AUGUSTA — Jerzy Wieczorek began playing taps on his purple trombone, and a solemn march began.

Two dozen protesters, in black jackets, hats, gloves and veils, walked around the corner of the Edmund S. Muskie Federal Building and onto the Western Avenue sidewalk. Some were carrying signs cut out like gravestones. Four men carried a makeshift casket.

The protesters were mourning people who they say have died both in the United States and abroad as the result of policies enacted since President Donald J. Trump assumed office for his second term one year ago Tuesday. Organizers themed the demonstration “Stop the Killing.”

“We mourn every loss,” protestor David Hallee, the builder of the coffin, said on the sidewalk. “The current administration’s attitude is not one we should have for our own people, for our guests and around the world.”

The protest was organized by Indivisible Mid-Maine, one of a dozen local chapters of the national nonprofit in Maine. The national group supports progressive candidates and encourages local chapters to hold protests like this one.

No counter-protesters attended.

Indivisible Mid-Maine has organized several protests over the past year, including the “Good Trouble” protest at the Maine State House in July, No Kings protests and a demonstration against Democratic Rep. Jared Golden during a speaking engagement at Colby College in April. The organization hosted a celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and legacy in Waterville on Monday, too.

The Mid-Maine Indivisible chapter is led by Colby College history professor emerita Elizabeth Leonard.

Leonard said she was inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign, an economic justice-driven movement that preaches nonviolent protest, to demonstrate funeral-style. The Poor People’s Campaign has held funerals for people killed by what it calls “policy violence” — the sometimes lethal impact of lawmakers’ decisions on poverty.

“So I thought — yeah, but it’s bigger than that now,” Leonard said.

Many of Trump’s policy decisions, she said, have disproportionately impacted people living in poverty — most notably, the millions of people around the world that were denied assistance through the gutting of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. A Boston University epidemiologist’s model suggests more than 750,000 people, including more than 500,000 children, around the world have died as a direct result of USAID cuts.

Protesters also mourned the killing of more than 100 people in U.S. strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. U.S. Marine Corps veteran David Winter held a coffin-shaped sign mourning those killed in the boat strikes.

“They’re illegal bombings, and they’re illegal orders,” Winter said. “No due process, no evidence of drug dealing.”

Three women also delivered letters to the offices of Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King inside the federal building, detailing the group’s frustrations with the administration and asking the senators to act.

Elayne Richard, one of the three, said King’s office did not allow the letter to be read aloud, but that the protesters offered brief statements instead. The three read the two-page letter aloud to Collins’ office.

The letter asks the senators what they will do to “vigorously and persuasively oppose the terrible and dangerous rhetoric emanating from the Executive Branch, and bring an end to the actual violence and killing that the Trump regime is inflicting at home and abroad?”

The letter details other deaths allegedly caused directly or indirectly by the Trump administration: 32 in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in 2025; Renee Good, a Minneapolis resident and U.S. citizen protesting against ICE; dozens in Gaza after the enactment of a Trump-brokered cease-fire; more than 200 in Yemen as a result of U.S. bombings; thousands impacted by research funding cuts; hundreds who have died as a result of restrictive reproductive policy; and more.

The ICE-related deaths were top of mind for several protesters, given rumors of the agency’s increased presence in Maine.

In all, the letter said, about 1 million people have been killed by the Trump administration since last January.

“Cruelty certainly is at play,” Leonard said. “There is a glee and satisfaction I detect with these leaders when these things happen.”

But, Leonard said, there is hope yet, because of the people who honked as they drove by and the two dozen protesters who braved the biting wind chill to protest Tuesday. Many Americans, she said, are recognizing the actions of the Trump administration and taking action.

“What’s the saying? Hope is optimism with a plan,” she said.