WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — Roughly 1,500 people — three times the predicted number — filled the sidewalks on Maple Street from Hartford Avenue to the end of Lyman Bridge on the New Hampshire side of the Connecticut River on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

The event was just was one of many that took place on Saturday in Upper Valley towns including Enfield, Hanover, New London, Strafford, South Royalton and Woodstock as part of Hands Off!, a national day of demonstrations against the Trump administration and its agenda.

Like the thousand or so Hands Off! events that transpired across the country, the White River Junction protest took a wide swing at the current administration, and protesters cited different reasons for attending the event.

Some, like Enfield resident Sarah Kaden were “just pissed at the federal government.”

“I’ve felt hopeless over the past couple months,” said Kaden, 26, who carried a sign that read “Protect trans kids.”

“I just want people to think about kindness,” they said.

Windsor resident Jennie Pollard, meanwhile, participated as a sign of solidarity with her two daughters who had recently been asked to “retire” from their longtime jobs in Veterans Affairs and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as part of the broader swath of firings at federal agencies.

“Everything is just such a mess,” Pollard said.

Throughout the event, organizer Joie Finley, who started the ad hoc activist group UV Rise Up! with a handful of volunteers at the Main Street Museum in downtown White Rive Junction, marched up and down the street handing out pocket editions of the U.S. Constitution and chanting into a megaphone.

“Hey, hey; ho, ho; Donald Trump must go,” protesters echoed back.

The honking horns of passersby mingled with the noise of the crowd. At one point, a man in a small silver car rolled down his window and held out a long pole. “My voice” said a sign attached to the end of it. He beeped his horn to a swell of claps and cheers from the sidewalk.

“I was just the mouthpiece,” said Finley when asked about her role in the White River Junction protest. “It belongs to each person here.”

Earlier in the day, roughly 80 protesters lined the sidewalks outside a senior living complex, The Greens at Hanover Condominiums, on Lyme Road.

“The average age (here) has got to be in the 80s,” former college educator and Greens resident, Laura Dorow, said of her fellow protesters.

After she saw other rallies advertised online by the activist group Upper Valley Indivisible, Dorow, 79, decided to host an event that provided older people with an accessible place to protest.

Some demonstrators, many of whom were Dorow’s neighbors at the Greens, sat in plastic chairs, waving to passing cars who beeped their horns in support.

Co-host Anita Brannen chose to perch on her walker. ”I’m absolutely appalled and disgusted at what is going on in our government,” she said.

Now 86, Brannen recalled how the 1950s of her adolescence seemed prosperous and peaceful compared to today. “When you’ve lived through good times, you know what the bad times are,” she said.

Brannen held up a cardboard sign that read: “Stop tariffs now,” while other protesters waved signs made from neon green and white cardstock paper that stood out against the morning gloom. Their thick block letters bore messages like “Dump Musk” and “Democracy, not autocracy.”

Annelies Ostler, 93, bought her sign online. “Know your parasites,” it read. Below was a picture of a deer tick, a dog tick, and Donald Trump, or, a “luna tick,” as the sign called him.

Originally from Germany, Ostler immigrated to Vermont in the late 1950s. “I had lived through a good example of dictatorship,” she said.

During the Vietnam War, Ostler attended marches in Hanover and Boston. Six decades later, she still sees the value in protesting with others. “I just feel better if I do something to let people know what we think,” she said.

For West Lebanon resident Ed Warren, 78, the Lyme Road event marked his first time joining a protest. “This is the only way I know how to tell people that I’m upset with the direction of our government,” said the retired optometrist.

Dorow hopes the protest shows people that “senior citizens are not just sitting around,” and that organizing an event like this is “easy to do.”

“I’m really proud of all of these people,” she said.

Marion Umpleby can be reached at mumpleby@vnews.com or 603- 727-3306.