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DON'T HOPE — ACT
Donald Trump behaves like a petulant child obsessed with power and revenge. His only consistent policy goal is to unravel the progress of previous leaders and sow chaos. But hoping that his existential threat to our country (and the world) will become self-evident — and that his supporters will abandon him — is not a plan. It's wishful thinking.
Thankfully, resistance is growing. Last month’s Hands Off! rallies across the country were an early, visible sign. While there may not yet be a single, unified anti-Trump movement, bold and determined actions are happening everywhere: universities refusing to bow to Trump’s threats and funding freezes; law firms rejecting pro bono deals for a disgraced president; and some media outlets standing firm. These courageous individuals and organizations are true heroes — and they deserve our gratitude and support. Those who have caved to Trump’s whims are cowards and deserve nothing but our scorn.
This newsletter exists for one reason: to help ordinary people take action in extraordinary times. We’re not here to rehash headlines. We’re here to help you decide what you’re going to do about them. Democracy won’t be saved by the next election or by the courts. History shows it lives or dies through the collective action of citizens willing to take a stand — in ways big or small.
So don’t hope. Don’t wait. Get busy in whatever way you can.
Your Faithful Editor
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In This Issue
- Hands Off! Demonstrations Signal Growing Resistance
- Demonstrations Are Continuing in Salisbury
- Big Win In Wisconsin - Thank You
- Don't Forget To Vote
- Upcoming Events
- Things You Can Do Now
- In Case You Missed It
- Did You Miss A Newsletter?
- Share Your News
- Tell Us What You Think
- Spread The Word
| HANDS OFF! DEMONSTRATIONS SIGNAL GROWING RESISTANCE | |
Thank you, everyone, who came out to make our voices heard on April 5. Towns and cities across all 50 states — and even beyond U.S. borders — saw an outpouring of grassroots activism as hundreds of thousands took to the streets for the “Hands Off!” protests. Organized by groups like Indivisible, MoveOn, and other advocacy organizations, the demonstrations were a powerful response to sweeping policy changes and escalating authoritarianism under the Trump administration. The rallies called out a range of concerns: harsh immigration enforcement, attacks on transgender rights, cuts to health and education programs, and the unsettling influence of unelected figures like Elon Musk on public policy.
Perhaps most striking was the breadth of participation — from major cities like New York and Los Angeles to conservative towns in West Virginia and Tennessee. This nationwide turnout underscores that the backlash is not limited to progressive strongholds but represents a growing, broad-based movement. While policy change is a long-term effort, these protests are a crucial reminder that public dissent matters. In moments of political overreach and democratic backsliding, showing up does make a difference. The April 4 demonstrations reignited energy in the resistance and proved that activism remains a vital force in shaping the future of our country. Stay involved. Stay loud. Stay in the fight.
| | DEMONSTRATIONS ARE CONTINUING IN SALISBURY | | |
If you live in or near Salisbury, please join the new, ongoing “Hands Off!” protests on the town green at the White Hart Inn every Saturday from 11am-noon. Hands-Off demonstrators will be joining the existing “We Stand for Social Justice” protest group that is a mainstay of Saturday mornings on the green. Bring your signs. Every Saturday rain or shine.
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BIG WIN IN WISCONSIN - THANK YOU
It was hard to miss the news that Judge Susan Crawford defeated MAGA candidate Brad Schimel in the April 1 election for a seat on the Wisconsin State Supreme Court—but the deep significance of this victory cannot be overstated. Crawford’s win preserves a 4-3 liberal majority on the state’s highest court, which will soon weigh in on critical issues including voting rights, fair election maps, reproductive freedom, and labor rights. She won by a stunning 10-point margin, despite Elon Musk’s attempt to sway the race by pouring in over $20 million. An astonishing 2.36 million voters turned out — that’s more than half of Wisconsin’s voting-age population. Compared to the 2024 presidential election, every single county in Wisconsin shifted to the left.
Democrats also celebrated another important victory: Jill Underly was reelected as Superintendent of Public Instruction. Her continued leadership ensures that Wisconsin’s children will have a strong advocate for public education at the helm.
The Wisconsin Democratic Party (WisDems) did an outstanding job organizing volunteers from across the state and the country to power these campaigns. If you were one of those volunteers — whether you phonebanked, cured ballots, or staffed the WisDems voter hotline—give yourself a big pat on the back, and don’t forget to share your experience with friends. You made a real difference.
