Bolstered by a big contingent of AFT members, thousands of people gathered on the evening of July 12 in front of the White House for a mass vigil, one of 817 “Lights for Liberty” nationwide against what many protesters termed Donald Trump’s “concentration camps” for migrants seeking asylum in the United States.
Led by union President Randi Weingarten, the teachers made it clear they oppose both GOP President Trump’s camps, which jail migrant refugees, as well as the Trump-trumpeted Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids planned for July 13–14, especially in such big cities as Baltimore, Chicago, D.C. and New York.
Speakers told migrants “don’t open the door” to ICE, because agents lack arrest warrants. The American Civil Liberties Union sued Trump and ICE on July 11 to try to stop the raids.
Union members were in town for AFT’s “Teach” conference, and delegates spent their sessions in professional development seminars, but also discussing mobilizing, organizing, the grass-roots-led forced teacher strikes—most of them in GOP-run “red” states—and, of course, politics.
But many of the teachers and staffers have frightened migrant kids in their classes, and several reported ICE already had picked up and deported either students, parents or both. Weingarten made it clear that’s un-American.
Trump wasn’t listening. On July 15, after most of the ICE raids did not come off, he issued an edict banning political asylum to any migrant seeking it who passes through an intervening country. That move both satisfies his own racism and his anti-Hispanic base, while trying to strike fear into migrants from Central America. If they travel by land, they must go through a “third country,” Mexico.
The teachers marched about a mile and half downhill from the convention hotel to the park. “Classrooms, not cages,” was their frequent chant. Other unions at the D.C. rally, which almost filled Lafayette Park, included Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ and the Communications Workers of America.
Religious groups and speakers were also a large contingent, including Unitarians and many Jews for Justice members. Some were older women who held handmade signs that said—in variations—“My relatives died in Nazi concentration camps” on one side, and on the other “Never again.”
Weingarten took up that theme, too. “My kippa”—Hebrew for “skullcap” or yarmulke—“means ‘Never again means never again.’ We must remember history,” the New York City history and civics teacher said. “Trump remembers moments of xenophobia and thinks he can repeat them. We remember the Statue of Liberty and think we can repeat that.”
“Teachers are defenders of democracy,” she added. “We must fight back. This must be a night of renewed protest, resilience and resistance.” Other speakers, in D.C. and nationwide, sounded the same theme.
“We must join together to protect” the migrants, Krishanti Vignarajah, who was Michelle Obama’s policy director, urged the D.C. crowd. “We must do this because we are Americans.”
“Don’t just stand there; get involved,” added one speaker from the pro-migrant group Casa de Maryland, whose staff is unionized with The News Guild. “This week, my county executive issued a general order that prevents police cooperation with ICE. But we’ll not stop there, until that order is a law.” And a coalition of churches and synagogues nationwide also offered sanctuary to endangered people in the U.S. interior.
Other speakers urged Congress to stop GOP President Trump by yanking future funds for ICE and its raids. One speaker faulted lawmakers for their recent approval of $4.5 billion for supposed humanitarian purposes for the camps, but—thanks to the Senate’s ruling Republicans—without conditions. That speaker called the ICE raids terrorism.
Speakers and signholders deliberately referenced “concentration camps” at the July 12 vigils. It’s the original description for Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s extermination camps for Jews during World War II. There already have been preventable deaths of children in Trump’s camps, plus the drowning of a father and his 2-year-old daughter trying to cross the Rio Grande River to seek asylum in the United States.
And conditions in the camps, according to speakers, attorneys who managed to interview migrants, lawmakers and others journeying to the U.S.-Mexico border area, also are reminiscent of Hitler’s camps.
“Turning away asylum-seekers at the border is cruel, inhumane and illegal," retorted Credo Action co-director Heidi Hess after Trump’s anti-asylum announcement. "This latest, racist stunt by Donald Trump to further close our doors to migrants is proof-positive that he is willing to abuse all powers afforded to the presidency in order to further his bigoted and hateful views.”
She demanded House Democrats both stand with immigrant families and “start an impeachment inquiry immediately” against Trump.
The Lights for Liberty referred to the small electronic candles people raised in parks at the protests, which began at 7 p.m. local time and continued to and through sunset. Thousands at the D.C. protest filled Lafayette Square, directly across from the White House. People held signs and the electronic candles, denounced the camps and vowed continued resistance to Trump.
There were only two reported confrontations among the nationwide vigils. Phoenix police arrested 16 people whose peaceful sit-in blocked a downtown street. There was a fracas in Aurora, Colorado, involving nonmembers of the Lights for Liberty movement.
Thousands marched through Chicago’s Loop, ahead of planned ICE sweeps to round up alleged undocumented people there and in other major cities, including Baltimore, Los Angeles, New York and Washington. The New York City march drew 7,000 people to Foley Square. Chicago marchers, led by the local branch of Indivisible, carried signs declaring “No kids in cages” and “Abolish ICE.”
The Naples (Florida) Daily News reported three groups—Showing Up for Racial Justice SWFL, Collier for Dreamers and the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Greater Naples—sent more than 30 people across the state to a vigil at the Homestead migrant detention center near Miami. And 200 people, organized by Indivisible’s Arizona chapter, the state Democratic Party and their allies, marched to a protest in front of ICE’s Yuma Detention Center.
“People across the USA (and world!) peacefully championed human rights and kindness on July 12, 2019,” lead Lights for Liberty organizer Adam Rifkin tweeted. “We lit candles, sang, and prayed. We vowed to #EndUSConcentrationCamos. Lights for Liberty began with a moment. Now @Lights4Liberty is a movement.” Organizers later tweeted the massive support left them both “grateful” and “speechless.”
“We are going to keep working together until no families are in detention centers,” the emcee of the D.C. protest declared.
“Immigrant youth with United We Dream are disgusted at the atrocities in the concentration camps,” Herson Quinteras, a UWD organizer, told the D.C. crowd.
“I was detained at (age) 9 years old,” said Quinteras. “We were put in a cold cell and my cot was only a few feet from the bathroom. A sandwich from a vending machine was lunch. Even after I got DACA, I was still afraid I could be separated at any minute from my family,” who had brought him to the United States years earlier. “And I am not unique.”
“But this community has given me strength. This community has given me support. And this community has given me protection,” he added, urging the crowd to continue doing so.
United We Dream represents the “Dreamers,” the 800,000 current students, workers and military enlistees brought to the United States as young undocumented children. Democratic President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program brought them out of the shadows and let them live and work openly in this country. Besides barring migrants, Trump wants to throw all the Dreamers out of the country. Judges have stopped his evictions.
Machine-made but especially handmade signs at the protests also blasted the camps, Trump and his backers. “Kids don’t belong in jail and neither do their parents,” read one. Another D.C. sign advocated financial resistance, too: “U.S. taxes pay for ripping children from their mothers. DO NOT PAY!” And one woman’s T-shirt read “TRE-45-ON.” Trump is the 45th president. Signs in DeKalb included: “Proud Descendant of Immigrants,” “Stop Separating Families” and “Stop U.S. Concentration Camps Now.”
One sign at the D.C. protest added an alternative suggestion, applicable to next year. “Deport the GOP and Trump. Vote them out,” it said. Then it added, in parentheses: “PS—They’re ignorant bigots and un-American.”
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