It was a quiet ceremony – no signs, no chanting.

But on Friday afternoon, while thousands rallied in Minneapolis and elsewhere as part of the “ICE Out” protests, about 50 people filed into a small chapel at Carondelet Village senior living community in St. Paul. Many paused in silent prayer as they entered, accompanied only by the noise of a bubbling fountain.

“Here we are in our aged-ness protesting the best way we can,” one resident said.

In October, Carondelet’s self-proclaimed Women with Walkers activist group helped pack Fairview Avenue during a “No Kings” rally protesting the policies of President Donald Trump.

So it’s not that many residents wouldn’t have liked to be out there for Friday’s massive demonstrations. But the subzero temperatures meant that most needed to find a safer way to stand in solidarity with fellow protesters and the immigrant community.

One woman asked for prayers for the woman who cleans her home, saying she’d been afraid to leave her home in recent weeks. “She’s very special,” the woman said. “I worry about her.”

Sitting down to let another person speak, her neighbor at the service said she knew whom she was talking about. Both women said they’d asked if she had a means to get groceries.

“I think we’ve seen ourselves as an alternative for some of the larger events,” said Dolores Voorhees, Women with Walkers’ ad hoc spokesperson. “You know, people can’t go to the Capitol, or they can’t go outside. It’s been a way for people to express their displeasure.”

Sharon Stenglein compared it to protesting the Vietnam War in the 1960s. “I have physical limitations and so I do what I can here,” she said, “but the spirit is still the same.”

Barbara Davis said she’d attended anti-war protests in the late 1960s, including the massive 1967 March on the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

“I actually climbed a barbed wire fence with helicopters overhead. And suddenly I thought, ‘And if I get to the Pentagon, what am I going to do then?’ Because no one had mentioned that. So I climbed back over the barbed wire fence,” Davis said.

Janet Kusch didn’t attend a protest until she was in her 30s — in Washington D.C., pushing for reproductive rights.

“I feel like I’m catching up on what I didn’t do as somebody in the 1960s who lived in a quiet little world in Austin, Minnesota,” Kusch said.

Asked what advice they’d give to the protesters who were out in the streets, Davis simply asked them not to give up hope.

“It may not feel right away like it’s making a difference, but when I look back at the Vietnam War and the second wave feminism, it did,” Davis said. “I mean, things changed.”

Voorhees agreed. “A lot of people doing a little bit makes a big difference.”

There will be more protests — and warmer weather — and the Women with Walkers expect to be out again more visibly. But for now, they’re glad others have picked up the torch.

“Thank you to the young people out there,” Davis said. “The young people, they’re the ones who need to be out on the street, because the rest of us are too old. So I’m very grateful. I’m very grateful.”

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