TIFTON — Protesters and picketers gathered before the Tifton office of U.S. Rep. Austin Scott this weekend to speak out against his support of the current federal administration.

Dissatisfied community members took up positions along the sidewalk outside of Scott’s local office Saturday morning, voicing their opposition to many of the current policies being pursued by the Trump administration and Scott’s role in supporting those initiatives.

Scott, who lives in Tifton, represents Georgia’s 8th Congressional District, which includes Lowndes County.

Signs criticizing President Donald Trump’s proposed and ongoing cuts to various government departments and programs, urging for the protection and preservation of these departments, and accusing him and his administration of valuing monetary gain over supporting their constituents were on full display for passersby, held aloft by the picketers.

“The American people are losing jobs, losing Medicaid, losing access to healthcare, and that is not what they voted for,” said Ambrose King Jr. “They voted to drive costs down, to protect them from tyranny.”

Chants regularly rang out among the crowd, proclaiming “Tax the rich,” “This is America,” or calling for Scott to “protect our veterans” and “do his job.”

On several occasions, the protesters urged the representative to meet with them for a town hall meeting and hear out their concerns. Vince Watkins, an organizer of the protest and a candidate for District 8 representative in 2024, wondered if Scott had ever held such a meeting for the residents of Tifton.

“In the decade that he has been supposedly representing us, have we ever had a town hall?” Watkins asked. “How do you represent people if you don’t talk to them?”

In the absence of the representative, Watkins took questions from the protesters for what they would want Scott to address, such as what he planned to do to protect Medicaid.

Watkins also criticized the direction the Republican Party had taken in recent years, claiming that Abraham Lincoln, a historic Republican, would have been horrified to see its current state were he alive today.

He urged the protesters to stand up and fight for their rights and the rights of their fellow community members, even when facing staunch opposition.

Organizer Imoni Smith asserted that this protest would be but the first step in reaching out to Scott and demanding he support his constituents, stating she aimed to continue holding protests for as long as the representative remained unopposed or unresponsive to the passage of policies that would prove harmful to South Georgians.

“The more he proceeds, the more we’re going to continue protesting — we are going to be relentless,” Smith said. “We will show up to his business, we will show up to his office during office hours in Tifton and Warner Robins. We are going to continue protesting; this is just the beginning.”