“I love Americans and I love the people of America, but I’m not a patriot for the systems that have been in place,” says Zach Weiser, a freshman majoring in art education, who also happens to serve as president for the Young Democratic Socialists of America club at Millersville University.
Prior to his role on-campus, he used to participate in the Lancaster Democratic Socialists of America, where he started to become involved in activism.
“That wasn’t something I grew up with at all. It was just something that I discovered on my own and became involved in,” Weiser said.
On Jan. 30, the National Shutdown campaign, also known as the “ICE Out! National Day of Action,” was observed across the country, including Lancaster. Many in the surrounding area turned out to play a part in this protest, including Weiser.
“Nationally, there were a lot of walkouts. So I heard about it because I’ve been in the organizing chats for many of the local ICE protests lately,” Weiser said. “I mean, I’m always in the know about that stuff. I’m pretty involved in, I guess, the scene for it.”
Weiser had fulfilled the role of being a safety marshal for this event. As the protestors were a part of a march on the sidewalk, his role mainly required him to stop cars in the street to ensure the protestors were protected and not at risk of harm.
One monumental moment for Weiser was when he was asked to lead the march.
“A guy from the Party for Socialism and Liberation, he hands me a microphone, ’cause I told him I would do some chants,” Weiser said. “Some of the students do speeches, and then he comes up to me again and he goes, ‘can you just lead the march?’”
This is a first for Weiser. While he has spoken and led chants in prior protests, being able to lead a march was an entirely new experience.
“Having like 400 people follow you, that’s a crazy feeling. [The march] made you feel very connected to everyone as we were walking by. So many people were ducking their heads out of their houses and just being like ‘thank you guys’,” Weiser pointed out. “The whole community was essentially in support of it, except for the cars that we were stopping.”
For this protest, others were assigned a variety of roles, ranging from social media to security. As social media sites have increased in popularity, protestors and activists have started to utilize the sites to spread awareness to causes and movements.
“There were people whose task was to film the protest for a couple reasons. Number one, proof we’re there. It’s just good to post online, get the word out that people are in the streets,” Weiser said. “To just have that documented proof that we’re out here, we’re peaceful, and we’re not hurting anyone is really important, especially now.”
While social media serves a purpose when being used in these scenarios, many tend to think that just posting isn’t doing enough for certain causes. Many protestors and activists want others to have substantial approaches besides social media, one of which being Weiser.
“Social media is awesome, but it leads to the tendency that we think we, as a society, kind of believe that social media replaces our organizing, it doesn’t. It’s important for getting information out. You should be doing both, but you can’t just sit around posting,” Weiser said. “I know a lot of people who have school and work around the clock and they literally cannot make it out to protest. In that situation, I would say find organizations you can donate to, find ways you can participate online.”
Protesting is very important to Weiser, as well as many other students and citizens. There has been an increase in activism and protests, with over 10,700 protests in the United States in 2025, according to data from Crowd Counting Consortium, which is a part of Harvard University. Many urge others to join in and participate in causes that they believe in.
“Everyone can do something. Everyone can do more than what they’re doing, I don’t really think there’s much of an excuse to not do anything right now,” Weiser emphasized. “But at the end of the day, what is a protest doing if it’s not inconveniencing people and showing people that there’s actually something worth fighting for?”
