Steps away from the Fox River in Yorkville, Illinois, over 300 people line the street, chanting and holding up signs. This past weekend, there were protests against the Trump administration across the country, including several in smaller northern Illinois communities.
“I'm scared. I'm petrified,” said Teri Shelton. She is a grandparent, and she says this is her first time ever protesting.
Her son is disabled and relies on social security and Medicare, and so does she. Shelton worries about Elon Musk’s DOGE interfering with those programs.
“A third of my paycheck is Medicaid subsidized from the federal government,” she said. “So, if I lose my job, and he loses some of his coverage, and we lose anything else with Medicare or Social Security, we're gonna be living in the street.”
Shelton says this is the first anti-Trump protest she’s seen here in her home in Kendall County. The county is pretty purple. It voted about 50/50 for Trump and Harris. And some people at the rally, like Betty Bogda, drove in from more rural, more “red,” communities.
“I would do this every week, yeah," said Bogda, "because I think it's important and it's something that you can do."
She and Shelton both say they’re concerned about the erosion of due process rights, especially when it comes to cases like Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s shipment to an El Salvador prison.
“He already said," said Shelton, "that he wants to send U.S. citizens to El Salvador.”
There have also been protests in far more rural areas of northern Illinois, like Ogle County. Hundreds gathered in Oregon this weekend for the second time in just the last few weeks.
Janet Buttron says they had about 400 people at their first “Hands Off” rally and 250 this past weekend. She’s an attorney and helped organize the event with Indivisible Ogle County.
“This is different,” said Buttron. “This is more of a dictatorial type takeover.”
She says people shouldn’t be surprised to see protests popping up in small, rural communities, because the issues they’re raising, from due process to healthcare to union protection, impact everyone, no matter where they live.
“Ogle County is a small rural area," she said. "We're not very large, so we were purposely targeting our small rural area, instead of traveling to Chicago or Rockford, where they were having bigger events. We want to reach out to all of our local individuals and get them involved and discuss these important issues, because they affect all of us.”
Buttron says they promoted the event on Facebook and she even drove around the county putting up flyers.
She says the events have been a bright spot for a lot of people who live in areas where they feel like they can’t speak out or put up signs critical of the president.
And even in Ogle County, far away from the national spotlight, she says she knows people who don’t want to come to protests in fear of being targeted by the administration.
“I'm an attorney," she said. "At that rally were numerous other lawyers, because we all understand how serious that this is. And, you know, are we afraid? Yes.”
Buttron says there has been some local pushback, but nothing that makes her think twice about holding demonstrations. And, she says, it’s important that these aren’t just one-off events. They’re going to keep protesting. In fact, Indivisible Ogle County has another rally planned for May 1 in Oregon.
