About 300 people rallied at Evanston’s Fountain Square on May 1, a holiday reserved to honor workers, to demand workers’ and Constitutional rights and protest President Donald Trump’s actions during the first 100 days of his presidency.
Speakers at the protest, organized by the group Indivisible Evanston, included Ph.D students, elected officials and clergy and continued the momentum of previous protests in the northern suburbs against Trump and Elon Musk.
“They (the Trump administration) are figuring out, how in this moment of unprecedented corporate concentration of power how to make corporations larger and more powerful and weaken workers more,” said Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss.
“In this time of unprecedented economic insecurity when people are trying to figure out how to afford housing, how to afford healthcare, how to afford childcare, how to afford elder care, how to afford their higher education, they’re trying to figure out how to make workers weaker and how to make corporations more powerful for the very simple reason that they want to put more money in their own pockets.”
Cook County Commissioner Josina Morita (13th) also addressed the crowd, saying, “As the daughter of a Teamster, I stand with my brothers and sisters in the labor movement. This year, of all years, we stand by our government workers who make our society work, who make our community strong.”
At Evanston’s rally, speakers also defended the rights of immigrants and marginalized people.
The Trump administration, through recommendations by the Department of Government Efficiency, has made spending cuts affecting thousands of federal employees, though the president has announced he will increase spending on defense.
Northwestern University Ph.D student in Mechanical Engineering Rohan Kota told the crowd that spending cuts the Trump administration made have already affected research at the university.
“We’re working every single day to make groundbreaking discoveries and tackle some of the most pressing challenges of our time,” Kota said.
“A few weeks ago, my roommate, also a Ph.D student, received an email from the federal government telling him to immediately stop his work. The truth is, acts like these jeopardize the very engines of American progress. We cannot expect to lead in the 21st century if we are busy attacking the institutions that built the 20th,” he said.
Organizers announced that a future rally is planned for June 14, Trump’s birthday.