Culture & Community | Poetry & Spoken Word | Politics | Arts & Culture | New Haven Green
Top: The march takes to downtown. Bottom: Rev. Scott Marks, director of New Haven Rising, and Aaron Jafferis. Lucy Gellman Photos.
Aaron Jafferis' words floated over the New Haven Green, wrapping a few hundred people in their sound. Air / I am taking as many deep breaths as you can spare now / Cause they're gutting our clean energy and air now, he started. A few feet away, Witness To Hunger Kim Hart breathed in, a cold tightness in her chest when she thought about the last two months. So our lungs are gonna need great healthcare now / But they're tearing that down too, it's not fair now!
A sign that read “WE THE PEOPLE WE THE MILLIONS” bobbed against the cloudy sky, undeterred by the drizzle. Jafferis pressed forward, tying healthcare to benefits for veterans like his dad, to life-saving cancer research and LGBTQ+ rights, to public land and the performing arts. Get your hands off park rangers / And artists' passionate hearts! he read, a growl at the very edge of his voice, and the crowd went wild.
That broad, sometimes staggering survey (and often, indictment) of the current political landscape defined Saturday's "Hands Off" rally and march in New Haven, part of a national day of action aimed at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and President Donald Trump in his second term in office. Held beneath a low-hanging, spitting gray sky, the event brought hundreds to the heart of downtown to both listen and speak out against what they see as a precipitous dismantling of Democracy.
"We have a problem in our country, and this problem is bigger than Trump," said Rev. and impromptu emcee Scott Marks, the director of New Haven Rising. "This problem is bigger than Musk. And I've come to let you know that we've come too far from where we started from. There ain't no turning back."
Top: Marchers. Bottom: James Stewart, who spoke alongside Personal Care Attendant (PCA) Nancy Rembert about the need to fight for Medicare. "We need more than one [person] to make a difference out here," he said.
Since his inauguration in January of this year, Trump has launched sustained and targeted attacks on immigration, women and LGBTQ+ and particularly trans people, veterans' benefits and healthcare, Medicaid and Medicare, public health research, education, public parks and the environment, science, libraries, museums, and federal funding to the arts and humanities. That includes but is not limited to mass firings of federal workers across government offices, from cancer researchers at the National Institutes of Health to USAID employees doing malaria and tuberculosis prevention in Asia and East and West Africa to programming staff at the Kennedy Center.
Saturday, speakers addressed many of those topics, many returning to a refrain of "Hands Off!" as they spoke on everything from public education to housing as a basic and endangered human right. Taking the mic early in the rally, New Haven Federation of Teachers President Leslie Blatteau set the tone, pushing back against the government's broad attacks on education funding and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in the classroom.
The administration has, among other things, targeted schools that have a Title I designation, meaning they serve a large number of low-income students. Twenty-two of New Haven's 44 schools are Title I. There are 580 Title I schools in Connecticut.
Top: "Teachers have a right and an obligation to teach the truth," Blatteau said.
"Teachers have a right and an obligation to teach the truth," she said, noting the significance of the New Haven Green as a historic site of protest and civil unrest. "In this city, that is what we do. Our students deserve to learn the truth. Honest history, about this country. And we will not allow Trump and Musk to censor us and take away our First Amendment rights, and our students' rights, to learn the truth ... Hands off our curriculum! Hands off our students! And hands off our funds!"
It set the stage for a lineup of speakers that pleaded for a return to policies and practices that center both humans and the planet they call home, from an acknowledgement of climate change and its catastrophic effects to a safer state for immigrants and refugees, regardless of documentation status. As they addressed reproductive rights, Medicare, LGBTQ+ youth and families and the alarming, increasing disappearance of people from their homes and communities, some momentarily lost composure, exhausted and on the verge of tears as they spoke. Others warned against the country's tilt toward increased militarism, speaking out against a U.S.-aided humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
"I ask that we the people continue showing up, demanding better, because we deserve clean air, a safe climate, and futures that we can count on," said climate activist Sena Wazer, who has been organizing since she was 15. "The work to acheive those things has gotten so much harder over the past two months, but at the end of the day, it's about our families, and communities, and people and places we love ... we are fighting for the very core of our being."
