![Palo Alto community members dressed as women from Margret Attwood’s novel, "The Handmaid's Tale," protested Friday afternoon at the crossing between Palo Alto High School and Town and Country Village. According to organizer Stephanie T., who asked that her last name not be used out of fear for retribution, the group chose this high-traffic location to encourage the public, especially teens, to band together against injustice. “[We wanted to answer] how do you get young people and other people to turn out to vote what your heart says?" she said.](https://palyvoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/IMG_5101-1200x900.jpeg)
Dressed in red cloaks and white bonnets, Palo Alto community members gathered to protest for preserving democracy at noon Friday on the crossing from Palo Alto High School to Town and Country, kicking off a day of activism.
Members from the organization Indivisible Palo Alto Plus, a local chapter of the national grassroots organization founded in 2016 following Donald Trump’s first election as U.S. president, attended the peaceful protest.
According to Stephanie T., who requested anonymity out of concern for possible repercussions, a member of IPA+ the protesters wanted to express their concern about the government’s shift toward a top-down power structure.
“At the moment, it seems we are moving away from a democratic republic and to a more autocratic [one],” Stephanie said. “President Trump is acting like he should be able to just decide, instead of us voting on and agreeing to what should happen.”
Stan Chism, a retired physician and former Stanford faculty member, said he attended the protest to address the threat to democratic institutions and to create a sense of urgency.
“We’re protesters trying to preserve democracy before it disappears and cannot be recovered,” Chism said. “People are too apathetic to read, to watch, to open their eyes, so we’re trying to capture eyeballs and bring their attention [to this cause].”
Stephanie said the protesters’ outfits, modeled after clothes in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale,” serve as a warning about what she said were the American people’s waning civil liberties.
“It [The Handmaid’s Tale outfit] is a reference to loss of individual rights, and for women, it’s a specific reference to our loss of reproductive rights,” Stephanie said. “When I was your age, we were fighting for reproductive rights, and then we achieved that, and now it’s gone in a lot of states.”
According to Paly junior Felicia Littke, the protesters’ outfits and signs were especially striking for their bluntness.
“It’s really great to not sugarcoat things and just lay them out as they are,” Littke said. “The amount of times that our current government has broken laws, gone against the Constitution and against any type of system put in place to not allow our presidents to have too much power is a threat to democracy.”
Chism said he hopes that Americans will become more aware of women’s role in protecting our rights and advocating for change.
“The notion of consciousness is important,” Chism said. “We [IPA+] are all people of different ages, different backgrounds, mostly women. Women are where the future will be.”
