These are the remarks made by Anne Hedges at the Indivisible Helena No Kings Rally on June 14, 2025 at Flag Plaza at the capitol in Helena.
I brought this flag today because this is our flag. It belongs to each and every one of us. When I was in the Peace Corps, living in the third world, I was in a country that had just unseated a dictator of 35 years. I learned a lot from that experience. I learned the meaning of our flag. I learned to value our flag. I will NOT let those in power, I will not let Donald Trump usurp the freedoms that this flag represents, freedoms that my father and so many others fought to protect.
To all of the veterans here today, thank you for defending democracy.
Now it’s time for all of us to step up and defend this country and the democratic values on which it was founded.
We cannot sit idly by while the far right, that wraps themselves in our flag, has a United States Senator wrestled to the ground by police and handcuffed for asking questions of the Director of Homeland Security. This is our country and we cannot abide by such authoritarianism.
We are here today because we believe in
• Democracy
• Due Process
• The right to vote for all citizens
• The right of all Americans to access health care
• The right to know what government is doing in our name
• The right to protect children from toxic pollution and protect our
climate for present and future generations
• Free Speech
• Peaceful Assembly
• A free and independent press
• Workers rights
• Veterans rights
• State’s rights
• The right against unreasonable search and seizure
• The right to petition government
• Habeas Corpus—and we deserve a department of homeland security director to know what that means!
What we have right now is an attack on all of the above and so much more:
• Using the military on civilians is something done by third world despots.
• Tax cuts for the richest people in this country while the poor lose basic public services and can’t afford housing, medicine, and food? Here we are.
• Presidential pardons for insurrectionists while people who have done nothing wrong are sent to jails in the third world?
It’s impossible to keep up, and that’s the point. The oligarchs, despots and their bootlickers, want to be kings of this country. They don’t want you to pay attention. They want you to lose your resolve. Fear their retribution and stay silent while they steal democracy from the masses. But we are the masses and we cannot let that happen. Especially those of us with the privilege to be here today. We have an obligation to do what we can to protect each other and the future of our democracy.
So let’s talk about what’s going on in Congress at the urging of the wanna be king and his sycophants. Trump’s Big Bad Bogus Budget Bill is a disaster for all of us, for our children and for the planet on which we depend.
• $625 billion in cuts to medicaid will take healthcare away from up to 15 million Americans including 215,000 Montanans, of which 80,000 are Montana Kids. This jeopardized rural hospitals on which so many in this state depend. It’s not just heartless, it’s a disgrace.
• Who here needs to eat? It turns out Congress doesn’t value that either. It’s proposing $250 BILLION in cuts for federal food assistance, impacting 11 million children, seniors and veterans.
• Under the Big Bad Bogus Budget Bill someone making $15,000 will see their federal taxes increase by 74% but the taxes on the uber rich will decrease 68%! Sound fair?
• Don’t forget the national debt, something the wanna be autocrats pretended to be apoplectic about when Biden and Obama were in office. This Big Bad Bogus Budget bill will add $4.6 trillion to the national debt.
• And medicare? We don’t need to worry unless the deficit increases, at which time there will be automatic cuts of up to $500 Billion to this safety net. Since it will be automatic, Congress is hoping you won’t blame them when up to 20% of Montanans lose their healthcare coverage. But we’ll notice and we know who to blame.
The Big Bad Bogus Budget Bill would:
• Triple the budget for ICE.
• Ban states from protecting the public from unregulated AI run amok by the tech broligarchs
• Repeals clean energy programs that provide thousands of jobs and millions of dollars of investments across Montana, giving Montanans energy security and energy independence, something our Senators only seem to care about when it means giving their fossil fuel cronies our natural resources and public lands while they destroy our climate and steal our wealth and our future.
• This bill takes funding from public schools that educate the next generation, kids that will help us be innovative and resilient
• Eliminates protections for ranchers who live near coal mines that are destroying their water resources.
• Makes our summers hotter, drier, and smokier while our rivers heat up, fish die, and our economy suffers.
• Allows Trump to censor non-profits that provide public services and benefits to millions of Americans.
• And MORE!
So what can we do? Being here is the first step. Being LOUD is the second.
They want us to be afraid to speak up, afraid to show up, afraid to protect our families and neighbors.
We can’t let that happen. We need to defend our rights with vigor and persistence.
Democracy is fragile. It is only as strong as the people who defend it and right now we the people are the defenders of democracy.
We are not entitled to the democracy we inherited. We must work for it. We must have resolve. We must not let Senator Daines and his sidekick Sheehy, our Cowboy impersonating Congressmen, or our broligarch Governor off the hook. We must call, write, and bird-dog our elected officials until they agree to protect their constituents and defend our constitutional rights. We must run for office, join organizations who are fighting for our rights, talk to our friends and neighbors and push back.
United we Stand. Let’s stand up for democracy. Our fellow Americans. The future of this country and the millions of people who are suffering here and abroad due to the heartless authoritarians that are running this country.
Let’s start by stopping the Big Bad Bogus Budget bill! Call your Senators!
Today, tomorrow, and next week!
Get active. Get engaged. Do your part for the future of this country.
We can and we must defend the flag and all the freedoms that it stands for.
BE LOUD!
We threw off kings once and we must do it again!