ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 Thousands of people took part in protests across the country on Saturday as part of 50501 movement.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
Thousands across the U.S. joined the 50501 movement to protest what demonstrators say are anti-democratic policies
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Kim Wittmer, attending her second protest, wants to be a role model for her granddaughters
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On the topic of deportation efforts, Florida GOP Chair Evan Powers says: “Temporary status was always supposed to be that \u2013 temporary”<\/p>\n
These protests cover a large range of topics. They\u2019re aiming to raise awareness about what they call anti-democratic policies in the United States.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One of those protests was held in St. Petersburg at Williams Park.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kim Wittmer was among the hundreds of people protesting.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like this is just a unique time in our history and it\u2019s important to get our voice heard,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is the second protest Wittmer has been to this month.<\/p>\n
Looking back a few years ago, she said it\u2019s not something she would attend.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never really done this before,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m like, oh my gosh, I do not like the way things are going. Silence is being complicit and I don\u2019t want to be complicit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wittmer wants to be a role model for her granddaughters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She hopes they see her and everyone protesting and can be inspired to stand up for what they believe in.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s time to take a stand,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Spectrum News reached out to various Republican groups about protests criticizing the White House\u2019s deportation efforts.<\/p>\n
Evan Power, the Chair of the Republican Party of Florida, said, \u201cJudges should not set immigration policy. The president and Congress should. Temporary status was always supposed to be that \u2013 temporary. As we learned after Florida imposed new laws to prevent illegal immigrants from working, we saw not real impact to our labor force.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 Thousands of people took part in protests across the country on Saturday as part…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[4318,3140,4628,115,596,99,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,835],"class_list":["post-5832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-app-latest-local-state-politics-stories","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-matt-lackritz","tag-news","tag-pinellas-county","tag-politics","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}