Paul Bass Photo
“We’re not sitting still about this!” hundreds of post-election Donald Trump protesters declared. Then they took to their feet and the street.
Three hundred protesters in all came out to the state courthouse on Elm Street Sunday afternoon to register their determination to fight back against the president-elect’s vows to round up immigrants, abandon efforts to contain climate change, and roll back women’s rights.
It was the third such protest in four days in downtown New Haven, part of a wave of such protests in over three dozen cities nationwide as Trump opponents struggle to find a constructive outlet for their fears about the next four years.
Sgt. Jackie Hoyte was pulling down her second straight protest-oversight duty Sunday. This protest, like others, remained peaceful and went off without problems. Hoyte consulted with Mhaire Jenkins (in photo) at the 2 p.m. start of the event about plans to have the crowd chant and hold signs on the steps of the courthouse, then march through and around the Green with police helping by blocking traffic.
Unlike the previous two anti-Trump protests, this one wasn’t organized by a New Haven activist group. Jenkins, a Bridgeport Hospital nurse, put out a call on Facebook with her friend Yasmin Thornton (at left in photo), an area interior designer, to have people gather. “People are feeling isolated, ostracized and terrified,” Thornton said. They wanted to give people an outlet and stress the importance of people getting involved at the local level of politics — “where it starts”— over the next four years. Stephanie Hill (at center in photo), a fellow Bridgeport Hospital nurse, joined them.
Without the help of traditional organizing networks, the request went viral on Facebook. Over 1,000 people responded. Choate Rosemary Hall student Edie Conekin-Tooze’s mother, who lives in New Haven, found out about it from a Facebook friend. She forwarded the message to Edie, who then spread the word among her fellow students. She and five other sophomores shared an Uber XL to the rally, toting signs like “Pussy Grabs Back,” which Laila Hawkins is holding in the photo at the top of this story; and a Trump quote (held aloft above by Angie Zho) uttered during a campaign that he ended up winning in the electoral college but losing in the popular vote.
The original Facebook call stresed repeatedly that this would be a peaceful protest. And it was.
Many drivers honked horns in support as they drove by. One passerby muttered, “Get a job!” The response: “It’s Sunday.”
At 2:50, the cops closed off Elm to traffic. Thornton, Jenkins, and Hill led the demonstrators across the street onto the Green.
They marched diagonally down to Chapel and Temple, then on the sidewalk back around the Green. They passed a different, quieter line — of hungry people picking up their weekly Sunday turkey or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches served by church volunteers. “Who are they? Yale?” Brian Aiken (at right in above photo) asked as the crowd streamed by. Informed of the rally’s purpose, Aiken offered no opinion on the election turnout beyond saying he plans to “pray for peace.”
“All that isn’t going to help. He’s still the president,” opined David Wilfong of Adeline Street, who had picked up a turkey sandwich. Wilfong said he disapproved of both Trump and Hillary Clinton: “I would much rather have seen Bush Sr. in office than those two.”
..."ostracized, isolated, terrified"...please...it's sad when educated elites get trumped by the common-sense homeless. they have no idea what those words mean
what if the protesters a) were homeless, b) pay taxes, and/or c) get hit with a cold rain...they'll sing a different tune.