Protesting on Passover
Fighting for freedom is an eternal story
Yesterday was both Shabbat and the seventh day of Passover. It was also the 250th anniversary of what Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his poem Concord Hymn (1837), termed “the shot heard around the world”
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.
The remembrance of the Jewish fight for freedom in ancient times and the battles that began the transformation of British colonies into a democratic republic made it fitting to join a big crowd of Connecticut residents on the New Haven Green by the statute of Roger Sherman, the only person to sign all four of our country’s founding documents (The Continental Association, The Articles of Confederation, The Declaration of Independence, and The Constitution) to protest against the unconstitutional, unethical actions of the current administration.
There were no politicians making speeches; just concerned Americans who are fired up about the unconstitutional, unethical behavior of the current administration. Everyday people who are appalled by the lawless apprehension of innocent people by masked DEI agents. By the shipping of human beings to an El Salvadorian gulag. By the administration’s flouting of court orders with apparent impugnity. By the fact that this administration is being enabled by complicit and/or cowardly Congressional Republicans abdicating their power as a co-equal branch of government.
People who are furious that Avelo, a budget airline that runs out of New Haven’s Tweed airport, has contracted with the government to run deportation flights:
We gathered with others who are furious that the social contract is being smashed to smithereens by Trump and his billionaire broligarchs.
People who are outraged by the wanton, dangerous destruction of our civil institutions, at funding cuts for important scientific programs, like research into cancer, climate, HIV/Aids, etc. People who are enraged that to fund more tax cuts for the 1%, the GOP is willing to touch the third rail: Medicare and Social Security. As Theresa Ghilarducci of the New School for Social Research said: “If they wanted a subject to start a political uprising to the whole Republican agenda… they found it…They may have stepped on the land mine, because we're already seeing protests and distrust all over the country.”
The crowd stretched around the entire Green when it was time to march.
As I watched people marching peacefully around the New Haven Green, I was thinking of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A’Changing”:
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin'
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'
The verse about mothers and fathers could also apply to some of the seemingly out-of-touch members of the Democratic party, the ones who still apparently believe that the usual norms still apply under Trump. Seriously, how many times have news organizations used the word “unprecedented” to refer to the guy?
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'
Keep shaking those windows and rattling those walls, people - it is making a difference. Bring more friends to the next protest.
And to those who are still pretending that we’re working within time-honored norms, wake up! Your old “bipartisan” road is broken, potholed and is leading us over the cliff into fascism. You can’t have a rational negotiation with irrational, unethical, ideologically-bound people, and the supposedly moderate people on the other side have just admitted their fear and cowardice.
So either fight like hell or get out of the new road if you can’t lend a hand.
America needs you to stand up and be counted.
A gallery of signs for your enjoyment:
xo Sarah