Hanover
While Henry held his placard reading #Families Belong Together over his head, Windsor resident Josh Compton stood next to the stroller in which Henry’s younger brother, Truman, sat surrounded by a three-placard sign with the same message.
“Henry is 4,” Josh Compton said.
“Four-and-a-half!” Henry yelled back.
While the Hanover version of the nationwide rally drew around 400 demonstrators across the spectrum of ages, Upper Valley residents of middle age and older and their younger children and grandchildren far outnumbered the 18-to-24 demographic, in part because only sophomores attend Dartmouth during the summer term.
Emma Bliska, the Dartmouth-area representative of the activist group NextGen New Hampshire, added that she knows of a number of those sophomores who “definitely went to the marches on the seacoast and Boston” as well as New York and Washington.
Rally organizers urged all adults on the green to flock to the polls in November — and to recruit enough friends and loved ones to join them at the polls to oust federal and state office-holders whom they see as aiding and abetting President Trump’s “no-tolerance” policies on immigration.
“Voting, voting, voting becomes absolutely critical,” Rod Wendt, executive director of the United Valley Interfaith Project, told the crowd. “Do not let this rally be a one-and-done.”
Bliska, freshly graduated from Middlebury College with a degree in political science, said that she and nearly 20 other NextGen staffers were just warming up, while helping demonstrators in Hanover and Portsmouth create homemade signs and encouraging them to sign petitions urging Gov. Chris Sununu to stop cooperating with federal Border Patrol traffic stops on Granite State highways.
Activists also are encouraging their peers on campuses around the state to go to the polls not only over immigration policy but over issues ranging from reproductive rights to efforts in the New Hampshire legislature to further restrict the rights of college students to vote in elections here.
House Bill 1264, now before the legislature, tightens the definition of residency for voting purposes.
“It is the absolute crux of our efforts,” said Bliska, whose family lives in Lyme. “The people in our age group are going to be the defining voters in the fall election. Young people across the country are very engaged over a wide range of related issues, and very enthusiastic about voting for progressive candidates. New Hampshire is going to be part of that trend.”
“Students have the ability to fundamentally shape this election,” she added. “And when the presidential candidates start coming ahead of the 2020 primary, they’re going to know that they’re accountable to young people.”
In addition to voting, and to urging his Dartmouth classmates to go to the polls in November, rising junior Garrett Muscatel is running for one of the five seats in House of Representatives from District 12, representing Hanover and Lyme.
“Since I’ve been here, the state has been working really hard to make it harder for students to vote,” said Muscatel, who grew up in California but has lived in Hanover long enough to be eligible to run for office. “Part of the reason I’m running is that even if the state makes it harder for students to vote, they will have representation in Concord.”
In another 14 years, in time for the 2032 presidential election, Henry Compton will be eligible to vote. And if his precocious concern for separated families is any hint, he’ll grasp the issues of that day.
“He reads the Valley News,” Josh Compton said. “That’s our morning ritual. We get the paper, look through it and talk through it. It’s opened up interesting conversations with my kids — simplified versions of complicated things. I thought it was important today to have the family involved. Being here makes it more poignant.”
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com or 603-727-3304.