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We face today the gravest state-sponsored offensive on basic rights in decades or more.

ICE and CBP’s use of racial profiling has been legalized, and now 40% of American residents are declared guilty until proven innocent by a lawless, masked police force that employs violent kidnappings, openly flouts due process, and experiments with disappearing people to overseas concentration camps.

The federal government uses deportations and regulatory agencies as weapons against dissident speech and union leaders. 

Simultaneously, the largest assault on organized labor in American history has begun, with the immediate or pending elimination of union contracts affecting more than 1 million workers - 7% of all union members.

The deployment of national guard and federal agents to major American cities is now continuous. And through executive order or NPSM-7, members of large and broadly defined swaths of society are classified as terrorists, including holders of very common beliefs like opposition to fascism and views on gender or race considered extreme by Donald Trump. 

The Trump administration and its allies seek nothing less than the destruction of the labor movement and all opposition organizations, and the imposition of a brutal and dehumanizing social order. In this life or death struggle, no meaningful opposition emerges from establishment circles.

But in the streets millions are stirring, and our power can already be glimpsed in a series of victories that have cracked the facade of omnipotence projected by aspiring authoritarians. Persistent demonstrations have made visible the growing majority opposition to dictatorial rule, stemming the spread of fear, giving space to dissent, and breaking away support for Trump’s offensive on working and oppressed people.

Political prosecution has been interrupted or even reversed, with the release of leaders like Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, Esdrás Zabaleta-Ramirez and Victor Sanchez, the dismissal of charges against Catalina Xotchitl Santiago and Alejandro Orellana, and the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from CECOT - something the Trump administration claimed was wholly impossible.

More than half of the country is already opposed to Trump’s offensive in their minds. Every form of resistance strengthens our communities and impedes the transformation of critical institutions into unadulterated tools of repression.

There is a window where we can build a movement that can meet this historic challenge.

What will it take?

We have, in our history, rich experiences of struggle that we can learn much from, where tremendous victories were won against remarkable odds. Join your neighbors, activists and leaders from across the state as we come together and equip our minds for the next stage of the struggle.

Gather in Hartford on November 8th to hear keynote speakers including local and national organizers and union members who have been targeted for exercising their free speech. 

Attend workshops led by local and national activists to discuss topics which include: building an intersectional movement against police brutality, defending due process and immigrant rights, protecting academic freedom, and defending the Palestine Solidarity Movement.

Propose and vote on action proposals to keep our movement building and growing! 

Speakers Include:

Evette Avery

Southeast Regional Director of Teamsters’ LGBTA+ Caucus

Andraya Yearwood

Columbia University and Trans Rights Activist

William I. Robinson

Professor of Sociology and Global and International Studies, Latin American and Iberian Studies, Affiliated Faculty Chicana and Chicano Studies, University of California - Santa Barbara

Kathy Manley

Attorney at Law, National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms

Jazmarie Melendez

CT Organizer, Justice for Jayson Negron

Ian Gavigan

Executive Director of Higher Education Labor United (HELU)

Juan Fonseca Tapia

Community Organizer and co-founder, Danbury Unites for Immigrants

Kerry Ellington

Community Organizer & Freedom Fighter

Tom Alter (via zoom)

Denied Free Speech by Texas State, Committee to Defend Tom Alter

Lunch is included

Your generous contributions will help cover the $5,000 we need to raise to continue the fight for civil liberties: $2000 for printing flyers, $1000 to cover the cost of speakers and travel, $500 for placards for May Day 2026, $500 for buttons and t-shirts promoting the fight for civil liberties.

Suggested donation levels:

$10 Student/Community Supported

$25 Movement Builder!
This ticket covers admission and your meal

$40 Solidarity Donation!
This ticket covers your ticket, the ticket of low income friends, as well as their meals

$80 Civil Liberty Defender!
This ticket covers your ticket, the ticket of low income friends, as well as their meals, and cost of printing posters.

Donations can be made through the Eventbrite link at the top of the page or given at the door day of.
No one turned away for lack of funds.