Why one homeowner has turned her lawn into a protest against Trump

Diana Vidutis, 73, says a lot of traffic goes by her house, in Takoma Park, Maryland, giving her statements an audience. Photo / Sarah L. Voisin, the Washington Post

Not for the first time, Diana Vidutis wondered if her signs would make her a target.

“Maybe I should be scared?” the 73-year-old said one evening, in her Takoma Park, Maryland, home. She shrugged off the thought. “To me, this is my contribution.”

Beyond Vidutis’ sloping front lawn, cars barrelled along both sides of the tree-shaded street, a main thoroughfare connecting the District to the bordering Maryland suburbs.

It would be hard for anyone to miss her “contribution”, a 7m hand-lettered sign strung across her yard: “Hey Cadet Bone Spurs! No Military Parade Can Hide That You Were A Coward And A Traitor”.

This was the latest of more than a dozen homemade political signs Vidutis has splashed across her property since Inauguration Day.

Their messages criticise the Trump Administration’s policies (“Tax Cuts Grow Debt, Agency Cuts Hurt People What Is It All For?”) as well as slam the President (“Donald, How Many Ukrainian Lives Lost in Exchange for Trump Hotels in Moscow?”).

Vidutis is certainly not the only person in Maryland’s liberal-leaning Montgomery County to post a political message on her lawn. Vidutis said she has felt helpless watching an Administration she did not support throw out political norms, rewire the essential hardware of the federal government, and steer the country towards new foreign conflicts.

But her dedication to using her front lawn as a political message board, rotating the signage every other week or so, is unique.

For Vidutis, voicing her views is an essential part of citizenship in a democracy - a feeling rooted in her own history as the daughter of Lithuanian immigrants who fled their homeland for America after a repressive Soviet-backed regime took over their country.

Her one-woman ever-developing display is good American citizenship, Vidutis explained, and also “cathartic”.

“I just feel like I have to do something,” she said. “This is all constantly crashing down upon us. We’re getting hit with a fire hose of disinformation.”

That evening, she had a new sign to make for the weekend. “I just went to Michael’s yesterday for some olive paint,” she said.

Political signs on both sides of the political divide are about more than spilling your opinions publicly, according to Arthur Markman, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and co-host of Two Guys on Your Head, a psychology podcast.

“A lot of us feel like there is very little we can do in terms of national politics,” Markman said.

“Yes, we can vote, but many don’t feel like they have all that much power there. So when you feel something is being done to you that you don’t agree with, you feel helpless.”

The overwhelming speed of change can lead to “learned helplessness”, or an “oh, well” attitude, Markman said. “The alternative is to find some kind of agency.”

Sending out a message - whether that’s slapping a sticker on a car or a making a lawn sign - can be a way to reclaim that agency, which is essential to building up resilience, or adapting to what a person sees as adverse changes in their world, said Markman.

“Having a sense that you have some influence on the world is an enormous part of our resiliency,” Markman said.

Vidutis is a lifelong Democrat and works as a legal secretary at a large law firm in Washington, DC. She marches at anti-Doge events and other protests, is active in the local Lithuanian community and sings in a Lithuanian-language choir. “I love the sad songs,” she said.

During the first Trump Administration, Vidutis regularly posted her political thoughts on Facebook. But that began to feel like shouting into a void, she said.

When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, she watched with horror, feeling helpless seeing a former Soviet country similar to Lithuania struggle against a violent incursion on its independence.

Three years ago, Vidutis took in a couple and their two small children who had fled Odessa to the US as refugees. The Ukrainians still live in her Takoma Park home. A Ukrainian flag proudly flaps from Vidutis’ porch.

“I can be a little preachy with these signs,” she admitted. “So I try to make them lively.”

Diana Vidutis sees broadcasting her messages as an act of good citizenship. Photo / Sarah L. Voisin, the Washington Post

When she decides it’s time to add to her display, Vidutis sits down at her dining room table with a pen and piece of paper, roughing out what she wants to say.

“I try to chop things up in big words, and to use as few words as possible,” she said. “For any good sign, it has to be something you can read in one second.”

Last week, she sat at her table thinking through a sign about the 250th Army birthday, an occasion that was marked with a massive military parade on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

“I’m trying really hard to come up with something positive,” she said.

Vidutis said no one has defaced her displays, and no neighbours have complained. People actually have been stopping by to take pictures with her signs, she said. She knows most of her neighbours’ views align with her own.

After some thinking, she got out the paint and began to work. She discovered the Army’s motto, adopted during the Revolutionary War: “This We’ll Defend”.

The next morning, two whiteboards neatly inked with handwritten messages were in place.

“Dear Army, Happy 250th,” one said. The other: “‘This We’ll Defend.’ PLEASE DEFEND U.S. AGAINST TRUMP.”

The following Monday, Vidutis had a new sign spread across her yard. Keeping up with the news cycle, she addressed the budget bill circulating in Congress, which Trump has pushed legislators to pass by July 4.

“Kill the Bill - That Huge Ugly Bill,” the sign read. “Stealing Slashing Billionaires Profiteering.”