May Day 2025: Anger in the Streets

We were back in the streets of New Haven Thursday — blocking traffic, briefly shutting down business at downtown stores, shouting our rage at Trump and Musk.

This was the third such action of the spring but it was larger, louder and angrier than the other two. It helps when you’ve got labor unions (we still have a few of them) organizing the event in conjunction with May Day, workers’ traditional day of protest.

I spotted among the hundreds of signs and placards a photo taken on May Day 1970: two Black youths with their fists raised as they climbed aboard the stone statues outside the courthouse where Bobby Seale and other Black Panthers were put on trial. The New Haven Green was filled that weekend with up to 10,000 protesters who had also come to demonstrate against the Vietnam War. This was the same week when members of the Ohio National Guard murdered four students at Kent State University during an antiwar protest.

In the decades since that year, much smaller gatherings have been held on this historic Green every May 1. Only the most committed activists and union people showed up. I admit I wasn’t among them.

Now everything has changed. We’re back, and man, are we pissed!

During the march that shut down Chapel Street, an old friend of mine walked alongside me for a while and remarked, “I did my first one of these in 1967, against the war.” I replied, “My first was in ‘69.”

It was loud in the streets, the chants echoing off the stone walls of the historic buildings, including those of Yale. We used that old favorite: “The people! United! Will never be defeated!” Sometimes it was shouted in Spanish. People stopped on the sidewalks to stare. Yalies — why weren’t more of them marching? — watched from their windows and balconies. For a few minutes we even stopped commerce at the Broadway shopping district: The Apple Store, J. Press, etc.

We knew we were part of a nationwide mobilization, at least for one day. Similar rallies and marches were happening in all of the big cities, yes, but also in smaller places. The New York Times listed some of them: Norman, Okla., Sauk City, Wis. and Hendersonville, N.C. The Times estimated there were more than 1,000 protests of Trump’s first 100 days.

Today’s Times has a story with this headline: “The Fight Against Trump Isn’t Yet a Movement, but It’s Starting to Gain Strength.”

Yes — but how strong? And for how long?

The chants on the New Haven Green included this one: “We are the many — they are the few.” Those “few” being the Trumpsters. Maybe the math is correct. But how do “the many” wrest power back?

This was another chant: “If we don’t get it — shut it down!” But as my wife and I left the Green at the march’s conclusion, we asked each other: “How do you shut it down? Economic boycotts? For how long? How can we sustain it?”

There’s a lot more organizing to be done, a lot of hard work, learning again how to work together in The Resistance.

We did it before. As this week’s 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon reminds us, we stopped a war.