BEVERLY — If you’ve driven down Rantoul Street on a late Saturday morning over the last nine months, you’ve probably seen protesters lining the sidewalks outside of the Beverly Post Office and Odell Veterans Memorial Park.
Some are young. Most are retirees. They’re neighbors in Beverly, or come from different corners of the North Shore. But they each have the same goal: to show dissent against President Donald Trump and his administration.
“It’s joyful. It’s spreading,” Hands Off Beverly organizer Andreas Bauermeister, a 67-year-old Beverly resident, said of the protests. “This is a phenomenon that people are coming out every week, no matter what. That has never happened before.”
Hands Off Beverly is one of about 23 independent weekly rallies held in communities north of Boston, including Ipswich and Swampscott, that oppose Trump.
Beverly’s group was born from a “Not My President” protest held in the city on Presidents Day this year. Feeling energized from that standout and one more that followed, Bauermeister worked with organizers to start a weekly rally.
More people joined in the following months. The Hands Off Beverly Facebook group has more than 500 members now, and a second weekly protest has been added on Wednesdays from 5:30-6:30 p.m. outside the First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church on Cabot Street.
The Saturday protests run from 11 a.m.-noon and draw about 150 people weekly. The Wednesday ones, anywhere from 20 to 40.
On Nov. 1, Gov. Maura Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll greeted protestors at Odell Park while in town to endorse Beverly Mayor Mike Cahill in his re-election bid.
“These rallies that happen consistently every week all across the country matter. You know that because you hear the honks,” Healey told the protesters. “People need to be affirmed. They need to be reminded that what is happening with the Trump administration isn’t right.”
The group has also led localized versions of national protests since the winter. As part of a national network of “No Kings” rallies protesting Trump, about 700 people joined Hands Off Beverly at Odell Park on June 14. Then, Hands Off Beverly saw 1,500 participants during another national “No Kings” rally on Oct. 18.
“What we’re doing is flying under the radar with the media, because this is not just us,” Bauermeister said. “It’s Ipswich. It’s Wakefield. It’s Salem. It’s all over.”
Photographer Marilyn Humphries has been capturing these protests around the North Shore. She’s seen dozens of people at each event, at times more than 100 participants in places like Beverly.
“I can’t recollect historically this going on with this many people,” Humphries said. “It’s crazy and inspiring all at once.”
Beverly resident Bill Mantone and his wife Robin Winter have been regulars at the Saturday protests in Beverly since the spring.
“I sat around and got angry and depressed, and then I found this group,” Mantone said. “What we’re doing is a small thing, but it’s something.”
Mantone served in Vietnam from 1969-1970. Now 78, he said preserving democracy is the greatest fight of his lifetime.
“This is more important than Vietnam,” he said. “When we went to Vietnam, we knew the country was going to survive. That’s not the case now.”
Mantone and other protesters take issue with current immigration tactics by ICE. Their signs protest rollbacks on voting rights, cuts in government spending for humanitarian programs, and attacks on the LGBTQ+ community.
John Hamilton, an 81-year-old Beverly resident, also served in Vietnam and is a disabled veteran due to his exposure to Agent Orange. He long considered himself to be more politically conservative, and often voted for Republican candidates prior to Trump.
For the last six months, he’s taken part in Hands Off Beverly protests.
“I swore an oath to defend and protect the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and now we have a domestic enemy in the White House,” Hamilton said.
“He does not respect the Constitution, nothing that I believed in, or that most people believe in,” Hamilton said. “He just does whatever he wants and it’s only for him. He’s as corrupt and immoral as could be.”
Hands Off Beverly plays protest music while standing out each week. They have bubble machines and noise makers, like horns and, in 81-year-old Penelope Tzougros’s case, a metal pan and spoon she bangs while smiling at passing cars. Often, being greeted with honks in return.
“These people are manifestations of what the Bible and Quran and other things teach us, that evil is real and we have to resist it,” Tzougros said. “You look at the Old Testament, and the same patterns exist in the Old Testament… we’re just seeing what people have suffered over and over.”
While most of the regulars at Hands Off Beverly protests are over 65, some younger locals join them too.
Beverly resident Michayla Woodward, 30, has stood out with her mother Lauren Woodward, 60, every week for about three months.
“Visibility is important,” Michayla Woodward said. “When people can drive by and see people standing outside and actually caring about what’s going on and supporting them, that’s good.”
As for how long Hands Off Beverly will keep taking to the streets?
“Until we’re in jail or or this administration is gone,” Bauermeister said.
Contact Caroline Enos at CEnos@northofboston.com .