The members of the People's Resistance Marching Band play trombone, snare drum, tuba, steel pan, trumpet, bass drum. At the Brattleboro No Kings march on September 12, they played the reggae song Get Up, Stand Up; the New Orleans classic When The Saints Go Marching In; and other songs.
Singers from the Good Trouble Choir sang. The weather was 65 degrees and sunny with a light breeze. Among the signs people carried in the march were “ICE out of Vermont” and “Migrant Justice.”
Some of the 16,000 people who marched and rallied in Brattleboro,
Keene, Greenfield and Northampton on March 28 will attend a No Kings march on Saturday, September 12 at 10 a.m., rain or shine. If at least 1,000 people show up (estimated by the organizers), they will march in the street (not on the sidewalk), otherwise on the sidewalk: from the park that is directly between the Brattleboro food co-op and the Brattleboro art museum to the area of the library.
“This is a great victory,” Brett Morrison of the Brattleboro group Friends of Island Park, told the Valley Post in a voice phone interview on November 20. The two bridges that connect downtown Brattleboro with Hinsdale, New Hampshire, and with an island in the middle of the river, will re-open to people for walking, riding bicycles, and relaxing. “I'm optimistic that it can happen before the bridge rehab project starts, and that the rehab will happen on time, finishing by 2029. The bridges will re-open permanently at that time,” he said.
In a victory for old growth forests, two land trusts on October 27 said they had saved 2,100 acres in the Pioneer Valley towns of Belchertown and Pelham. “The land will be stewarded as 'forever wild,' taking a passive management approach to the forest to encourage old growth conditions to develop,” the land trusts said at:
www.kestreltrust.org/2000-acres-permanently-conserved-with-trustees-10-25/
On October 18 there will be marches and rallies to protest Trump in the Pioneer Valley, Brattleboro and Keene. Details are at www.NoKings.org.
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On June 14 in Springfield, Northampton, Greenfield, and Brattleboro, there will be marches and rallies to protest Trump. Details are at www.NoKings.org.
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On May 13 in the Pioneer Valley town of South Hadley, about 100 janitors, dishwashers, other workers, and supporters held a rally. “This is my second year working at Mount Holyoke college," Philip Bernashe told the Valley Post in a voice phone interview on May 21. He is one of 170 workers at the college who are members of a union, SEIU Local 32BJ.
About 700 people marched in Brattleboro on May 1 to protest Trump, and to fight for workers' rights. May 1 is Labor Day in China, India, Europe, Russia, most of Africa, and all of Latin America. In the US in the 1930s, and globally for as long as there have been workers, strikes have been used to create a middle class, help end apartheid in South Africa, and achieve many other victories for democracy. The Brattleboro march was organized by the groups Indivisible, 50501, and others.
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On April 5, in the rain, about 6,000 people rallied in the Pioneer Valley, 2,000 marched in Brattleboro, and 1,500 rallied in Keene. They were protesting Trump. One of the groups that promoted the protests is the Center for Biological Diversity. According to the Center's web site, “The welfare of human beings is deeply linked to nature — to the existence in our world of a vast diversity of wild animals and plants. Because diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss impoverishes society, we work to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction.
In Brattleboro on March 2 there will be a march to protest Trump's policies. The march will start at noon outside 192 Main Street and will end at the food co-op. For more information, contact Dan Dewalt via https://rcpVermont.org.
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In the Pioneer Valley, on February 21 on the Gill-Turners Falls bridge on Route 2, about 20 people attended a rally to protest Trump's policies. The rallies will continue there every Friday at 4:30 p.m., according to a mass email from a group that has a web site at www.traprock.org.
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About 200 people marched in Brattleboro. The event was organized by local resident Vera Riley, and by the Women's March, a national group.
“It was wonderful,” Riley told the Valley Post. “Mollie Burke, Isaac Evans-Frantz, and others spoke of alternative media; nuclear delusion; military budget in the trillions; Palestine; gun control; Black Lives Matter; bi, gay, trans, etc; and more. George Carville sent us off with a story from 1982 about the Ku Klux Klan's unsuccessful event at the gazebo where people sang 'We Shall Overcome.' Then George led us in singing to close.”