The 50501 Movement started with just one post.
Reddit user u/Evolved_Fungi, who spoke with Newsweek on the condition of anonymity, said that the hundreds of thousands of people who gathered at state capitols across the country on Wednesday was something needed at the moment.
"I really felt like people needed something to connect to, and just seeing everybody struggle with what to do it was like 'here. Here's a date. Here's a time. Here's a place. Go,'" u/Evolved_Fungi said. "And all of a sudden people had purpose...It was amazing. I was absolutely thrilled with the response."
Why It Matters
The 50501 Movement—or 50 states, 50 protests, one day—garnered support throughout social media over its plan to stage demonstrations across the nation to "fight Fascism" on February 5. The protests were against President Donald Trump and his actions during his first three weeks back in the White House.
Trump has issued a flurry of executive orders, fulfilling campaign promises such as clamping down on illegal immigration and pardoning people who took part in the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Just yesterday, while people across the country were protesting, Trump signed an executive order to prevent transgender athletes from competing in women's and girls' sports.
In a Beacon Research/Shaw & Company Research/Fox News poll, 59 percent of registered voters said they were in favor of detaining and deporting illegal immigrants charged with crimes, and a report from Gallup in 2023 showed that 69 percent of people say transgender athlete should only be allowed to compete in sports corresponding with the sex they were assigned at birth. Most Americans (58 percent), however, opposed Trump's January 6 pardons, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll
What To Know
u/Evolved_Fungi has both marketing and engineering degrees and loves to read psychology books. He is part of other activism groups, including the bodily autonomy group Bloodstained Men and Their Friends who protest against circumcision. He says he has worked with other groups to help with marketing and fundraising campaigns as well as thinking of ways to connect people within a widespread organization better.
But he says he doesn't work for a campaign, noting he donated about $200 to a few groups and voted in the past election.
"I'm just like everybody else," u/Evolved_Fungi told Newsweek.
He wrote a call to action on Reddit, which ended up being just over a week before the actual protests took place. He said he saw a lot of talk on social media from people saying, "We need to have protests, we need to march and those comments were turning into discord chats and conversations on Reddit."
"I ended up seeing a lot of areas where everybody was trying to organize, but it was like someone saying into a massive room 'Hey, I'm in Florida is anyone else around?'" u/Evolved_Fungi told Newsweek. "It just wasn't efficient. It wasn't working. I kind of had this thing that they needed 50501."
The original post had indicated the date was going to be May 5, because u/Evolved_Fungi liked the way the numbers sounded, but one commenter said, "That's too far out, let's make it sooner," and the February 5 date was decided because "the proximity creates a sense of urgency."
The post included a "simple instruction set." u/Evolved_Fungi called it almost like the "telephone game," when people would whisper a word or phrase to the next and so on until everyone understood the message.
u/Evolved_Fungi's message told people to go to their state capitol at whatever time on February 5, even if no one else was there, "then you stand alone. There is power in your presence."
"People needed something to organize around," u/Evolved_Fungi told Newsweek. "This was a self-organizing idea."
u/Evolved_Fungi ended up deleting that first post, though.
He told Newsweek that he "didn't want to get in the way," quoting Tao Te Ching's concept of "if you tell somebody to do something, that's all they're going to do but if you empower somebody to do what they're able to do, they're going to do everything they can." u/Evolved_Fungi said he "didn't want to be seen as greater than anybody else."
"I think the reason that it worked was because it was just thrown out there and a lot of people got upset about the chaos of it. It wasn't organized. It didn't have leadership," u/Evolved_Fungi told Newsweek. "All of those things were aspects of why it works. It's an idea that organizes the people rather than the people needing to organize around the idea."
The "chaotic management style," as u/Evolved_Fungi called it, was part of the idea. He told Newsweek it was even "critical to make it happen," so that people didn't have time to form and disagree with one another.
If reached out to u/Evolved_Fungi to set up a website or run a protest in a specific state, he just made them a moderator in the Reddit group, encouraging them to stand up and do the work themselves. Even if someone was critical, u/Evolved_Fungi pushed them to make the change then.
"There was a lot of intentionality around some of the things that I think people didn't like about it," u/Evolved_Fungi told Newsweek. "Everybody has permission to do everything. Just go do it."
u/Evolved_Fungi, though, wasn't fully expecting the large impact his message would have come Wednesday, February 5. He started seeing references to the protests organically pop up on his feeds throughout different social media platforms.
He said that overall the protests were peaceful. u/Evolved_Fungi told Newsweek that Michigan's protest saw 8,000 people and about 20,000 individuals showed up for the movement in California. For a lot of them, u/Evolved_Fungi said it was their first protest, and some drove for hours just to take part.
The only hiccup was allegedly in Utah, where someone in the Reddit comments told u/Evolved_Fungi that a government sign was vandalized with the words "Eat the Rich."
"A lot of the comments were people saying this was the first time I felt like I had power back from what is happening politically in our country," u/Evolved_Fungi said. "This was something that really touched the people who are just everyday citizens."
What People Are Saying
Massachusetts State Senator Sal DiDomenico at the Boston protest: "You have allies in the State House who are going to fight back. Donald Trump wants to be a tyrant. Donald Trump is inspired, and he respects tyrants around the world because he wants to be just that. We have to fight back as a community and a nation to allow us to have a voice, not President Musk, not President Trump but the people have the voice of this country to fight back and defend democracy because we are not going to take it anymore."
Maureen Devlin told Newsweek at the Boston protest: "The criminality is just spectacularly disastrous for our country. It needs to be stopped."
Jess told Newsweek at the New York protest: "The tech titans want to be in charge of everything and they don't like democracy."
What's Next
u/Evolved_Fungi told Newsweek that if anything like the 50501 Movement were to happen again, the "chaos" would be needed for people to "go and just do it."
He said another Reddit user had suggested the group "keeps up with the 5s" and does a protest on March 5 next, but u/Evolved_Fungi told Newsweek he's concerned about burnout. u/Evolved_Fungi does expect some type of auxiliary event from the 50501 Movement, however, to take place in the future.
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