Posted 3:58 p.m. today
Updated 3:59 p.m. today
NEW YORK — Robert De Niro, Sally Field and other celebrities plan to join the mayors of New York and Minneapolis to rally cities to chart their own course on health care, climate change and other issues during Donald Trump’s administration, organizers said ahead of the inauguration-eve demonstration.
Aiming to energize and unite city dwellers concerned about the president-elect’s plans, activists and dignitaries planned to gather Thursday evening in front of Trump International Hotel and Tower, about a half-mile from his Trump Tower home. Groups including Greenpeace, Planned Parenthood and MoveOn.org have signed on.
Organizers said they expect thousands of people, including stars Rosie Perez, Marisa Tomei and Alec Baldwin, whose Trump impression on NBC’s « Saturday Night Live » has drawn barbs from the president-elect.
« Cities and towns across the country have the power to protect people and the environment by joining together, » actor Mark Ruffalo said in a statement, adding that the rally would signal to Washington « that we will fight, at every step, discrimination and harmful policies. »
New Yorkers, however, are split on how Mayor Bill de Blasio should deal with Trump, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday.
Forty-six percent said the Democratic mayor should try to get along with the Republican president-elect, while 45 percent said de Blasio should be a national leader in opposing the Trump administration’s policies, the poll of 1,005 voters found. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Meanwhile, Trump left New York for Washington on Thursday morning.
