Castina Charles of Altamont Main Street USA organized her first rally on Tuesday. She beamed as a group of about 75 people huddled in the midst of a snowstorm at the base of the Leo W. O’Brien Federal Building in Albany.

Cars passing by tooted their horns as the protesters waved handwritten signs, ranging from “Resist racist cabinet” to “Every day is Earth Day.” Several in the crowd were wearing the pink pussy hats made famous inauguration weekend at the Women’s March on Washington, D.C.

“Senator Schumer, keep it up; we’ve got your back when you fight for us,” the crowd chanted, alternately substituting Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s or Congressman Paul Tonko’s name.

An organizer from MoveOn.org praised protesters for their enthusiasm and urged persistence as he told the crowd, “You’re overloading the system. Voicemail fills up every 15 minutes.”

Charles, from Schenectady, said one of the members of her group was Doug Peterman of Altamont and, although he wasn’t at Tuesday’s rally, the meeting at his home inspired the group’s name. Altamont Main Street USA was chosen, she told The Enterprise, “to show we’re not a fringe organization. We’re mainstream America.”

This was the first rally Charles organized and the second one she’d been to. She went to her first rally the Tuesday before, Jan. 24.

“I walked away excited. It turned on a switch,” said Charles who works as a freelance writer and tutor. She said that the Trump administration has “framed it that we are not American.”

“This is a movement I believe will continue to grow,” said Charles. “So many people who came had never been to rallies. The resistance to Donald Trump is spreading.”

Altamont Main Street USA is working with MoveOn.org, the Working Families Party, and People’s Action, Charles said.

MoveOn.org, founded in 1998 to urge the country to “move on” from focusing on the impeachment of Bill Clinton, is a progressive public policy advocacy group and a political action committee.

The Working Families Party was formed in 1998 by a coalition of community organizations and labor unions.

People’s Action was formed last year, merging organizations like the Alliance for a Just Society, National People’s Action, and USAction Education Fund.

People’s Action is advocating public events be staged every Tuesday “in resistance to President Donald Trump’s agenda and to strengthen our movement for a people-and-planet agenda that serves the needs of all people, not just the wealthy and powerful,” according to the People’s Action website.

The regular Tuesday events are to lead up to a convention is Washington, D.C. in April dubbed the “Rise Up” People’s Action Founding Convention.

“We want to congratulate our representatives that are working for just causes and pressure our representatives that aren’t,” said Charles.

She said events will be held every Tuesday — not always at the O’Brien Building, sometimes at Republicans’ offices — for the first 100 days of the Trump administration. The group’s events are posted on the Facebook page #1america4all.

“This is going on all over the country,” she said. “We’re not going to normalize Trump.” She said New York was fortunate to have Democratic senators, Charles Schumer and Gillibrand, noting that Schumer is the minority leader. “He sets the tone,” Charles said.

At Tuesday’s rally, Schumer was represented by Kevin Mann, Gillibrand by David Connors, and Tonko by Dan Peluso, she said. Those in the crowd asked questions ranging from Trump’s ban on immigrants from Muslim countries to withholding income tax as a protest.

Charles said she got involved because she was “disheartened after the election.” The week before the inauguration, she got a notice fromm MoveOn.org that Doug Peterman was hosting a gatheirng at his Altamont home; 18 people showed up, Charles said.

Peterman, who lives on Main Street in Altamont, could not be reached for comment. He was featured in an Enterprise editorial last fall after a “Hillary” sign he had placed on his front lawn was taken and replaced with a “Trump” sign.

Peterman, who described himself as a “stay-at-home dad” said he was angry when he first saw the Trump sign in his yard. “It is such a nasty, nasty election,” he said.

Instead of taking out the sign, he bought white electrical tape and changed its meaning. “He added an “s” to the word “Trump,” making it into a verb, and then, above “Trumps,” he spelled out the word “Love.” Below it, he spelled the word “Hate.” So his transformed sign read “Love Trumps Hate.”

“I think people feel danger coming from his rhetoric,” Peterman said of Trump during election season. “I don’t like the kind of violence Trump is inciting, the way he’s dividing people.”

He concluded, “The principle we should hold to is: I respect what’s on your lawn, even if I disagree.”