BRATTLEBORO-For America’s 250th birthday, Brattleboro’s annual Fourth of July parade was its customary mashup of community pride, lots of trucks, and political protest.
Owing to the hot and humid morning, the Brattleboro American Legion Band rode down Main Street, and the Brattleboro Union High School band opted for shorts and T-shirts rather than their uniforms.
There weren’t as many firetrucks from neighboring fire departments this year, but Brattleboro Public Works had most of its equipment in the parade, including its new compost collection truck.
The biggest contingent was a show of support for Brattleboro Memorial Hospital’s Birthing Center, with about 200 hospital workers and their allies expressing their displeasure over a plan announced on July 1 to close it down.
To honor the original “No Kings Day” on July 4, 1776, Brattleboro Indivisible sent out The Good Trouble Street Choir, joined by the “Signs of Fascism” marchers.
A pro-Palestine contingent with flags and Bread and Puppet Theater–insprired creations of mothers dressed in black grieving their dead children were not far behind.
A 14-foot papier-mâché replica of the Statue of Liberty, in honor of Richard Morris Hunt, a Brattleboro architect who designed the statue’s pedestal, was the centerpiece of the parade.
As he has for years, Alfred Hughes Jr. brought up the rear of the parade, this year celebrating July 4 in a golden gown accented with monarch butterflies.
This News item by was written for The Commons.