The social justice advocacy coalition Connecticut For All highlighted International Workers' Day, or May Day, with a half dozen demonstrations across the state on Friday.
Connecticut For All’s mass mobilization came after a year of federal cuts to programs like nutritional assistance, or SNAP, benefits and healthcare, specifically Medicaid. The group’s organizing director, Constanza Segovia, said that has been largely guided by the Trump administration.
“They have given preferential treatment to wealthy folks with every policy they've enacted, and that is hurting the majority of people in this country and in Connecticut,” Segovia said.
This legislative session, Connecticut For All has advocated for a so-called billionaire’s tax on the state’s wealthiest individuals. Americans for Tax Fairness released a report in mid-April, noting that Connecticut’s billionaires have seen a 34% wealth growth within the last 16 months.
Segovia said policies disproportionately benefiting the wealthy have hurt the state’s most vulnerable workers.
"We are just tired of things being so hard,” Segovia said. “Now with the federal landscape, it seems like a really important time to continue to hit the streets, to get everybody on the same page with a clear message."
Helen Quinonez of immigrant rights group Make the Road Connecticut said this current moment has made the common goals of the participating organizations even more apparent.
“The only option that we have is to come together and fight against all these things,” Quinonez said. “We are asking for the same thing: better life, healthcare, food, education, better taxes.”
The coalition also demonstrated for further rent control, strengthened immigrant rights and better education.
“Whether it's Republicans or Democrats in charge, we want our dignity and our safety as working people prioritized,” said Segovia of Connecticut For All.
Labor’s precursor, education
Another of the participating organizations this May Day was SEIU Local 1973, or the 4Cs. The union covers more than 4,000 full and part-time faculty and staff at community colleges in the state.
Its president, Seth Freeman, is a computer science professor at CT State Community College Capital in Hartford. He spoke with Connecticut Public in 2022, as community colleges in the state were forced to merge into CT State, after funding challenges and declining enrollment were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We are unionized here in the state, so that gives faculty in Connecticut more protection and more rights to academic freedom,” Freeman said this week. “And generally, community colleges haven’t faced the same really terrible funding cuts that we've seen at UConn and other research universities.”
Still, Freeman said, between the “attacks on higher education faculty” and “free speech being silenced,” it is important to have educators present in May Day movements.
“And get as many of our students out there as possible to also learn about May Day and worker power and support the other workers that are there,” Freeman said. “We want all workers to have more power, so all workers can form their own unions and have more of a voice.”
Down on Coastal Connecticut, the organization Hearing Youth Voices has lately focused on K through 12 education access. Organizing manager Nicole Broadus said the group hoped May Day marches could raise awareness about The New London Board of Education’s plans to close Jennings Elementary School at the end of this school year.
“It’s a neighborhood school. It is located smack dab in the middle of our New London community and houses a lot of our English as a secondary language learners,” Broadus explained.
The school closure news came after Hearing Youth Voices was already thinking more about intersectional inequalities for students of color, largely through their advocacy for an expanded Just Cause eviction law.
“We see the way that housing is impacted. We see the way in which education is not equitable. And so we were able to connect the work that we were doing to this work that Connecticut For All was doing,” Broadus said. ”(We) just felt like May Day really fit with all the things that we were advocating for.”
Learn more
The coalition of labor and immigrant rights groups held rallies Friday in Hartford, New Haven, Norwalk, Waterbury and Willimantic — with several more by other groups across Connecticut.
Hartford
Bushnell Park, 10 a.m. march
New Haven
New Haven Green, 12 p.m. festival and 5 p.m. march
Norwalk
Norwalk City Hall, 4 p.m.
Waterbury
The Green, 6 p.m.
Willimantic
Jillson Square, 5 p.m.
Hartford’s 10 a.m. march at Bushnell Park closed at the capitol, as organizers delivered a letter for Gov. Ned Lamont to his chief of staff.
