or even some of the other protests around the country this weekend. The calls to action—“resist, organize, fight”—felt too vague, especially when the left has had so little success organizing on the national stage. “It felt like we went from resistance to resignation and that this was just perfunctory," one attendee said. 

But we’re also only six days into this new paradigm. And we captured what promises to be the first protest of many as Seattle’s left finds their footing, and their energy. 

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