Top: Members of the New Haven Immigrants Coalition. Bottom: Sarah (at far right), an artist and designer who asked to be identified only by her first name. "I'm here for all the people who cannot be here," she said. "I have the privilege of being able to speak my voice, and there are so many that don't get to."
Nowhere, however, was it more moving—or illustrative of what is actually at stake—than when speakers spoke candidly and directly from the heart, sharing their personal stories with hundreds of people they had never met before. Taking the mic alongside Ana Paola Juarez, New Haven Immigrants Coalition member and ESUMS Senior Ambar Santiago-Rojas tore into the federal government, knitting together the struggles of immigrants, students, women and workers in the U.S. with those around the world.
Taking a moment of silence for Jocelynn Rojo Carranza—who took her life when classmates threatened that they would call Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on her parents—she stressed the importance of vocal, decisive and collective action in the face of a country tilting to the right.
"We fight for a world where no one is forced to flee, where no one is bombed out of their homes, where no one is treated like they are disposable," she said. "Our fight is also about women's rights ... it is about demanding education that empowers, rather than criminalizes our youth. It is about reimagining a system that invests in people, not prisons. healing, not harm. This is not just a movement for immigrants. It is a movement for humanity."
Top: Elise Granata and Mareika Phillips. Bottom: Kim Hart, who sometimes became emotional as she spoke.
Hart, a founding member of Witnesses to Hunger and outspoken advocate for emergency food providers in and beyond New Haven, looked to the devastating impacts that DOGE's cuts to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will have on her family, and millions of Americans who rely on housing assistance every year. With a catch in her throat, she turned the clock back to 2018, when she and her son found themselves homeless. After two years and five months, it was a Section 8 housing voucher that lifted them out of homelessness.
"I am a woman of faith, but it has me concerned," she said, her voice breaking. Currently, Hart is able to stay on top of her bills because she lives in Section 8 housing. She's able to put away a little for an emergency fund, in case anything happens to her or to members of her family. Now, she lives in fear of eviction as she watches the administration gut wraparound services that are often life-saving and life-sustaining.
"It was a nightmare" when Hart and her son were homeless, she recalled. "But right now, we are currently housed, and I'd like to continue to have my rent subsidized. People who are struggling need to be able to at least put forth the effort for help with rent ... with these DOGE cuts, my assistance is most definitely at risk. Hands off my housing! Hands off my housing! Hands off our housing!"
"We'll fight for you! We're gonna fight for you!" yelled a woman pressed to the front of the crowd.
Wendy Tyson-Wood (right) and her husband, Dr. Kenneth Cook.
As she prepared to march, attendee and activist Wendy Tyson-Wood said she'd made the trek from Waterbury, where she and her husband had helped organize their first "Hands Off!" protest of the day. After New Haven, they were headed to another action in Hartford. For her, it felt like a no-brainer. She sees how heavily her neighbors rely on Waterbury's food banks. She has children and grandchildren, and wants to protect their futures. Her dad is a veteran and her mom is a retired educator.
"We just believe that it's not partisan—this is about America," she said, showing off a pair of dangly, sparkling star earrings as she spoke. "I wore my red, white and blue earrings so that I show solidarity. It's really not partisan. It's really about America being America. This is my country. And I love this country."
Kat: Save Sesame Street, save America. Bottom: Westville-based artist David Sepulveda.
Around her, hundreds of people had headed toward Chapel Street, where they soon fanned out across the asphalt with cheers of "Show me what Democracy looks like / This is what Democracy looks like!" In the thick of the crowd, early childhood educator Kat (she declined to give her last name) held up two signs, both hand-painted before the march.
Already, she said, she'd given "probably 20" posters and homemade signs away to people who hadn't come with anything to hold. As she marched, she held up a bright poster championing Sesame Street. Donald Trump has repeatedly called for defunding PBS, on which the educational program launched decades ago.
"Everything's driving me crazy," she said. "The only thing keeping me sane is going out, making art ... everything that makes America great, they're defunding. All the things that help our kids, all the things that held us as a society, all the things that make us better, they're taking away from."
Listen to the poem in the video above.