At a moment when the country’s president and other elected and appointed officials are hell-bent to detain and deport more and more immigrants, hundreds of Pittsburghers demonstrated that they prefer to retain and support immigrants.
Roughly 500 people attended a “Stand with Immigrants” rally at the City-County Building, Downtown, Saturday afternoon, one day after President Donald Trump signed a law passed by the Senate and the House of Representatives that includes a massive increase in already ramped up immigration enforcement, with the aim of deporting some 1 million people per year. (We could cite more specifics, but many would find that even more depressing.)
Saturday’s rally — sponsored by grassroots organizing group 50501 Pittsburgh and Casa San Jose, which serves the region’s Latin immigrants — was a chance for people to express their dissent with the law, how it’s funded and the tactics used to implement it — arresting people without due process and other rights and more. But it also provided some concrete things that those people can do.
One of several speakers, Casa San Jose Community Defense Organizer Jaime Martinez, said, “Folks, we are in a battle for the soul of our nation. People are being disappeared, and we need your help.”
He exhorted attendees to help immigrants by calling Casa San Jose’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement Response line at 412-736-7167 if they see any ICE or related activity. He invited them to volunteer for the crisis response team at https://casasanjose.org/en/home/. And he welcomed them to donate to the organization’s bond fund.
“Ordinary people are being picked up every day, and they have no criminal record,” he said.
Recounting his recent visit to one such detainee, he shared how the man had asked, “Please don’t forget about me.”
“That’s what we’re all called to do today,” Martinez said.
A speaker from The Disappeared volunteer project that works to track detainees, Julia Whiteker, presented the stories and the full names of several detainees, asking the crowd after each, “Let’s send him a blessing.”
She wanted to talk about more of these humans — profiled at https://www.the-disappeared.com and on paper printouts taped to the City-County Building — but she already was way over her allotted speaking time. “Thank you for being here and using your privilege and power to stand up for the powerless.”
That’s a theme supported by other speakers, which included city Councilor Barb Warwick and Mayor Ed Gainey. Gainey ripped as evil the “Alligator Alcatraz” detention facility recently built in the Florida Everglades with the support of Republican officials and voters and others.
“The next time you see one of these Christian wannabes, ask them if they love their neighbor.”
“It’s a matter of good vs. evil,” agreed 1Hood’s Farooq Al-Said. He wasn’t advising playing nice. If people see ICE trying to round up immigrants, “Intervene. Waste their time. Help these people out.”
The Abolitionist Rights Center’s Tanisha Long would love to see more of that. “When immigration rights are under attack,” she asked, “what do we do?”
“STAND UP!” answered the crowd. “FIGHT BACK!”
While the speakers spoke and smote and the Pittsburgh Labor Choir performed “We Will Not Be Moved” before the chanting group marched down to Market Square and back, people shared resources and connections at tables set up in the building’s portico, which was mercifully shaded from the hot sun. One of the big signs by the Pittsburgh Overpass Project proclaimed in large orange letters, “RESIST INJUSTICE. DUE PROCESS FOR ALL.” Another: “WHO WOULD JESUS DEPORT?”
Many attendees had been to this spot for the recent and massive “No Kings” protest of Trump and his administration’s and supporters’ policies, including the Rev. David Usher of Ingomar, who sat with his new “NO DICE with ICE” sign. He’s an actual immigrant from Australia and a legal one, “but that means nothing,” he opined. Protesting is “like a full-time job now.”
That’s fine with John Bauman, a retired IBEW union electrician holding an “America Was Built by Immigrants” sign who also attended Cranberry’s “No Kings” rally and several other such events.
As sad as he feels about what he’s protesting, “History shows we have to turn out,” he said. “Every one of the rights we got started on the street.”
Brentwood’s Bobbi Donovan got the assignment, too. “I’ve been singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ for 57 years,” since she was 9 and protesting with her father for civil rights. She witnessed protesters facing fire hoses and police dogs, and she knows that some people can’t protest as easily these days as a 66-year-old white woman can.
In fact, a brown man walking Downtown beside her told her he doesn’t attend these protests for fear of what might happen to him, even though he’s a naturalized U.S. citizen.
Donovan gets that, too. “We have to be out here because immigrants can’t.”
Also having attended the “No Kings” rally, she made a new sign, “We ARE ALL (born of) IMMIGRANTS!”
After hearing from her daughter, she added some cardboard to the sign to add the words, “Except for our Nation’s Indigenous Peoples.”
And later this week, after listening to a talk by former Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, she squeezed on another exception: “And descendants of enslaved people.”
This won’t be her last sign or her last protest for other Americans and would-be Americans. “I don’t understand how we’re standing idly by and letting these people be kidnapped from the streets, like in a dictatorship!”
Not on her watch.
Bob, a feature writer and editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, is currently on strike and serving as interim editor of the Pittsburgh Union Progress. Contact him at bbatz@unionprogress.com.