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DON'T FORGET TO CAST YOUR LOCAL VOTE
If you live in greater Salisbury, mark your calendar for these upcoming votes:
May 6 – Referendum on the Proposal 2025-26 Budget for Region One School District (Housatonic Valley Regional High School). Voting will take place at Town Hall from 12-8pm. Click here to see the budget.
May 14 - A town meeting will be held at 7:30pm to approve 1) the proposed 2025-26 Town of Salisbury budget and 2) the proposed 2025-26 Central School budget.
Anyone who is a US citizen and is liable for at least $1,000 in local property taxes in Salisbury is eligible to vote on these matters, regardless of whether they are registered to vote in Salisbury.
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"We need to make our voices heard. We’re not red, we’re not blue. We’re the building trades, the backbone of America. You want to build a $5 billion data center? Want more six-figure careers with health care, retirement, and no college debt? You don’t call Elon Musk, you call us!... And yeah, that means all of us."
-- Recent statement from Sean McGarvey, President of North America’s Building Trades Unions, for which he recently received a standing ovation from a room full of his fellow union workers
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Saturday, May 3 from 11am-12 noon: Hands Off! Protest at The White Hart Green in Salisbury. Every Saturday join "We Stand for Peace and Justice," the group that has been there every Saturday morning since 1982! Bring your signs and your energy and come whenever you can!!
Saturday, May 3 from 11am-12 noon: Protest at New Milford Green. New Milford Green, south end, near the intersection of Bridge and Main Streets, New Milford. Every Saturday join Act Local NWCT to stand up for our rights and speak out against the Trump administration's destruction of our democracy.
| Saturday, May 3 from 1- 2:30pm: May Day Protest in Torrington. Meet at Coe Park, on the sidewalk across from the plaza, 101 Litchfield Street, Torrington. Join in to stand up for the many, not the billionaires. | |
Monday, May 5 at 5:30pm: The Sharon Democratic Town Committee holds its regular monthly meeting. You are welcome to join in person on the second floor of Sharon Town Hall, 63 Main Street in Sharon, or remotely on Zoom. Please email sharontowndemocrats@gmail.com for a link.
Tuesday, May 6 from 3-5pm: One-time Postcarding Event at the White Hart in Salisbury. Jill Drew, editor of the informative and inspiring Today's Action newsletter, has invited concerned citizens to a one-time postcarding event to write to Democrats in Ohio, informing them that their new Republican Senator (who took JD Vance's seat and will be running for re-election in 2026) voted for budget bills that would cut funding for Medicaid and lavish more tax breaks on billionaires. Bring your colored pens and stamps. The organizers will provide the postcards and scripts. Bring your friends — everyone is welcome!
Thursday, May 8 at 7pm: Empty Chair Town Hall Without State Senator Stephen Harding. Event will be at Pettibone Community Center, 2 Pickett District Rd, New Milford. Act Local NWCT invites you to be a part of the conversation. The concept is simple -- we will have an empty chair for State Senator Stephen Harding and a panel of experts to answer your questions on how to combat the federal cuts, tariffs, and policies at the local level. Your voice matters - bring your stories, concerns and questions. Let's come together and learn how to save the services we depend on. Space is limited so register soon!
Tuesday, May 20 at pm: Salisbury Democratic Town Committee. This regular monthly SDTC meeting will be held at Town Hall and via Zoom. The SDTC is committed to promoting good government and democratic principles at every level of our civic life. The SDTC recruits candidates for local elective and appointed offices and supports the most qualified Democrats to run in municipal, state, and national elections. Meetings are usually on the third Tuesday of every month. Please email Al Ginouves to receive a copy of the agenda and the link to the meeting. All are welcome.
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As the turmoil and recklessness of the Trump administration escalate, it’s more important than ever to take a stand. Channel your frustration into action.
Phonebank Into Virginia - Join the Center for Common Ground (CFCG) as it makes calls to Black voters in advance of the Virginia primary election on June 17. (Early voting is already underway.) Make calls with the group every Tuesday from 6-8 pm or on your own time from 9am-8pm. Motivating people to get out and vote in primaries is important because it boosts their likelihood of voting in general elections. If you are a beginning phone banker, don’t worry. Each session starts with a training for anyone who needs it. You can also train yourself beforehand by watching this video. If you are experienced, you can start making these calls immediately and pop back into the zoom room with any questions along the way. For more information about this phonebanking action or to sign up, please visit the CFCG Phonebank Page.
Get Timely Updates on Important Actions From These Sources
Because we publish only once a month, there are many events during the month that never make it into our pages. To keep informed about those events, we strongly suggest that you subscribe to some of the excellent, more-frequent sources that are listed below.
