About 600 demonstrators gathered along Route 6 in Eastham on Saturday, April 5 as part of a nationwide protest against the Trump administration’s cuts to government services and abuse of executive power, while at least 400 more gathered in front of Provincetown Town Hall. Other Outer Cape residents drove or took buses to Boston to join a rally that the police there estimated drew more than 25,000 people.
“Hands off democracy!” people chanted along Route 6, waving American, Canadian, Palestinian, and Ukrainian flags and homemade signs. “Hands off our community!” ran a call-and-response chant in Provincetown.
The Eastham rally didn’t include guest speakers — it was “for whatever is getting under people’s skin,” said organizer Sheri Tagliaferri, an Orleans resident and founder of the activist group Nauset Citizens Alliance. “We’re protesting what is happening to our country, our democracy, our institutions,” she said. “We don’t want to live in a place like Russia where there’s one person in charge of everything.”
David and Nancy Koonce of Wellfleet, who were at the Eastham protest, said their daughter and son-in-law had both been fired from the U.S. Agency for International Development on March 29. “It’s absolute chaos,” said David, adding that he had served in the Vietnam War and was worried about similar layoffs at the Veterans Administration.
In Provincetown, a series of speakers took to the steps of town hall, including state Sen. Julian Cyr, marine biologist Bekah Lane, disability rights activist Elspeth Slayter, and Provincetown DEI Director Donna Walker. Brad Badgley of the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod spoke about the threat to HIV prevention and research, and Army veteran Wendy Agbay spoke about the mass firing of V.A. health-care workers.
“Trans people are under attack,” said transgender activist Jamie Elizabeth Grasso. “There are 840 bills being proposed in the United States to make being trans a criminal offense, and about 50 percent of those that have come up for a vote have passed.”
“Shame, shame!” chanted some in the crowd.
Grasso also quoted the opening line of the Constitution — “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”
“So, let’s do it,” he said. “Let’s hold them accountable as best we can.”
