Thousands of people spilled onto Boston Common Saturday for one of hundreds of Hands Off protests held nationwide.
Mixed in among the sea of faces: dozens of Belmont residents who braved the inclement April day to make their voices heard.
“The mood was energizing, and it felt very hopeful,” said Priscilla Cobb, chair of the Social Action Committee at the First Church in Belmont, Unitarian Universalist.
Cobb said between 30 and 40 people traveled together from Belmont to Boston for the event, filling the 75 bus twice. They were met at the Common by still more Belmont residents.
“There was a lot of camaraderie and support,” Cobb said.
According to the Associated Press, Hands Off rallies were held in more than 1,200 locations spread throughout all 50 states Saturday. Protests were held across Massachusetts, including in Worcester and Easthampton.
“It helped to know that these protests were happening all across the country,” Cobb said.
Massachusetts is sometimes seen as a political outlier, more liberal than other parts of the country. Because of that, voices of protest from Massachusetts could be dismissed by others.
But Massachusetts has been at ground zero for several of the new Trump Administration policies, including the threat of steep funding cuts to various colleges and universities and immigration policies leading to a Tufts University student being taken from the streets of Somerville by immigration officials.
“The work being done here is helping people all over the country,” Cobb said.
Fran Yuan, a member of First Church in Belmont’s Social Action Committee, attended on Saturday.
“Being out in a crowd of people protesting all of the ways our leaders are destroying our country with little thought to humanity was exhilarating, to a point,” Yuan wrote in an email.
Yuan, whose parents are immigrants, sees the Hands Off rally as the first step in making voices heard.
“My parents were immigrants from China, and I was always conscious of the many opportunities people from all over the world could find here and the freedom we had to express our opinions,” Yuan said.
Former Select Board member Mark Paolillo, who attended the rally with his wife and some friends, called the experience inspiring.
“It allowed us to engage in the discussion on some level, instead of sitting back and wondering what to do,” he said.
While the experience at Hands Off was incredible, Paolillo also said there is a need to do more to make their voices heard.
State Sen. William Brownsberger echoed the need for people to be heard.
“Like many people, I feel that there are a lot of things going in a bad direction right now, and while it’s hard to control the federal government, it is important to speak out,” he said.
