Pennsylvania State Sen. Nikil Saval (D-Pa.) speaks at the Kill the Cuts Rally on April 8.
Credit: Anna VazhaeparambilOver 150 individuals gathered in Center City on Tuesday to protest and demand the reversal of federal funding cuts to research, health, and higher education.
The April 8 rally — which took place outside the office of Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.) on Market Street — was organized by Labor for Higher Education in collaboration with the United Auto Workers, the Service Employees International Union, the American Association of University Professors, the American Federation of Teachers, and other related organizations. The event featured a range of speakers, including faculty, students, and researchers from Penn.
The Philadelphia demonstration was part of the second “Nationwide Day of Action” — organized by Labor for Higher Education and Higher Education Labor United. The event served as the continuation of an initial day of protests in February.
“I want to say that today, as we stand here, we're not just standing alone.” State Sen. Nikil Saval (D-Pa.) said. “We are standing with thousands and thousands of people across the country.”
After the rally, Ian Gavigan — the national director of higher education at Labor United, a coalition representing more than 60 labor unions — described the event as “one of more than 40 rallies and events happening across the country” in an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian. He described the rallies as a means of “coming together with one simple message.”
Gavigan also mentioned the importance of holding “our leaders accountable" and "fully fund these critical public programs."
“Dave McCormick is a new senator for Pennsylvania, and he has so far not stood up for the people of Pennsylvania,” Gavigan said. “This is the biggest city in his state, and we're calling on him to stand up and do what's right for the people here, which is to keep funding and to fully fund the federal programs.”
During the rally, Saval and Philadelphia Council AFL-CIO President Daniel Bauder attempted to deliver a letter to McCormick on behalf of over 50,000 union workers.
The letter demanded that McCormick “publicly oppose all cuts to federal funding for research, healthcare and education,” according to Clancy Murray, a graduate student worker at Penn and the head of the bargaining committee for Graduate Employees Together — University of Pennsylvania. The document also called on McCormick to “fight to restore funding already cut” and to “hold a public face-to-face town hall with his constituents in Philadelphia to discuss the impact of these federal funding cuts.”
“We delivered the letter through an intermediary — through security,” Saval said during his speech. “Senator McCormick’s staff has left for the day.”
Tonia Hsieh — a professor and chair of the Biology graduate program at Temple University — emphasized the urgency of the rally in light of recent federal action from 1968 Wharton graduate and President Donald Trump.
“We stand here right now at a crucial moment in our fight for research, education, and opportunity,” Hsieh said. “We must raise our voices and speak out against the reckless actions of the Trump administration, actions that threaten the very foundation of our country.”
Hsieh criticized the executive orders as part of a coordinated effort to undermine higher education and research.
“By attacking our freedom of speech, by slashing research funding, and by attacking our educational system, Trump has declared war on knowledge,” she said.
Corinde Wiers, an assistant professor of Psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine and AAUP member, echoed Hsieh’s concerns, expressing her frustration over the state of federal research funding.
Wiers described how her lab — which was entirely dependent on grants — was left in a state of uncertainty after a $2 million clinical trial grant was unexpectedly delayed and partially defunded earlier in the year.
“[My research] would directly benefit so many Americans, but currently the federal government's actions may make it impossible to do,” Wiers said.
“The tariffs are already hurting people," Bauder said. "[McCormick] and all those other jokers should be ashamed.”
Jonathan Nadraws, a sixth-year Chemistry Ph.D. candidate at Penn, described the rally as a “fight against the government’s cuts to federal funding” in an interview with the DP. A member of the bargaining committee for GET-UP, Nadraws, also pointed to the presence of union leaders and graduate student workers “at the front” of the movement.
“I think it's really appalling what the government is doing to research and to healthcare in our country,” he continued. “We are not afraid to show up where this guy works.”
Nadraws concluded by underscoring his effort to “publicly and proudly demand that our elected representatives represent our interests, and fight against the cuts that are threatening our jobs, our livelihoods, [and] our health.”
Billy Mitchell, a Cognition & Neuroscience Ph.D candidate at Temple whose National Health Institutes grant was jeopardized when the Trump Administration targeted the federal program, later warned that cuts to public research threaten progress on critical issues that impact broader communities.
“We're not just losing researchers. We're losing the people who are going to cure cancers, are going to solve dementia, are going to ease the suffering that touches every family,” Mitchell said. “We must protect public funding for that research. We need to protect the people doing that research, because science has never failed to yield dividends, and those dividends should not be controlled by a powerful few that are meant to benefit all of us.”
Several speakers also directly called on McCormick and other elected officials to take action.
“Programs like Medicaid and Medicare are the pathway to stable healthcare,” Lolita Owens, a home care worker and member of Service Employees International Union Healthcare Pennsylvania, said. “Washington's elite and their billionaire buddies are aiming to enact these drastic cuts to critical federal programs in order to extend tax breaks to their billionaire friends.”
Owens then urged the crowd to “tell Senator McCormick to kill the cuts.”
Other speakers emphasized the power of collective action, highlighting the strong sense of solidarity amongst the people gathered at the rally.
Bauder encouraged demonstrators to “stick together” and to “do what needs to be done to get those bozos out of office,” criticizing McCormick’s response to tariffs.
“It's important for us to gather like this, exercising our rights and making sure that our voices are heard,” Bauder said. “We care about each other, we care about people, we care about our community, we care about our rights. There's more of us than there are of them.”
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