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5 Calls - Elected officials really do care what their constituents think. That's why calls to officials' offices are impactful. Every day staffers compile and report on all the calls that their offices receive. Making a call takes just a minute using the short scripts on key issues and telephone numbers they provide. 5 Calls researches key issues, drafts scripts, and provides contact info for elected officials. Go to the 5 Calls website and choose an issue you care about. Enter your zip code and the system will provide you with the telephone numbers of your senators and representatives along with the relevant scripts. Subscribe to 5 Call’s weekly newsletter for emails with the latest updates.
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Jill Drew’s Today's Action Daily Blast – This six-days-a-week email suggests a single, focused calling action to our public officials each day, most often providing carefully-researched sample scripts along with the contact information for calling US senators and representatives serving Northwestern Connecticut and the adjoining area of New York’s Hudson Valley. To sign up email jill@jilldrew.com.
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Jessica Craven's Chop Wood, Carry Water – This is one of our perennial favorites. Activist Jessica Craven provides daily suggestions on easy actions that each of us can take. Read it here and subscribe free for her daily dose of actions.
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Connecticut Refuses to Sign Trump DEI Compliance Order. Connecticut is rejecting the Trump administration's demand that K-12 schools certify their compliance with the elimination of all "illegal" diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, the state education commissioner announced recently. CT Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker said she would not be signing the US Department of Education's letter certifying compliance with the administration's interpretation of federal civil rights laws. She wrote in a letter to the federal department that the state is already in compliance with anti-discrimination laws and principles. The letter marks the state education department's first major pushback against Trump's slew of executive orders and directives targeted at the country's education system. Read more in CT Insider.
Senator Chris Murphy’s “Emergency” Message About Trump is Connecting With Democratic Voters. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy isn’t drawing arena-size crowds like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are as he tours the country talking to voters. But people are starting to view the Democrat as worthy of the national spotlight. As other Democrats grasp for a response to Trump’s election, unsure of how to confront him, Murphy is channeling his own frustration and anger into a sustained blitz of television appearances, fundraising appeals, Senate floor speeches, and local events in places like North Carolina. He also is talking directly to voters on social media, including through lengthy live videos on Instagram where he sits in his kitchen with a cocktail and tries to explain what he sees as “the central story” of Trump’s presidency — “the billionaire takeover of our government made possible by the destruction of our democracy.” Read more in the story from the AP.
James Carville: How to Turn Trump’s Economic Chaos Against Him. As the country reels from President Trump’s reckless tariff policy and its mounting impact on everyday Americans, Carville lays out a roadmap for Democrats to seize the economic narrative. He argues it’s time for Democrats to stop getting distracted and start focusing on the real story: a president who promised prosperity and delivered pain. Read the full piece in The New York Times.
What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal --
by David Brooks in The New York Times. Until now, we’ve treated the Trump administration’s moves as disconnected: attacks on law firms, the gutting of USAID, assaults on universities, efforts to undermine NATO, and disruption of global trade. But these are not isolated acts — they are part of a unified campaign to tear down the institutions that restrain authoritarian power. To stop it, America needs an equally unified and extraordinary response. Click to read the full opinion piece.
New Book Challenges Liberals to Trade Despair for Bold Ambition. Want to know why Democrats are failing to win public support? In their provocative new book, Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson argue that Democrats have too often swapped innovation for regulation, growth for gridlock, and ambition for caution. Their message: If progressives want to win hearts and minds—and fend off the appeal of strongmen—they must embrace a politics of plenty. Klein and Thompson criticize how modern liberalism, mired in red tape and NIMBYism, has stifled housing, energy, and scientific progress. Their solution is to reignite America’s inventive spirit through massive public investment—not just in regulation, but in green energy, new technology, and national infrastructure. Click to watch Klein and Thompson discuss the book on The Daily Show.
Trump’s Jewish Cover Story. The Trump administration wants you to know that it’s looking out for Jews. The White House has cited anti-Semitism as the motivation for many of its controversial moves, whether deporting foreign students who allegedly engaged in pro-Hamas activism or threatening to pull millions of government dollars from Ivy League schools. But this is profoundly misleading. In reality, Trump and his allies have been using “anti-Semitism” as a pretext to advance a radical agenda that has nothing to do with Jews at all—and that most American Jews do not support. Read this insightful article by Yair Rosenberg in The Atlantic. For another perspective read The Guardian's interview with Jerry Nadler, the most senior Jewish member of the House of Representatives, who accuses Donald Trump of cynically exploiting the fight against antisemitism as a ruse to force his will on top-flight universities.
