“Honk if you support Ukraine,” a large sign read on Friday afternoon outside of U.S. Rep. Trent Kelly’s office on Seventh Street North.
Passing cars often beeped their horns, triggering waves and greetings from a group of more than 30 protestors that accompanied it.
Weekly protests outside of the office of Mississippi’s Republican 1st District congressman, organized by Annis Cox of Columbus, have started to grow over the past two weeks, both in participation and messages. The group, she said, had more than doubled since the previous week, coming together to voice their frustrations with the federal government.
“(What unites us) right at this second is probably all the time we’ve spent irritated in our hearts and our minds about stuff that was going on and not having a place (for them), besides ourselves and our families, our echo chambers – but a lot of times you’re singing to the choir,” Cox said. “Now … the people driving by, they can see us and they can say, ‘Yeah.’”
Besides signs supporting Ukraine, other messages from protestors included things like “Check out Project 2025” and “Cutting Medicaid is murder.”
While President Donald Trump has distanced himself from the conservative policy agenda Project 2025, some of the political decisions he has made in office, including federal grant freezes, were outlined in the document. And though the president has said in the past that his administration would not touch Medicaid, Republican lawmakers have recently discussed significant changes to the health insurance program for low-income Americans.
Cindy Buob was one of the protestors in front of Kelly’s office Friday. She told The Dispatch she was there to protest some of the “erratic” moves she has seen lately from the federal government, including the alienation of America from its allies with the use of tariffs and other political moves. Buob said she wants her representatives to more actively “stand up to Trump.”
Still, one of her chief concerns, she said, is possible cuts to cancer research. She carried a sign that read, “Do NOT cut cancer research.”
“I am (alive) today because of cancer research,” Buob told The Dispatch. “With a 57% cut to the congressional directed medical research program at the department of defense, there will most certainly be cuts to the breast cancer research program. … And cuts to the NIH (National Institutes of Health) will stop advances in cancer research, prevention, detection and treatment.”
The United States House of Representatives voted to pass a bill including a 57% cut to the Department of Defense’s Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs, which funds cancer research, according to a report from Urology Times. A new National Institutes of Health policy from Trump’s administration, which was blocked by a federal judge last week, would strip research groups of hundreds of millions of dollars in indirect expenses, according to reports from The Associated Press.
Buob said this was her first time participating in the protests Cox has arranged, though she has protested other issues in the past. She said it was nice to see others standing up for themselves and their beliefs outside Kelly’s office, along with the honking cars driving by, since many people in the area can tend to be “quiet” about what they think and feel.
Fred Kinder, who has been a part of the weekly Friday protests since they started on Feb. 28, said he believes the number of participants has grown as people have become more discouraged with moves from the federal government.
That frustration, he said, is compounded by never hearing how a local representative like Kelly feels about particular issues until the results of votes on different pieces of legislation are revealed – typically following party lines.
But the weekly protests, Kinder said, are for everyone who is frustrated by the current administration, no matter their political stance.
“It’s about time that somebody took a stand,” Kinder said. “… I think Trent (Kelly) should hold a town hall meeting.”
Cox said she intends to continue the weekly protests from noon to 1 p.m. every Friday outside Kelly’s office.
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