As temperatures dropped into the 50s in central Pennsylvania on Saturday, things were heating up in the final push for the Nov. 7 election.

That was the case in State College, where former President Donald Trump held his first. two possible stops at Penn State. His presence invited a challenge from two grassroots organizations and several other organizations on campus.

Carrying signs with progressive rhetoric, about 50 protesters marched up University Drive and around the Bryce Jordan Center onto Curtin Road, loudly denouncing racism, fascism and the excesses of capitalism.

“Dare to fight, dare to win… Make the racists afraid again!” the crowd chanted, “Silence the racists again!” He also shouted slogans such as: and “Get the MAGA out of town!”

The march blocked those hoping to attend the overbooked Trump rally.

“Dick Cheney loves you guys!” One of the witnesses shouted slogans against the group. Others mocked the group as delusional, mentally ill, or “woke.”

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Some Trump supporters took the media attention as their chance to be in the spotlight and began showing off to dance in front of protesters and cameras. A woman waved a cardboard mask of Donald Trump in front of the crowd.

The group walked down Curtin Road to the end of the line, reached the security checkpoint in the centre, then turned back and walked another lap or two.

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

Scuffles broke out as protesters moved down Curtin Road towards University Drive. Honj said a protester grabbed a MAGA flag, while a masked protester later said Honj pushed posters with the flag. A few more masked protesters pretended to be unaware of the event taking place in front of them.

“We are working people. The organiser, we never planned to use any physical violence; “We’re just here to show up and take up space,” he said. “But we believe in self-defense. This is America; whoever is attacked has the right to defend themselves. But we don’t initiate it.”

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

Protesters walked two laps in front of the Bryce Jordan Center, then marched past several undergraduate students playing pickleball outside the Wagner Building, which is home to the Penn State Reserve Officer Training Corps, including the Air Force, Army and Navy ROTC. They set out towards the road.

Places like the Wagner building are turning Penn State students into the next “war criminals” general, a student committee organizer said.

“This is blood money. We can’t do this (on our campus),” the organizer said. “They’re sending our poor children to fight the rich people’s wars.”

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

Indeed, as reporters looked for interview opportunities with band members, one or two masked figures would appear nearby. If strangers unknown to the group approached too quickly, a group of six members would immediately form a semicircle around them and throw around words like “de-escalate” to discourage violent intervention.

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 groups.

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

Another group of students formed near the entrance of the Bryce Jordan Center; where Trump supporters waited in line and argued back and forth with them.

Penn State Trustee Jay Paterno stopped by and unzipped his Penn State windbreaker to show a few protesters that he, too, was wearing a Harris and Walz 2024 jersey.

He declined the interview, saying he was just on a daytime walk, didn’t understand what was going on and didn’t want to get involved.

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