About forty Newton and non-Newton residents gathered with homemade signs at the foot of the Walnut Street bridge by Washington Street to mark May 1st, May Day. The RESIST the Coup organizers — Nadine Cohen, Susan Davidoff, and Lynn Weissberg — chose this location to bring their message to the large number of people heading home from work — as well as to Newton North students leaving school. (RESIST the Coup meets every Saturday from noon to 1PM at Newton Centre Green.)
In many countries, May Day is a celebration of workers and the labor movement. This year, in addition to a large union rally at the Parkman Bandstand in Boston, communities around the Commonwealth hosted standouts in support of workers and protests against Trump administration policies.
Ms. Davidoff told Fig City News that the RESIST team wanted to engage more people and allow those who could not go to the Boston rally to participate in a standout. “It helps giving people a sense of not being alone in these dire times,” said Ms. Davidoff. There was a loud, ongoing sound of approval from car horns, and even an MBTA bus traveling up Walnut Street.
Others shared a variety of reasons for joining the standout. Marshall Stein, a retired lawyer and Newton Centre resident, emphasized the importance of “having as many people as possible participating. It’s important to have people in the streets.” His wife, Helene, observed that Americans had not endured World War II on our shores, as has Europe and other parts of the world, and “Trump’s actions strike terror in countries that experienced” that War. She agreed with her husband that “People have to take to the streets and make a loud noise [because] that’s the only recourse we have.”
Raised in El Paso, Texas, Newton resident David Backer joined the May Day rally “to show that I object to the current administration’s attacks on rules and laws, and the administration’s intentional cruelty.”
“Working people are suffering from massive inequality in this country. …And, now there’s insult added to injury with cutting public education, and Social Security and other earned benefits — not social welfare, but earned benefits,” said Melissa Brown from Upper Falls, adding that she wanted to be part of the rally to show how important it is that people working full time “should earn enough for a comfortable life — good pay and also medical care, clean air and water, education equality under the law.” Margaret Van Gelder, a Newtonville area resident, came “in particular on May Day to stand with the rights and protections of all workers, especially those who have recently lost federal jobs for no cause.”
City Councilor Julia Malakie, a Newton native, said she participated in the May Day protest as well as the the Saturday stand outs because “We don’t have the power of judges or members of Congress who can actually have a direct effect. It feels like our best option is making the resistance regularly visible. There’s power in numbers. I’m really encouraged by the research that says only 3.5% of a population protesting can change a regime.”
