Lucy Gellman Photo
Raising their fists, homemade signs and voices to cheers or “Love Trumps Hate!” and “Vote Him Out,” 60 protesters gathered midday Monday on the New Haven Green to join a nationwide effort to convince the Electoral College to vote someone other than Donald J. Trump into the presidency on the 19th of this month.
The effort, part of a national day of protest by Women & Allies Strike Out And Protest, was led locally by New Haveners Ann Hartman Massaro and Babz Rawls-Ivy. Taking a small stage and podium set up on the upper half of the Green, Massaro and Rawls-Ivy introduced the event, and then opened the conversation to women and men who wanted to express their concerns about an impending Trump administration.
“When I realized the day after the election that we are going have a sexual predator in the White House, that we are no longer safe, I wanted to organize,” said Massaro, a survivor of sexual abuse who helped organize the group both nationally and locally.
Crowd members, shivering in the damp cold, echoed that sentiment. “My father was severely injured in World War II, and tomorrow I’m going to tell him that I’m going to fight fascism,” said Maggie Quinn, 61, of Bethany, sporting a pink knit “pussy hat” as she spoke. “Fascism is not an American value. This is my World War II.”
As Quinn hopped on the mic, 71 year-old Judy McVety moved to the front of the crowd, carrying her oxygen tank on her waist as she hoisted up a handmade sign with both hands. After protesting “from the 1960s up through President George Bush, Jr.‘s invasion into Iraq,” she said the choice to show up on the Green felt not just natural, but necessary.
As Quinn gripped the podium and launched into another cheer of “Get him out! Get him out!” that the crowd soon picked up, McVety raised her sign higher, joining New Haveners like PTSD therapist Stephanie Kilpatrick, 38, and Teal Caliendo in sending around the chant.
“I’m here as a concerned American,” said Tiara Russell (second from left in photo), a 27-year-old nurse from New Haven.
“I marched in the 60s. I remember Watergate. I marched during Iraq. Now I’m in my 70s, and dammit, I’m marching again,” said Caliendo, taking the stage.
“I am seeing my Muslim brothers and sisters, my Jewish brothers and sisters threatened,” said the Rev. Rochelle A. Stackhouse, pastor at the city’s Church of the Redeemer. “I have to say, as a Christian, it’s wrong. It’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong.”
Click on or download the above audio files to hear recent WNHH radio programs dedicated to the protest.
It's a free country and there's freedom of speech. It's a good thing it's free - if they had to pay for the uninformed, irrational and silly things they post on signs and say in public, they'd be broke in five minutes and then the NHI would have nothing to publish.