LEBANON — Some 600 Upper Valley residents gathered on Colburn Park to protest the Trump administration as part of a series of May Day protests that took place across the globe on Thursday.

Over the course of two hours, a series of politicians, community members and musicians addressed the crowd from the park’s bandstand.

“They can come for our budgets, but they can’t come for our mission,” Kendra LaRoche, executive director of the Special Needs Support Center, a White River Junction nonprofit that provides resources and programming for people with disabilities, said to the crowd.

The center is one of the organizations from across the country that has been impacted by federal budget cuts under the Trump administration.

Thus far, the center has lost an estimated $100,000 in federal funding, said the nonprofit’s Marketing and Development Director Tony Strat in an interview.

The event, Basket of Betrayals, was organized by the Upper Valley Coalition, or UVC, and Upper Valley Indivisible, a nationwide activist movement with a chapter in the Upper Valley.

UVC formed on Feb. 17, Presidents Day, in response to Trump’s inauguration. Since then, the group has hosted monthly meetings at the First Congregational Church in Lebanon.

Addressing the crowd, founder and chairman Don Collins announced UVC’s plans to expand to Sullivan County and rural parts of Vermont that are more conservative than the Upper Valley, which leans heavily democratic.

“We can’t be in this blue area and expect to change the world,” he said.

Later on, Vermont state Rep. Rebecca Holcombe, D-Norwich, informed protesters that earlier that day, the Vermont House of Representatives passed a constitutional amendment protecting the right to collectively bargain that the Senate passed last April, as well as a joint resolution that would protect trans and nonbinary residents.

“Get on it, New Hampshire. You’ve got some catching up to do,” she said.

When Vermont state Sen. Becca White, D-White River Junction, asked how many Vermonters were in the crowd, the majority of protesters put up their hands.

Former Lebanon Mayor and New Hampshire Executive Councilor Karen Liot Hill made an appearance at the protest. The only Democrat to serve on the Executive Council, Liot Hill urged protesters to not lose hope in the face of a Republican majority.

“We must stay focused. We must be disciplined. We must fight and we must fight everywhere and all at once,” she said.

In her speech, White galvanized the crowd when she spoke of Palestinian Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi’s release from the Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans, Vt. A legal resident of the United States since 2014 residing in White River Junction, Mahdawi was arrested by ICE officers during an interview to finalize his citizenship on April 14 at a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services field office in Colchester.

But White also reminded protesters of nine men still in the St. Albans facility who are facing deportation.

“It’s not just about Mohsen anymore,” she said. “It’s about all of those people.”

Throughout the protest, several speakers drew parallels between Thursday’s event and other instances of activism during crisis points in American history.

Kianna Mist, an artist and member of the Narragansett tribe in Rhode Island, recalled the words of Martin Luther King Jr.: “I am tired of marching for something that should have been mine at birth.”

Holcombe spoke of a group of students at the University of California-Berkley, who in the 1970s poured concrete onto a street curb to create a ramp at a time when the school was not wheel chair-accessible.

Their actions helped push the city to install the first curb ramp in 1972, which became known as the “slab of concrete that was heard ‘round the world.”

“You can have fun while you do this,” Holcombe said.

Protesters Susanna French, 53, and her mother, Anne French, 83, donned Suffragette-style sashes made by Susanna. “Sash the patriarchy,” hers read.

French stitched her first sash on Nov. 5, 2016, after learning the results of the first Trump election.

“I had to do something with my anxiety,” she said.

She started accepting requests from friends, then launched an online business. Today, French has sold over 700 sashes to customers around the world. She’s “grateful to meet people from all walks of life” through the online exchange, she said.

Along with the roster of speakers, a series of musicians led the crowd in song.

Art installations by Upper Valley artist Charlie DePuy dotted the park, including a group of baskets filled with symbols of the Trump administration’s betrayals. “Institute of Museum and Library Services defunded” read a sign affixed to a tall shelf of books representing the 381 works that were recently removed from the Naval Academy Library in Annapolis, Md.

Protester Jim Schubert, of Cornish, brought his own piece of activist art, which he displayed from a corner of the park’s perimeter.

A retired Kimball Union Academy art teacher, Schubert, 76, had made a giant mask that combined the faces of Trump and Adolf Hitler, which he debuted at a Hands Off! rally in White River Junction on April 5.

The government is becoming an “authoritarian regime,” he said. “We need to wake up.”

Marion Umpleby can be reached at mumpleby@vnews.com or 603-727-3306.