Progressive students and residents tell Trump and his supporters to leave State College

As the temperature dropped into the 50s in central Pennsylvania on Saturday, things were heating up in the latest buildup to the Nov. 7 election.

This was the case in State College when former President Donald Trump made the first of two possible stops in Pennsylvania. His presence sparked defiance from two grassroots organizations and a few others on campus.

About 50 protesters carrying signs with progressive rhetoric marched down University Drive and around the Bryce Jordan Center toward Curtin Road, loudly denouncing racism, fascism and the excesses of capitalism.

“Dare to fight, dare to win… Make racists afraid again!” The crowd chanted, among other things, “Silence the racists again!” and “Run MAGA out of town!”

The march drew boos from those in line hoping to participate in Trump’s overbooked rally.

“Dick Cheney loves them!” a spectator yelled at the group. Others mocked the group as delusional, mentally ill or “woke.”

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Some Trump supporters used the media attention as their own chance at the spotlight and strutted in front of protesters (and cameras) to dance. A woman waved a cardboard Donald Trump mask in front of the crowd.

After the group marched down Curtin Road to the end of the line, reaching the security checkpoint in the center, they backtracked and went through another loop or two.

The protest was largely peaceful, with one exception: a brief altercation between several protesters and a Penn State junior who identified himself as “Honj.”

The fight broke out when protesters returned to Curtin Road, back towards University Drive. Honj said one protester grabbed his MAGA flag, while a masked protester later said Honj was pushing the flag signs. Several more masked protesters feigned ignorance of the event unfolding in front of them.

“We are working people. We never planned to engage in any type of physical violence; “We are simply here to show up and take up space,” that organizer said. “But we believe in self-defense. This is America: whoever is attacked has the right to defend themselves. But we didn’t start.”

“It’s (expletive), it’s a mental illness,” Honj later told a student reporter. “It’s time to take back our country.”

After making two laps in front of the Bryce Jordan Center, protesters set off down Curtin Road past some college students playing pickleball outside the Wagner Building, which houses Penn State’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, including the Force’s ROTC. Air, Army and Navy.

The student committee organizer said places like the Wagner Building turn Penn State students into the next “war criminals” general.

“It’s blood money. “We can’t have that (on our campus),” the organizer said. “They send our poor children to fight in the wars of the rich.”

Organizers said they organized the protest in two days. They attract new members through word of mouth and place them in new member cohort programs, providing training sessions on the groups’ principles. They teach security and defense, and how to talk about history and political theory, all with the goal of having a “disciplined and highly organized training.”

In fact, when journalists looked for opportunities to interview members of the group, one or two masked individuals would appear nearby. If strangers the group didn’t recognize approached too quickly, a six-member group immediately formed a semicircle around them, throwing out words like “de-escalation” to discourage violent interference.

The Student Committee for Defense and Solidarity and the People’s Defense Front were the most prominent group of protesters, but they were not the only group.

Other community protesters formed their own groups and held their own signs throughout the afternoon. A group set up a station on the corner of University Drive and Curtin Road to show their support for Democratic candidates Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

Another group of students formed near the entrance to the Bryce Jordan Center, where Trump supporters waited in line and heckled them back and forth.

Penn State administrator Jay Paterno walked by and unbuttoned a Penn State jacket to show some protesters that he, too, was wearing a Harris and Walz 2024 T-shirt.

He declined an interview, saying he was just on his daytime walk, didn’t realize what was going on and didn’t want to get involved.

Paterno unsuccessfully sought the Democratic Party’s nomination for lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania in 2014.