![]() A dining worker at Berkeley College swung open a back door to salute the demonstrators as they passed. Each time the procession passed a college, more students joined. Students, activists and even a Yale professor - American studies professor Charles Musser ’73 - roused the crowd with brief but impassioned speeches. One speaker - a member of Unidad Latina en Accion - donned a homemade Corey Menafee costume consisting of a broomstick and an apron emblazoned in black and red ink with the words “CALHOUN STOP RACISM CHANGE THE NAME ¡NOW!”įrom the Green, the crowd marched in a loop around campus, holding a 30-foot-long, traffic-cone-orange banner that read, “YALE: #CHANGE THE NAME!” and chanting all the way. ![]() Many carried placards with phrases like “JUSTICE CAN’T WAIT” and “CALHOUN=SLAVERY.” Most popular, perhaps, were picket signs calling on Yale to “Smash Racism.” Cameramen from FOX 61, NBC CT and other state TV news networks swarmed the outskirts of the scene. The rally started at the corner of College and Elm, where protesters began to congregate on the New Haven Green over an hour before arriving at Woodbridge. In the meantime, a few speakers address the demonstrators, and some activists with megaphones lead call-and-response chants. Kica Matos, emcee of the rally and director of immigrant rights and racial justice at the Center for Community Change, says the guest of honor is running late but will arrive any minute now. The facade of Woodbridge Hall looks stately in the fall sunlight. The organizers of the Change the Name Rally stand atop the building’s front steps, and a crowd of nearly 200 students, faculty, staff and other New Haven residents huddles below. I can see my breath in the air, and the wind is unrelenting, but no one is leaving.
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