IMPORTANT LAST MINUTE TRAVEL NOTE: The East Haddam bridge on Route 82 will close sometime tomorrow for several hours so that the Coast Guard Ice Breakers can clear the ice around the bridge and head north towards Middletown. You will need more time to get here. Here's how:

If you are south of Exit 7 on Route 9, head south on 9 and go East on I-95. You will be getting off at the first exit across the river for Old Lyme, Route 156 and take 156 north to route 82 and follow it to East Haddam.

If you are north of Exit 7 on Route 9, go north and get off at the exit for Portland and follow route 66 East to Cobalt where you will go south on 151 to East Haddam.

Whatever you use to plan your route, if you are on the WEST side of the Connecticut River, you must cross on I-95 or at Middletown to get here.

On January 21, 2018, thousands of women, femmes and allies will come together in Las Vegas, Nevada, to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Women’s March and to launch our collective 2018 Women’s March agenda: #Power ToThe Polls.

We ,Together We Rise: Building Bridges for Justice in East Haddam, CT are organizing a Vigil on Jan. 20, 2018 for the Women's March anniversary weekend.

From the Women’s March to the Women’s Convention, we’ve seen how powerful we are when we gather together, share space and lift each other up. While the official Women's March anniversary event will take place in Nevada, Women’s March Chapters are organizing exciting state-specific anniversary events throughout the anniversary weekend, from marches to legislative actions to community events to voter registration drives.

Together, we will show this administration that women are not backing down.

Join WOMEN'S MARCH Sister Event in East Haddam, CT for the first anniversary of the Women's March.

SPECIAL NOTE TO ALL PARTICIPANTS. We are expecting a large crowd and would appreciate it if you could car pool. THANKS.

Saturday’s Program

Our speakers:

Christine Palm is the principal of the new company, Sexual Harassment Prevention, LLC, which gives anti-discrimination trainings for the corporate, academic and non-profit workplace. Palm serves as Women’s Policy Analyst for the Connecticut Commission on Women, Children and Seniors, where she works with legislators on such issues as human trafficking, pay equity and women’s access to reproductive healthcare.

Palm also served for many years as Communications Director for the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women. She is the author of a teacher's guide and film series: "What the Dead Know: Bringing to Young Audiences the Poetry of Seven Modernists Buried in New England." She has been a newspaper reporter and a high school teacher, and is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated essayist.

SOPHIE GABLE

We're SO excited to have Sophie Gable, a senior at Nathan Hale-Ray High School speak to us about young women's role in politics at our Women's Vigil: Power to the Polls CT Sister Event (register at tinyurl.com/powertothepolls)

For her senior project, she created a blog where she discussed federal politics www.politicalnewsbysophie.com , wrote stories for the East Haddam News and job shadowed a broadcast journalist from WTNH. She's been interested in social justice and politics throughout high school and plans to major in Journalism and minor in political science at University!

Diane Adams, our singer: Diane has been an educator in Connecticut for the past 30 years, currently working as a substitute teacher in Region 4. Her true passion is singing, and she can often be found singing with the choirs of the United Church of Chester and Congregation Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek, as well as in local community theatre productions. Events of the past year have inspired her to dust off the songs she learned back in the '60s and even to write a song or two. She frequently joins our vigil to sing songs of protest to lift our spirits as we stand.

THERESA GOVERT

Theresa Govert is a founder & the Chair of Together We Rise CT (TWRCT) and will be facilitating and speaking at our Women's Vigil: Power to the Polls CT Sister Event
(REGISTER at: tinyurl.com/powertothepolls )

TWRCT is a non-partisan group based out of East Haddam, CT that started after a 8’x4’ sign she had painted with, “‘Dear Muslims, Immigrants, Women, Disabled, LGBTQ+ folks and People of Color. We love you- boldly & proudly. We will endure’- Shaun King” was defaced in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Since then TWRCT, has brought together hundreds of people from the Lower CT River Valley, an area with predominantly white communities, to think and learn more about issues related to justice and the intersections of oppression.

Theresa is a recently returned Peace Corps Volunteer. She served for three years in Botswana, where she worked with her community to organize thousands for a national campaign to end gender-based violence, started a small business as an alternative economic employment opportunity for female sex workers and presented to participants of the White House Mapathon on the importance of free, accessible data. In 2016, she was selected to receive the prestigious John F. Kennedy Service Award, awarded every five years to six individuals. In 2017, she was one of six women under the age of 40 who received Connecticut Women's Education and Legal Fund (CWEALF) and Young Women Rising's The Future is Now Award.