Earth Day Rally and Weekend Protests Energize MDI Activists

Carrie Jones

Apr 24, 2025

BAR HARBOR—Before the marchers from the College of the Atlantic arrived on Bar Harbor’s Village Green, Wednesday afternoon, microphones were tested, songs murmured, guitar notes mellowing into the air. A family watched as their two young children had an impromptu dance on the grass before they bundled one back into their stroller and pushed them toward the path.

One woman waiting on a park bench said hello to a man who works as a tour guide. He’d done seven tours so far this season. Nearby, three people waited at an Island Explorer bench before walking away.

A cardinal sang in a tree. Firefighters peeked out of the public safety building and went back inside.

More musicians arrived, a hat flopping around one’s shoulders. Guitars were placed in the grass to wait for the marchers who came up from the college campus and down the streets of Bar Harbor. The previously very quiet green became something else: a rally for Earth Day.

Songs were sung. Professor Gray Cox exclaimed that climate change was “a big freaking problem” before leading attendees in song.

“Climate change,” he said, “is just one of the many changes that are coming.”

The problems, he said, can sometimes seem too big, too massive, they can knock the fight out of you, he said, or put you in fight or flight mode.

The wins matter and they have to be celebrated too, said COA’s Director of Energy David Gibson.

According to Earthday.com, “Senator Gaylord Nelson, the junior senator from Wisconsin, had long been concerned about the deteriorating environment in the United States. Then in January 1969, he and many others witnessed the ravages of a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. Inspired by the student anti-war movement, Senator Nelson wanted to infuse the energy of student anti-war protests with an emerging public consciousness about air and water pollution. Senator Nelson announced the idea for a teach-in on college campuses to the national media, and persuaded Pete McCloskey, a conservation-minded Republican Congressman, to serve as his co-chair.”

The Earth Day march and rally was not the only activism that occurred this past week. Protests continued throughout the state and on Mount Desert Island this weekend after the Justice Department sued the state about Maine’s protections for transgender student athletes.

Hundreds gathered in Ellsworth and Bangor on Saturday, as well as over 700 other locations across the state and country on April 19, which was the 250th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which most cite as the beginning of the Revolutionary War.

Chalking also occurred on Bar Harbor streets.

Activate Maine reports that 850 gathered in Ellsworth and 25 in Southwest Harbor on Saturday. A separate protest, specifically against Leonard Leo at his Northeast Harbor residence was planned for Sunday. The Saturday protests are a part of the decentralized 50501 movement. The numbers stand for “50 protests in 50 states on 1 day.”

Charles Stephens as well as Carmen LaHaye spoke at the Ellsworth protest. Both are part of the Hancock County Democrats.

“It warms my heart to see all you here,” Stephens began in Ellsworth. “I have a question for you: Do you want to go back to having a king? We said no 250 years ago. We say no today.”

Stephens spoke to Trump administration cuts in multiple programs funded by federal money.

“Personally, I had major cancer surgery 25 years ago followed by chemo and radiation therapies. I was given a 20% chance of survival. My oncologist told me that what he was taught in medical school 25 years ago, now looked like the dark ages & that what he was doing for me at the time would look like the dark ages in 10 years,” Stephens said. “If it wasn’t for federally funded cancer research, I wouldn’t be alive.”

He urged those attending to work together to proactively work toward mutual goals and to contact their elected representatives to explain their positions.

“There are so many individuals reaching out to us wondering what they can do and how to get involved. A huge focus for us right now is working to help make a wide variety of actions available. Not everyone can attend a rally, and not everyone has the time to stay up on all the issues or write letters to the editor. We are helping people find the roles that suit their experience, skills, time, and energy, and help give them the community and tools they need to make a difference. We encourage concerned neighbors to reach out to their municipal Democratic committees as well as attend our monthly HCDC meetings, whether in person or by Zoom. By joining together, we not only strengthen our Democratic party but also our sense of community,” said HCDC Vice Chair and Communications Lead Lee Cline. “If you would like to be involved in some way, please reach out to us at chair@hancockdems.org.

Sweet Fern, a local group on Mount Desert Island, has supported events in other Maine towns, attending events there as well as in New York and the District of Columbia, one member said.

Sweet Fern MDI’s mission is that it “grows its roots in ground left impoverished by anti-democratic forces. Sweet Fern MDI supports those who want to respond to interlocking injustices such as rampant corruption, racism, sexism, poverty, worker exploitation, environmental and civic destruction, and the failed health care system. We are a community group not affiliated with any one political ideology, open to all who are willing to work with us.”

Alex Newell Taylor, one of the facilitators for the nonhierarchical group said, “Sweet Fern was formed to provide people local to MDI a very local hub to plug into statewide or even county wide and national organizing efforts.”

The goal was not to reinvent the wheel, but to give people an entry point into action. There are biweekly meetings for people to come together to be in community, Newell Taylor said. They have been supporting in-person actions in the state and may do more local actions during the summer.

Working groups are active currently on more specific issues such as environmental protection, health care justice, bodily autonomy, and support for the immigrant community.

“The working groups are constantly evolving because we have a core belief in the group that anyone can lead,” Newell Taylor said.

All are welcome. It’s a nonpartisan group, not a Democratic group, she said. “There are certainly people in the group who are not democrats.”

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The Bar Harbor Story has reached out to both the Hancock County Democrats and Hancock County Republicans for this story. The Hancock County Republicans had not responded by press time. We’ll update the story if they do.

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