Stop the Coup

On February 5, 2025, at noon, the American public started fighting back at statehouses across the nation against an unconstitutional takeover of the American government lead by the newly installed Trump Administration following the playbook of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. The rallies were an extraordinary example of decentralized organizing. No major organization was behind the rallies—just an idea floated on Reddit under the title 50501 (Fifty Protests, Fifty States, One Day) that took off like wildfire. Many people stayed away because they didn’t trust it, maybe it was a trap. But it wasn’t. It was real and it was powerful. And thousands came out to make their voices heard.

The photos shown here were taken at the Massachusetts State House in Boston. The message first was to stop the coup. There was more outrage expressed against Musk than Trump. More focused messages of trans and LGBTQ+ rights, US AID, reproductive rights, immigration, veterans, and so many others followed.

Glenn Ruga

Glenn Ruga, SDN Founder, is a graphic designer, a part-time social documentarian, and a lifelong human rights activist. From 2010-2013 he was the Executive Director of the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University (www.prcboston.org). Ruga was a curator of the New York Photo Festival in 2012 (http://nyph.at/ruga/).

He has created traveling and online documentary exhibits on an immigrant community in Holyoke, Mass., on the struggle for a multicultural future in Bosnia, and the war and aftermath in Kosovo.

He is the owner and creative director of Visual Communications, a graphic design firm located in Concord, Mass. His clients include Physicians for Human Rights, the International and US Campaigns to Ban Landmines, the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship, the Civil Rights Program at Harvard Law School, the St. Boniface Haiti Foundation, and other non-profit, educational, and human rights organizations. His design work includes websites for many of the above organizations.

Ruga founded the Center for Balkan Development, a non-profit organization created in 1993 to help stop the genocide in Bosnia and create a just and sustainable future in the former Yugoslavia.

Glenn has a B.A. in Social Theory from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and an MFA in Graphic and Advertising Design from Syracuse University. He also has a certificate in Interactive Communications from Massachusetts College of Art.