SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — Tina Koumoutsos was inside a downtown events space organizing postcards about voting rights for the women’s issues group she leads for the county Democratic Party when she noticed a familiar face on the big screen Sunday night.
“Oh, that’s Jane Fonda!” Koumoutsos said as the actor and longtime liberal political activist kicked off “Rise Up, Sing Out,” an event honoring free speech that was livestreamed during President Donald Trump’s birthday cage matches.
“They come for one of us, by God, they come for all of us!” Fonda said — and Koumoutsos joined the chorus of cheers and applause at a Springfield viewing party, where women outnumbered men by 10-to-1.
The Springfield watch party was one of hundreds held across all 50 states as counter-programming to the cage fights that President Donald Trump hosted on the White House lawn to mark his 80th birthday and the country’s 250th. More than 1 million tuned into the livestream, according to a “Rise Up, Sing Out” spokesperson, whether on their own or as part of a group, like the 70 or so who gathered in Springfield. Many of the watch parties were coordinated by leaders of local Indivisible chapters and organizers of No Kings protests — two intertwined movements where women are playing outsized roles opposing the president.
“Rise Up, Sing Out,” was hosted by Fonda’s Committee for the First Amendment at New York City’s Town Hall, a venue founded by suffragists who fought to pass the 19th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, establishing women’s right to vote. Fonda relaunched the committee in October as a vehicle for Hollywood to oppose Trump administration efforts to restrict free speech. Its first iteration was in the 1940s, when prominent Hollywood figures wanted to counter the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee and its investigations of allegedly disloyal Americans.
Many of the Ohio women who watched the women-heavy lineup in New York are central figures in their community’s response to Trump administration policies impacting this city of 60,000, where the termination of an immigration program has left thousands of Haitian immigrants in existential limbo and unsure of whether they will be able to remain in the country.
Jen Casto, the leader of Springfield’s Indivisible chapter, said that she and Amy Young, the leader of nearby Indivisible Westside Columbus, organized the viewing as a chance for some of Springfield’s most committed volunteers to convene for an event more intimate than a protest and more social than their day-to-day mutual aid efforts.
“I think it’s important for people to know that there is joy in resistance, that joy is resistance, and music brings people together,” Casto said.
As attendees walked in, they came upon a table with lyric books for the songs in the “Rise Up, Sing Out” program, literature about how to “stand with immigrant families” and colorful cards for them to write notes of encouragement to their Haitian neighbors. A few feet away, potluck offerings that included fried chicken, fruit salad and brownies were available to all.
More than 400 miles away, the scene at the White House Sunday night depicted a version of masculinity celebrated by the president, with displays of physical strength, violence and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric.
Trump and Dana White, the chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), which organized the cage matches, walked out to the metal song “Bodies,” with the refrain, “Let the bodies hit the floor.” “Shout out to Trump for having the balls!” fighter Josh Hokit said in an interview at the White House with popular manosphere podcaster Joe Rogan after winning the fourth bout. “Michelle Obama is a man, am I right, America?” Hokit continued, repeating a transphobic, far-right conspiracy theory about the Democratic former first lady.
In the final fight of the night, Justin Gaethje beat his opponent’s face “to such a bloody pulp that he was declared incapable of continuing,” according to a White House pool report.
In New York, meanwhile, actors like Julia Roberts and Lily Gladstone, the punk rocker Patti Smith and the queer singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright offered a different version of what the country should celebrate.
Roberts urged the crowd to “take a really deep breath” before reading a poem by Amanda Gorman honoring a Minneapolis woman killed by federal immigration agents earlier this year. “Renee Nicole Good is not a symbol. She is an American woman, a queer woman, who was doing the very best she could do to be good in an unjust world,” she said.
Gladstone, a member of the Blackfeet Nation, praised the bison native to her tribe’s ancestral lands as a model of resilience in the face of adversity. They are the “only animals able to calve in sub-zero temperatures,” she said, and “in spite of ongoing campaigns and policies to erase both the Blackfeet and the buffalo, we are both, in fact, still here.”
The entertainer Peppermint, a drag queen and LGBTQ+ activist, said that trans youth are facing “a government that cares more about censoring their bodies than feeding them.” Black Voters Matter co-founder LaTosha Brown sang a Civil Rights Movement anthem and warned that when it comes to voting rights, “Everywhere is the South right now, y’all.”
Near the end of the “Rise Up, Sing Out” program, Wainwright stood in front of a large photograph of hundreds of individuals waving rainbow Pride flags and performed “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
“Jane told me that she wanted me to say before singing this song that the person who made it famous, the woman for whom it was written, Ms. Judy Garland. She was a member of the [original] Committee for the First Amendment. And the man, the incredible lyricist Yip Harburg, who wrote the words … he was actually blacklisted,” Wainwright began.
By the time Wainwright reached the third verse, when “troubles melt like lemon drops,” the crowd in Springfield was swaying to the music. As he wrapped, Springfield delivered its loudest applause.
