With protests against the Trump Administration scheduled across the nation on Saturday, organizers have put together at least 20 in Connecticut in places ranging from the heavily blue big cities of Hartford and New Haven to the red-voting, mid-sized communities of New Milford and Torrington.
The “Hands Off!” rallies are designed as a broad-brush rebuke of the policies of President Donald Trump and the unprecedented power he’s given to his billionaire Senior Advisor Elon Musk.
“Donald Trump and Elon Musk think this country belongs to them,” begin online fliers for nearly all of the hundreds of Mobilize protests scheduled. “They’re taking everything they can get their hands on — our health care, our data, our jobs, our services — and daring the world to stop them. This is a crisis, and the time to act is now.”
But a few aim more specifically. In Stamford, protestors plan to march to the headquarters of World Wrestling Entertainment, complaining that cofounder and Trump-appointed Education Secretary Linda McMahon is damaging America’s school system.
“Hands off our schools! Hands off our dollars,” is a key part of their message.
In Danbury, a rally will be outside the public library with scheduled speakers including Attorney General William Tong, state Sen. Julie Kushner, Mayor Roberto Alves and representatives from the local NAACP, the state chapter of the ACLU, the Connecticut Education Association and the Association of Religious Communities.
Organizers of the Hartford rally outside the state Capitol say Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz and Tong will attend. In all, there are 22 rallies scheduled in the state so far.
Large rallies are planned for Manhattan, Chicago, Philadelphia and virtually all major cities Saturday. Whether smaller gatherings in the relatively little blue state of Connecticut can be effective is unknown, but organizers are flooding Facebook and Instagram with messages to encourage big turnouts.
On Tuesday, two prominent Connecticut political science professors offered varying ideas on the effectiveness of rallies in the Trump era.
Prof. Matthew Schmidt of the University of New Haven suggested that organizers need to do more than just fill the sidewalks with lots of people.
“It’s complex. You need to tell a compelling story, and not just to the millions of people you put in the street. You need a sympathetic narrative that brings over another 10 million who wouldn’t ever go out on the street, people who would say ‘OK, (now) I think the government has gone too far,” Schmidt said.
“There’s good data that says no regime has ever withstood a social movement that gets 3.5% of the adult population (protesting). But this is complex, it’s not just about the headcount,” Schmidt said. “Protests can be quite effective, and now you have a chunk of people seeing what’s happening: The administration refusing to abide by court rulings, three Yale professors saying they’re going to Canada, people saying we’re moving toward an autocracy.”
Schmidt said government reactions to a protest can be extremely important.
“If the regime itself decides to bring force, that could reinforce the narrative that the Trump Administration is beyond the pale. I don’t think they’ll do that,” he said.
When asked if political protests in the current deeply polarized environment can be as effective as in the past, Schmidt replied “I’d say it’s somewhere between Occupy Wall Street and Vietnam.”
Prof. Gary Rose of Sacred Heart University said he’s skeptical that Saturday’s rallies will reach much beyond the population that already disliked Trump. Protests would stand the best chance of swaying people if they remain rigorously peaceful, he said, while violence or vandalism would risk alienating more voters.
“Given the tactics of the anti-Musk people with the firebombings of Teslas that you see on TV, I don’t think protests will resonate very well with Middle America,” Rose said. “During Vietnam, when people went into the Weather Underground that certainly didn’t move anyone to their issues. I don’t think the current opposition we see on TV every night is going to. The more violent it becomes, the less support they get — in some respects it could strengthen Trump.”
Organizers of Saturday’s rallies have emphasized non-violence through all of their promotions.
“A core principle behind all Hands Off! events is a commitment to nonviolent action. We expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values,” according to the mobilize.us website.
Although two Connecticut conservative towns will have rallies, most of the rest are planned in Democrat-friendly suburbs where Trump soundly fell short in the November election. Fairfield County will be host to many, while the Naugatuck Valley and northeastern Connecticut will have few. An exception is Killingly, a heavily conservative town where Trump took nearly 60 percent of the vote in November.
One town without an anti-Trump rally Saturday will be West Hartford; organizers want to focus the turnout at the Hartford protest. Local resident Mary-Ann Langton, a disability rights advocate, organized an anti-Trump gathering last Saturday at the Connecticut War Memorial and plans to make that a weekly event, with the exception of this coming weekend.
In a written statement, she criticized Trump’s cutbacks in Medicaid and his dismantling of the federal education department.
“Cutting these essential programs hurts people,” she said. “I rely on Medicaid. The only reason I can live in the community is because Medicaid covers the cost of my personal assistant,” she wrote. “Without Medicaid, I’d be forced to live in a nursing home, and I don’t think they’d want me because I’d be a troublemaker.”
She estimated that up to 50 protestors showed up Saturday to wave anti-Trump placards at passing motorists.
Among the protests planned Saturday are:
Bethel: 11 a.m. to noon at PT Barnum Square;
Cornwall: noon to 1:30 p.m. at Route 4 and Route 7;
Danbury: 4 to 5:30 p.m. outside the public Library, 170 Main St.;
East Lyme: 3 to 5 p.m. at the Niantic Green;
Enfield: Noon to 4 p.m. at town hall;
Guilford: 11 a.m. to noon at the Guilford Green;
Hartford: 3 to 6 p.m. outside the state Capitol;
Killingly: noon to 2 p.m. outside the Dunkin near the Dayville Mall;
Litchfield: 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Litchfield Town Green;
Middletown: 10 a.m. to noon at Main and Washington streets;
New Haven: noon to 1:30 at the New Haven Green;
New London: 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. outside New London Superior Court;
New Milford: 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the New Milford Green;
Newtown: 1 to 3 p.m. at The Pleasance park, 1 Main St.;
Norwich: 2 to 4 p.m. at the Chelsea Parade field;
Salisbury: 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the White Hart Inn, 15 Under Mountain Road;
Stamford: noon to 1:30 p.m. outside 888 Washington Boulevard;
Torrington: 1 to 2 p.m. outside the Social Securty office at 147 Litchfield St.;
Warren: 9 to 10:30 a.m. at the community center, 7 Sackett Hill Road;
Westport: 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Ruth Steinkrause Cohen Bridge;
Willimantic 2 to 3 p.m. outside town hall;
Windsor: 3 to 4:30 p.m. at the Windsor Green.