Undaunted: The Associated Press. Unlike Columbia University, unlike a pack of big law firms (e.g. Paul Weiss, Skadden Arps), unlike Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, unlike ABC News, and unlike virtually every House and Senate Republican, the Associated Press (AP) refused to capitulate in the face of authoritarian bullying. Rather than accept its “punishment” — exclusion from key venues at the White House and daily access to Donald Trump, simply because it had the galling temerity to call the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of Mexico” — it took the Trump censoring regime to federal court. After a few weeks, it won at the district court level. (The Trump administration is appealing the ruling.) Read Jen Rubin's perspective in The Contrarian.
What is DOGE Really Doing to Social Security? Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) attacks on Social Security aren’t about efficiency — they are sabotage. DOGE announced plans to cut Social Security staff by 7,000 workers, 12% of its workforce, and plans to shutter or shrink dozens of Social Security Administration offices around the country. Administrative costs are less than 1% of Social Security spending. Since almost all Social Security spending goes towards benefits, which are set by statute, gutting the agency won’t save money for participants. The only way that slashing the number of workers will save large sums of money is by making it hard for people to access their benefits. Such backdoor benefit cuts, and making a popular government program look bad, are the real goals behind DOGE attacks on Social Security. Read more from the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute.
Academia Pushes Back. After watching large universities shake in their boots and succumb to Trump's threats, it is refreshing to see some of them take courageous stands, even at huge financial risks.
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Georgetown Law: In response to several threatening letters from Interim US Attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin — stating that his office will no longer consider candidates associated with Georgetown Law unless the school halts all diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts — Dean William Treanor of the Georgetown University Law Center issued a powerful response. Drawing on conservative principles, Treanor argued that the threat undermines First Amendment and religious protections for free speech in ways that even conservatives should find deeply troubling. Read an excellent analysis as well as the full text of the letter in Above the Law.
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Harvard University: Harvard's lawyers sent a letter rejecting numerous demands from the Trump administration that the university said would cede control of the school to a conservative government that portrays universities as dangerously leftist. Within hours of Harvard taking its stand, the Trump administration announced it was freezing $2.3 billion in federal funding to the school.
So You Want to Be a Dissident? A Practical Guide to Courage in Trump’s Age of Fear. Not long ago, Americans viewed dissidents as distant figures — heroes like Alexei Navalny, Jamal Khashoggi, Nelson Mandela, and Mahatma Gandhi — who defied repressive regimes at great personal cost. But the US has now entered unfamiliar territory, where challenging the state carries real risk. A sitting President, elected on a platform of vengeance, has imposed loyalty tests, banned words, purged civil servants, and appointed an FBI director who has promised punishment for dissent. The list of individuals and institutions facing consequences grows daily, creating a chilling effect. Still, there’s hope. Research shows autocrats can be defeated when sustained, strategic, nonviolent resistance erodes their foundations. The collapse of fear and rise of collective courage can trigger a “belief cascade” strong enough to bring down authoritarian rule. Co-authored by a journalist and a political scientist, this New Yorker essay offers a practical roadmap for resisting authoritarianism.
Trump’s Biggest Beneficiary: Himself - Opinion by Steven Ratner. In his trampling of historically appropriate behavior, Trump appears to be pursuing several agendas, but personal enrichment stands out. The corruption of Trump 2.0 has not gotten the attention it deserves amid the barrage of news about Trump’s tariff wars, his attack on scientific research, and his senior appointees’ Signal text chains. But self-dealing is such a defining theme of this administration that it needs to be called out. Like much that Trump has done in other areas, it announces to the world that America’s leaders can no longer be trusted to follow its laws and that influence is up for sale. Read this opinion piece in The New York Times.
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DID YOU MISS A NEWSLETTER?
The entire archive of past newsletters is available at the Salisbury Democratic Town Committee website.
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SHARE YOUR NEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
Please send us any news or announcements that you would like us to share with our community. We publish on the first of each month, so please send us any submissions at least one week in advance. Please submit to the editor at salsdemsnews@gmail.com.
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TELL US WHAT YOU THINK
We love hearing from you, our readers. Every edition of our newsletter is created with you in mind — to inform, engage, and inspire. But your feedback helps us do our job better. Drop us a note — even a few lines can make a big difference. Reach us anytime at salsdemsnews@gmail.com.
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