Sept. 19 (UPI) — Hundreds of protesters showed up at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, forming a chain around the front of the building and shouting “Hands off!” in response to President Donald Trump’s shutting the center down.

The gathering was in the plans for months by advocacy group Hands Off the Arts, but its July event had to be postponed because of wildfire smoke. It just happened to coincide with a week with a lot of news around the center.

On Tuesday, a judge ruled a second time that Trump couldn’t put his name on the center, then he and the board closed it down. Later, Kennedy Center Executive Director Matt Floca said the closure is only for a week. On Thursday, a judge ruled that any changes to the center have to be announced to the court in writing 30 days in advance.

Hands Off the Arts was created by a group of Kennedy Center staff after Trump took over in early 2025. By Friday, the group expected about 1,000 people to attend, but it estimated at the end of the evening that it was several thousand.

“The demonstration opposes the recent sudden closure of the facility, the installation of security fencing and political efforts to alter or demolish portions of the presidential memorial,” the group said on its website.

Actress Lynda Carter, best known as Wonder Woman, came to show her support. “Music and the arts is how we actually survive,” The Post reported she said. “It is how we learn. It is about vibration in the universe. It is about gravity; it’s about our souls.”

“The center had more or less become like a mausoleum rather than a vibrant cultural center,” co-organizer Mallory Miller told The Washington Post before the event. “But a lot of us have amazing memories of the center hustling and bustling with people. We wanted to kind of bring that feeling back.”

“The Kennedy Center can’t be renamed for anyone else,” Miller told ABC News. “It’s a memorial to John F. Kennedy. It’s, like, silly to suggest otherwise. And it’s not just silly — it’s insulting and it’s degrading and it’s un-American.”

Miller was a former assistant manager of dance programming at the Kennedy Center. She lost her job in 2025 as part of mass layoffs.

“Artists are the risk takers in our society,” Miller told ABC. “We are the people who create the world that comes next, and that is what the Kennedy Center means to all of us. This is a building that belongs to the American people, not one person, and it’s our Kennedy Center. We are the Kennedy Center.”

The group had planned to form a human chain around the center, but new fencing made that impossible. But they made a chain anyway.

Former ticket salesperson Jasmine Small watched the human chain form. She was one of the first people laid off last year.

“I’m showing up today, because no one showed up with my colleagues,” Small said. “I’m going to have a voice for them to say that we won’t be forgotten.”