About two dozen protesters stood outside Duneland Falls Banquet Hall to protest Gov. Mike Braun and President Donald Trump on a wide variety of issues Thursday night.

Braun, who appeared at the Porter County Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Day dinner there, is a staunch Trump supporter.

Natalie Winters, of Valparaiso, said she hasn’t been politically active for long but had to get involved.

“I am horrified by what’s going on in this country. I worry about my children,” she said. “This is not my America.”

Her placard said she opposed cuts to funding for libraries, school lunches, and education, but she expanded it to include veterans, health care and a host of other issues. “I’m worried about everybody,” she said.

For Olivia Capusan, of LaPorte, it was her first protest. “I’ve had to become politically active with this presidency,” she said.

“It blows my mind that so many rights are being threatened,” she said. Her trans friends are especially scared, she noted.

Fran Kras, of Westville, showed her T-shirt bearing the words, “He’s a fascist.” “People stop me and say, ‘Who are you referring to?’ There’s so many of them out there,” she said.

“Our rights are disappearing. I think some people don’t even realize it,” she said.

Kras has been politically active almost all her life. “My first protest was against U.S. Steel in Chicago, polluting,” she said. “My mom took me.”

Now she’s speaking out against Republican policies. “I think there are, rightly so, a lot of people who are frightened to speak up. I’m a white woman, sort of privileged,” she said.

David Phillips, of Porter, had a similar view. “As a white person, I’m the last person going to be hurt,” he said.

“What Braun is doing is hurting a lot of people,” he said, including women’s rights. “We’re against anything he supports because he supports Trump.”

“The end of DEI is hurting people. They don’t start at the same place we have done,” and need a boost, he said, to compete fairly.As the crowd chanted, “More brains, less Braun,” Phillips said protests have historically changed public policy over time. “Protests will increase in the United States as people get hurt,” he said.

Lisa Nicole, of Valparaiso, began organizing protests in February. “My last protest had about 500 people at it,” she said, and only three counter-protesters.

On Saturday, a “Food is a Human Right” protest is being held in front of the Porter County Courthouse, soliciting nonperishable foods from noon to 2 p.m., she said.

The food will be distributed to food pantries in Valparaiso. Nicole expects about 700 people to attend.

At the protests held in downtown Valparaiso, “it’s just nonstop honking,” she said. “Even people that don’t know us are defending us.”

“The people leading all this stuff, they’re all women,” Phillips said.

Julie Storbeck, who helped organize Thursday’s protest, said word spread by a grassroots effort. “It’s important to not let people like Braun take away rights and then sit down to a nice dinner,” she said.

“I think it’s kind of wrong he’s holding this pricey event in a union hall because his party wants to get rid of unions,” Kras said.

She objected to the state paying for a helipad for Braun’s home.

“Why should I be paying for that? Figure out how to commute like the rest of us,” she said.

“You’ve got to take it to the public,” Julie Keen, of Chesterton, said.

“I’ve never seen anything this appalling all my life,” said Susan Krischano, 71, of Valparaiso, about Trump’s policies.

She objects to dismantling agencies that provide aid, health benefits, research on diseases and more.

Krischano’s happy to see people starting to get riled up. “The people are at the town halls. They’re protesting, they’re calling.”

“They’re not representing the people,” she said about the Trump administration and Republican-controlled Congress.

Krischano said she even put in a call to Denmark’s prime minister to apologize on behalf of Americans for Trump’s insistence that the U.S. should annex Greenland.

“Now he’s a Putin wannabe, and that’s exactly where we’re at right now,” she said. “He’s making life miserable for everybody.”

“Look at all the things he’s torn apart, dismantled and destroyed,” Krischano said. “Something’s got to be done.”

“If Vladimir Putin wanted to destroy the United States, he couldn’t find a better weapon than Trump,” Mike Draia, of Valparaiso, said.

Draia, a BP Whiting Refinery retiree, said the 2015 strike against BP “really opened my eyes.” He became politically active after that.

More young people need to become politically involved, he said.

For Draia, who is now on Medicare and Social Security, protecting both is important. “They’re threatening my entire livelihood,” he said. “It’s not an entitlement, it’s an investment.”

Long-time friends Talia Pasquali, of Porter, and Abby Smith, of Michigan City, held a banner together. “During the first Trump term is when I really started paying attention,” Smith said. Pasquali, who has been politically active “as long as I can remember,” helped protest in Florida during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think Braun is a sham and he can be bought, and we don’t want people like that in office,” Pasquali said.”

Kras said she was prepared for the protest alongside Ind. 149. The organizers provided a map showing where to stand to remain safe and in the public right-of-way. “I have my car key, I have my ID, I have $20 tucked away,” she said.

Her purse was left behind so no one could grab it.

Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.