On April 4, demonstrators gathered in downtown Hanover to participate in the nationwide “Hands Off!” protest against President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk. For over two hours, protestors gathered in the rain, chanting and holding signs to protest issues such as the Trump administration’s involvement in higher education, immigration crackdowns and federal funding freezes, among others.
“Hands Off!” protests occurred throughout the country on Saturday at more than 1,200 different locations and in all 50 states, according to the Associated Press.
Hanover resident Jean Brown, who helped organize the protest, said “Hands Off!” protests were a display of “resistance” towards the Trump administration.
“It was very important that we have one here in Hanover and Dartmouth College,” Brown said. “[These] events are to show visibly that there is resistance and opposition to what’s happening to America right now.”
A large majority of protest attendees were not Dartmouth students. Orford Democratic Town Committee chair Deborah Merrill-Sands noted this lack of students.
“We need more Dartmouth students to come out and join us,” Merrill-Sands said. “...I think it’s the only way we can get the Republican congressional people, senators and the House, the Republican side, to start really feeling the power of their constituencies.”
During the Hanover protest, attendees expressed their support for a variety of causes, such as protecting diversity, equity and inclusion programs, preserving Medicaid and Social Security and defending LGBTQ+ rights. Giselle Hart GR held a sign displaying Emma Lazarus’s poem “The New Colossus,” which is inscribed on The Statue of Liberty.
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” she said. “I think that those values that America, the United States, ultimately represent, are not being upheld right now by the Trump administration.”
John Miller, a Vietnam War veteran from Oxford, N.H., said he attended the protest to “defend freedom and democracy.”
Miller also expressed disapproval of the College’s recent hiring of Matthew Raymer ’03 as general counsel and senior vice president. Raymer previously served as chief counsel for the Republican National Committee and has publicly expressed support for the Trump administration’s push to redefine birthright citizenship.
Miller described Raymer’s hire as “appeasement” of Trump officials, expressing concern about the administration’s involvement in higher education.
“I’m very concerned for academia, freedom of education,” he said.
Hanover resident Bill Black, another protest organizer, said he believes that, because universities are “focused on preserving their large endowments,” and may be at risk of losing federal funding, they are not pushing back against the Trump administration’s policies.
“There’s no better justification for what to do with your endowment than to make sure that you keep our democracy running,” Black said. “One of the whole rationales of the endowment is to preserve the future of your college. If you can’t push back against this [Trump] administration, there may not be a future for the college.”
