Here’s what’s next for the Tuesday with Toomey demonstrators who protested the senator for 6 years

Carolyn Stillwell used to vote all the time, but didn’t follow Pennsylvania politics particularly closely. Vashti Bandy had never tried to visit a senator’s office. Rosalind Holtzman was an introvert unlikely to speak out.

They all say that changed when they joined the protests that have taken place outside Sen. Pat Toomey’s office in Philadelphia every week since his 2016 reelection. The three Tuesdays with Toomey organizers say they’re now more outspoken, more active, more knowledgeable — and planning to remain engaged even after the Republican senator leaves office on Jan. 3.

As Toomey departs, the protesters say they’re looking forward to having their Tuesday afternoons back, and to welcoming Democratic Sen.-elect John Fetterman. But leaders of the group, formed primarily by women, also say the experience has driven them and many of their fellow protesters to a level of heightened civic engagement that will last beyond Toomey’s tenure.

“The biggest legacy of his time in office is that a whole bunch of his constituents who were never anything other than voters have gotten involved,” said Stillwell, of Philadelphia.

She and others involved in the group said they plan to now put their energies into causes they’ve learned about along the way, using the knowledge built while dogging Toomey.

“A lot of people said they had never spoken in front of a large group before. I had never canvassed before, and now I realize it’s important. ... I had never visited a senator’s office before. I had to Google it,” said Bandy, of Philadelphia. “Now my friends actually ask me stuff.”

She added, “I learned so much through doing this about frankly problems and solutions that I didn’t even know existed.”

» READ MORE: Pat Toomey didn’t change in his 12 years as a senator. The GOP did.

As the protests continued, the group opened up new avenues of involvement by inviting speakers from other organizations and elected Democrats, including members of Congress and the state legislature. Their guests included advocates for people facing drug addiction, liberal policy analysts, religious leaders, people with disabilities, immigration advocates, arts organizations, labor unions, environmentalists, and others.

“We kind of learned all these different ways we could get involved to change things we don’t like,” said Neil Kohl, a Philadelphian who joined the demonstrations early on and kept going for the past six years. “It became very much less about Toomey and more about what we could do ourselves.”

The group formed almost immediately after the 2016 election, when so much of Philadelphia reeled from Donald Trump’s victory. Toomey, who had kept his distance from Trump during his own reelection campaign that year, had pledged to be an “independent voice” whether Trump or Hillary Clinton won. Some of the liberals who saw those ads were determined to hold him to that promise.

The weekly protest took on a life of its own, sometimes dwindling to a couple dozen people then swelling around major events, such as the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg or the early GOP attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. (Most participants met over Zoom during the early days of the pandemic, though a few still went to Toomey’s office outside).

“We ended up making this relatively low-key corner, Second and Chestnut, a center of protest,” Bandy said.

State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D., Philadelphia) was an early protester who went on to win public office.

“This is democracy and organizing at its best — at its best,” said Kenyatta, who this year ran for the Democratic nomination to replace Toomey. “I am not sure we have ever seen in our city a more consistent group of advocates.”

And while Toomey said the protests didn’t affect his decision to not seek reelection — even before he won in 2016, he had said publicly it would likely be his last term — Kenyatta said the group deserves credit for helping flip the seat to Democrats.

“There would be no Sen. John Fetterman, or any Democratic senator for that matter, if it wasn’t for Tuesdays with Toomey,” Kenyatta said.

The group formed after a Philadelphia nanny, Alexandra Gunnison, visited Toomey’s Philadelphia office on a Tuesday afternoon when she had a break to raise concerns about Trump and rising hate crimes. She didn’t appreciate the results, and a weekly protest was born at 12:20 p.m. every Tuesday.

“That was when she was able to get the time the first time, and we just kept doing it,” Bandy said.

» READ MORE: How 1 angry Philly nanny started a statewide protest movement

Toomey failed to meet a number of their requests, they say. They wanted an open town hall in Philadelphia where Toomey would take unscreened questions. They wanted him to stand up to Trump and denounce some of the president’s allies, such as adviser Steve Bannon. They argued that he needed to listen more to Philadelphians. They called on Toomey to fight racism and other hatred.

“I’m Jewish, and I grew up with the Jewish paranoia,” said Holtzman, of Elkins Park, adding that she was doubly worried by Trump’s election because her husband is a Mexican immigrant. “Trump got elected, and then every alarm bell in my body went off. It’s like, ‘I know where this goes.’ ”

Toomey can point to a number of high-profile instances when he broke with Trump.

He was one of the few elected Republicans to publicly chastise the president for his waffling over “both sides” of the deadly 2017 neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Va., and for Trump’s racist tweet urging four congresswomen of color to “go back” to other countries, even though all were citizens and three were U.S.-born. Toomey forcefully pushed back against attempts to overthrow the 2020 election, and then voted to convict Trump in the impeachment trial stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Toomey said the protests didn’t affect his work.

”I think it was a reflection of the heightened polarization that that occurred with Donald Trump’s election,” he said in an interview.

» READ MORE: Pat Toomey Q&A: What Pennsylvania’s retiring senator says about tax cuts, gun legislation, Jan. 6, and Trump

And while critics argued he didn’t care about Philadelphia, Toomey pointed to a list of bills and advocacy that he said aided the city and surrounding region. Among them: support for dredging the Delaware River, a push for contracts at the Philadelphia shipyard, and a cyberstalking law inspired by a woman from Bucks County.

Tuesday with Toomey organizers give him credit for supporting Pennsylvania’s election results, but added that supporting democracy is the bare minimum they expected.

“It shows he can have moral courage, once,” Holtzman said. “Where was he the other four years?”

The greatest lesson of the protests, Bandy said, has been understanding the power individual citizens have if they stop putting elected officials on a pedestal.

“You say, ‘Me, as an ordinary person, what power do I have in this relationship?’ ” she said. “They aren’t any better than you and since you’re paying them, you have a right to hold them to account, to have them represent you, because that’s their job.”

She added, “I think people would be a lot less apathetic if they realized their power.”

Many of the group are looking forward to a break.

“It’s wonderful, we get our Tuesdays back,” Bandy said.

But first, they plan one more rally — to welcome Fetterman, once he establishes a Philadelphia office.

Bandy said they hope to get him to commit to holding a town hall. But, she added, “I don’t think I’m going to have to do a six-year protest with John Fetterman.”