Flurries of snow briefly dusted the windy Boston streets as protesters chanted various phrases including, “Donald Trump, you racist clown. Build a wall, we’ll tear it down!” while marching in protest of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies Saturday afternoon.
Approximately 400 protesters marched from the Chinatown Gate to the Massachusetts State House Saturday afternoon to stand in solidarity against Trump’s new policies. The rally gathered in the Chinatown Park first to celebrate the Lunar New Year, then marched to show support for all types of immigrants.
The coalition was originally formed to demand International Workers’ Day be recognized as a national holiday, according to John Harris, spokesperson of the Boston May Day Committee.
“Our main goal is to build a mass social movement in defense of the rights of migrant workers and working people in general,” Harris said in a phone interview before the march.
Harris said immigrants are facing particularly hard times throughout the nation.
“We believe migrants are being scapegoated for the general decline in living standards for working class people,” Harris said. “There is a polarization in this country that hasn’t been in existence to this degree for many years.”
Representatives from Mass Action Against Police Brutality, the Communist Party USA, the Democratic Socialists of America and many others gave speeches. Former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein also attended the rally and delivered a speech to protesters.
Stein criticized Democrat and Republican leaders.
“Harm to any one of us is harm to all of us,” she said. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Stein also spoke out against a growing sense of nationalism in the country.
“We say no to deportations, night raids, factory raids and detention,” Stein said, earning cheers from the crowd. “We are not the nation of the razor wire fences; we are the nation of the Statue of Liberty.”
Migrants from Haiti, Guatemala and Colombia shared their stories and expressed their sentiments about America’s current situation.
Cairo Mendes, an undocumented immigrant and lead organizer of the Student Immigrant Movement, told the crowd he is unafraid.
“I am committed to fighting for people like my mother, who would drive without a license to go to work every day,” Mendes said. “I am committed to my mother who is a house cleaner and is forced to clean for upper class people who voted for Trump so she can put bread on the table.”
Mendes encouraged the crowd to fight for the rights of immigrants.
“I urge people to move forward with love, radical love for one another, because to me, an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us,” Mendes said.
Several protesters said they would have liked to see more organized demonstrations in response to Trump’s executive orders.
Paula Hernandez, a junior in Boston University’s College of Arts and Sciences, said movements like this would be more beneficial if they had more open-minded leadership.
“[Groups] definitely isolate themselves and reject immediately anyone who has a different opinion, even if that other person or group is open to understanding why this is better,” Hernandez said. “I think something more planned would help.”
Alex Siordia, 20, also a junior in CAS, echoed similar thoughts.
“There are organizations that are socialist or communist, but I want to understand what they want America to look like, what are the interactions, how that affects us on a day-to-day basis, what an economic market would look like,” Siordia said.
However, others in attendance appreciated the opportunity to show dissent toward Trump’s immigration policies by any means.
Kaiwen Chen, 24, of Beacon Hill, said he did not believe Trump’s plan to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border would work. Originally from mainland China, Chen attributed his stance to global interdependence.
“If America is crushed, then China is going to be crushed,” Chen said. “In this kind of global world, no one can be independent because every country interacts with one another.”
