For most of her adult life, Annis Cox has been active in her community, helping with church projects, substitute teaching at Annunciation Catholic School and using her sewing skills to organize a mask-making project that provided thousands of masks to Columbus schoolchildren in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But over the last six weeks, Cox has gone from being active to being an activist, leading a group of mostly senior citizens who have been protesting outside of U.S. Rep. Trent Kelly’s Columbus field office on an ever-growing range of issues.

At 69, Cox has become something of a community organizer as her Friday protests continue to grow.

It’s a role that came to her later in life.

“I grew up in the mid-70s when there were a lot of protests going on, but I never really got involved,” she said. “It wasn’t that I wasn’t aware of what’s going on. I was just busy with other things. But I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised with where I am now. My mother said we were a family of contrarians and our family was a mix of conservatives and liberals, so we were exposed to a lot of competing viewpoints.”

Cox said her decision to speak out is a reflection of her mother’s habit of putting her politics into action.

“I remember during the Carter administration when he urged Americans not to use lights on the Christmas trees to save on electricity during the energy crisis,” Cox said. “I don’t know how many people did that, but we did. It was the saddest-looking Christmas tree you ever saw.“

Getting active

Cox grew up in Greenville, moving to Columbus in 1978 as she and her husband, Bill, began raising a family.

Bill was a civil engineer by training, but he provided for his family primarily through a construction company he co-founded.

“My energies were toward raising our three children, church projects at St. Paul’s Episcopal and sewing, which was kind of my creative outlet,” Cox said.

For the past 10 years or so, Cox said she had become increasingly troubled with national politics, particularly conservative policies.

“A while back, I was mad about a bill that was going through Congress, so I looked up Trent Kelly’s number in Washington and called to let them know how I felt,” Cox said. “The person that answered the phone was so nice, it was hard to stay mad at him. He listened to what I said and was very polite. But when I hung up, I can’t say I felt like anything would come of it.”

More and more, Cox found herself upset with the moves being implemented through Trump’s executive orders and the austerity policies billionaire Elon Musk brought in as head of Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency.

Making a phone call just wasn’t going to cut it, Cox began to realize.

“I was talking to some friends about some of the things going on, and about five or six of us decided to protest outside of Trent Kelly’s office on Seventh Street,” Cox said. “Only three of us showed up that first Friday. That was fine with me. I wasn’t thinking about having big crowds. I just wanted to come and protest what was going on.”

Over the past six Fridays, the gatherings have grown from a handful of folks to almost 60 people.

“We usually have about 30 or 40 people there,” Cox said.

The protests organized by Cox aren’t just peaceful. They are downright polite.

When we started, I wanted to let them know what we were doing, so I went into the office and talked to Sissy Younger, who runs the office and is someone I’ve known for years,” Cox said. “I wanted her to know that we were exercising our rights as citizens, and she said as long as we weren’t blocking the door or sidewalk, we were welcome to be there.”

That polite tone has carried out into the street, too, Cox said.

“I think since we’ve started, we’ve only had about three people who were against what we were doing and none of them were ugly about it. They just gave a thumbs down or shook their heads at us. Most of the people who come by are supportive, honking their horns and giving us a thumbs-up.”

‘We don’t tell anybody what to protest about’

As the crowds have grown, so are the issues represented, based on the contents of the signs protests display.

Unlike Saturday, which saw thousands of organized protests in cities and towns across the country, Cox’s protests are largely organic.

“We don’t tell anybody what to protest about,” she said. “They’re welcome to protest whatever it is that upsets them. The situation in Ukraine has been kind of a common theme, along with immigration, cutting cancer research, what they’re trying to do to the Department of Education and Musk. Every week, though, it seems like somebody is raising another issue.”

Cox said she is not so naive as to think the Friday protests will cause Kelly to abruptly change his positions. But she does hope they cause him to give the issues more thought and let him know that his constituents aren’t pleased with what’s going on.

“You don’t really know what the effects (of the protests) will be, but over time it may build some momentum,” Cox said. “Attitudes can change over time.”

In the meantime, there is one benefit that cannot be disputed.

“All of us feel a little better after the protest is over,” she said. “It means we are not just sitting around complaining. We’re getting out there and letting our feelings be known. It’s also a nice feeling to realize you’re not crazy, that other people are feeling the same way about things as you.”

She said each week she looks forward to new faces at the protests.

“We just tell people, ‘Bring your lawn chairs and join us. Let people know how you feel.’”

There is one face she doesn’t expect to see during the protests: Her husband’s.

“No. No. No. No,” she said, laughing. “We’re a house divided in how we look at a lot of things and how we react to it. He tells me all the time that if I don’t quit watching all these news shows that get me mad, he’s going to cut out all our streaming services. So I do my complaining out in front of Trent Kelly’s office. That seems to work fine for both of us.”

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].