Fifteen years ago, Nancy Wasserman left her friends and family in Vermont and moved to Ottawa for love. It was 2015 and Barack Obama was president of the United States.
Wasserman had fallen in love with a Canadian who lived in Ottawa, and at that time, they would have been unable to be married legally as a same-sex couple in the United States. So Wasserman moved to Canada.
She’s lived in Ottawa with her partner since then, and became a dual citizen. And on Saturday, she helped organize a protest in Ottawa against the Trump administration, joining millions of protestors worldwide in the “No Kings” rallies.
The cross-country protests took place over the weekend in response to weeks of political unrest and to raise concern for the Trump administration’s policies. Many of the protests were organized by a group called Indivisible.
In 2017, when Donald Trump was elected for his first term as U.S. president, the Indivisible movement was formed in the U.S. as a commitment to democracy and anti-fascism. But in January of this year, when Trump was inaugurated for a second term, Wasserman said she wanted to use her voice.
She posted to her neighbourhood Facebook group to see if any of her neighbours were Americans or dual citizens who felt the same.
Soon, she heard from many Ottawans who shared her feelings, and they were able to form an Ottawa chapter of Indivisible. Since then, with Wasserman at the helm, the group has been protesting, spreading awareness about the Trump administration, and encouraging Americans living abroad to vote.
“We’re open to Canadians, Americans, dual citizens… anybody here in Ottawa who wants an umbrella under which to protest what’s going on in the States, with the authoritarian drives happening elsewhere, and also the profound impact this is having on Canada, in terms of Trump’s 51st state, the impact of the tariffs…
“So we’re really hoping to be an umbrella organization that can give people who want to protest what’s going on that has been caused at this point, primarily by Trump in the States, but certainly elsewhere,” she continued.
Wasserman grew up visiting Lexington, MA, where the first battle of the Revolutionary War took place in 1775. The site is now known as the “Birthplace of American Liberty.”
“We got that history lesson every year about the uniqueness of the U.S. and the importance of the separation of powers between three branches of government, and why that was significantly different than a parliamentary system, and how important the melting pot myth was,” she explained. “It was about how we welcome your tired, your hungry, your cold.
“I really grew up with that and and really believed it and I knew the States wasn’t perfect, but I also had a real trust in that system of checks and balances between three branches of government,” she continued. “And that’s being thrown out the window right now. It’s appalling and it’s very distressing”
She said she has been following reports of the arrests made by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that have sparked protests in recent months.
The protests come after weeks of increased enforcement since Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff and main architect of Trump’s immigration policies, said ICE officers would target at least 3,000 arrests a day, up from about 650 a day during the first five months of Trump’s second term.
Wasserman also said the deterioration of the free media and the Trump administration’s “authoritarian” policies have motivated her to join forces and protest from Ottawa.
Saturday’s protest at Ottawa’s U.S. embassy was attended by about 1,000 people, The Ottawa Citizen reported, in camaraderie with the American “No Kings” protest, but was renamed “No Tyrants” — “since Canada actually does have a king,” she laughed.
To protect both herself and her partner, Wasserman has decided to limit travel to the U.S. in order to be more “outspoken” about her beliefs.
“I wanted to make sure there would be nothing on any of my devices that would implicate anything else,” she explained. “I’m American, sooner or later they have to let me cross the border, but they don’t have to let my partner cross the border. I didn’t want to subject us to that kind of scrutiny or fear.”
So for now, she said she plans to continue protesting with the other members of Indivisible Ottawa. She’s also encouraging Americans who are living abroad to vote in the U.S. state legislative elections in November.
She still believes in the stories she was told as a child about the promise of America. But she said it will take “decades” to recover from Trump’s administration — let alone for individual people to heal and move on.
“It’s, really, really horrible to see how quickly this has happened. There are shades of Nazi Germany, without any question,” she said. “One always wondered, how was it possible that Hitler came to power so quickly?
“We’re getting a day-to-day lesson in that right now.”
With files from the Canadian Press
