Clutching a “You voted for a con man” sign as he marched with others through downtown Baltimore, Jim O’Connor said he’s tired of people dismissing anti-Trump protests as a Baby Boomer affectation.

“I have a daughter who worked hard in college, got a good job in the federal government, thought she was making a difference in that job and now she doesn’t have that job. So don’t tell me I don’t have a right to be out here,” said O’Connor, 71, a retired hardware store owner.

Trump “is wrecking the economy, wrecking the federal government and who’s going to suffer? People like my daughter who’s working two jobs now to help pay their bills and maybe won’t have Social Security someday. That’s who,” said O’Connor, who lives in northeast Baltimore and said he’d never joined a protest before.

O’Connor was part of the crowd of about a thousand people who took to the streets yesterday as part of the city’s observance of a nationwide May Day demonstration to protest the actions of Donald Trump since he began his second term as president.

Feeder marches from six locations converged at McKeldin Plaza at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, each with a different focus reflecting the crowd’s many causes: worker’s rights, academic freedom, immigrant justice, medical research, the war in Gaza, the U.S. government’s support of Israel and more.

“If the U.S.stopped sending weapons, Israel would not be able to maintain the genocide, that is a fact,” a speaker said to applause.

Many carried signs calling for the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was wrongfully deported and is at the center of a national legal battle over his return.

Still others singled out billionaire Tesla owner Elon Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been dismantling major components of the federal government, slashing jobs and shuttering agencies.

Lines of protesters snaked through downtown Baltimore streets at rush hour. They wrapped around the closed Gallery at Harborplace Mall on Pratt Street and gathered outside the Baltimore field office of ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) at Hopkins Plaza.

The unifying theme for the protest was spelled out with a sign erected at the intersection of Pratt and Light streets: “Stop the Billionaire Takeover.”