Tomorrow, I’ll be joining a march in downtown St. Louis to protest the separation of families at the border. This is one of over 700 events planned for Saturday by MoveOn.org (and I presume other groups, but I found out about it from MoveOn). Tens of thousands of people are expected to demonstrate across the US.
Anybody else going to a march?
I’ll try to update this thread from the demonstration if possible. If you’re marching, please post your thoughts and experiences here as well.
Takin’ it to the streets!
Oooh, takin’ it to the streets!
I have a bad foot and can’t walk that far. But I did assist from home with the planning of yesterday’s civil disobedience at the DOJ and Senate Office Buildings.
There’s an ICE detention center in Troy, MO, not far from me, and a protest will be held there, too. I considered going to that one but ultimately decided to go to the one in St. Louis instead. To my knowledge, no immigrant children are being held in the center in Troy, and I think the march in St. Louis might be more visible. MoveOn says they’ve signed up 2,000 participants for that rally. Hopefully other groups will bring more.
I do worry about violence breaking out. Not so much in smaller cities like St. Louis, but more in DC, New York, etc. I worry about the Nazis showing up, or the protestors at one of the ICE facilities deciding to storm the Bastille. Hopefully everyone will keep their heads.
I’d go, but I don’t take heat well in my old age and will probably skip it.
We’re expecting 100-odd degrees with humidity to match, and the area where it’s being held is all concrete. The planners themselves have already told people not to bring small children or dogs, and a local grocery store is donating bottled water.
I think it’s really important to remember that this detention issue is part of a larger issue with the prison-industrial complex. The detention centers that are built, the contractors who supply them, have economic motivation as well as being part of a deeply unethical national policy and a form of Trump virtue-signalling to his base (yes, conservatives can virtue-signal just as bad as the worst excesses of the radical left, if not worse.) Could you imagine being a child and being separated from your family, held in an unfamiliar location guarded by men with guns speaking another language - I mean, obviously everyone posting in this thread can imagine this scenario or they wouldn’t be protesting. But can you imagine all that, and also realize that people are profiting from it?
There’s racism in this border policy, there’s no doubt about it - racism in Trump’s motivation for 1. ramping up the policy and 2. just talking about it. But there’s also the hands of corporate lobbyists.
Jacquernagy, I absolutely agree. I wish for-profit prisons got more attention and there was a movement to abolish them. I was glad that Bernie Sanders talked about it during the campaign, but unfortunately it didn’t catch on as an issue.
I plan to be at the rally here in Las Vegas, but I have a business opportunity that popped up last night that I have to handle first. I still have 2 hours to get to the rally, so I’m hopeful I can do it.
Just took about a 8-block stroll through downtown. Gosh its hot. Looks like things are winding down. It was a good rally. No counter protesters as far as I could see. Probably a few thousand people in the rally. I’m glad I came today.
My girlfriend and I attended the rally and march in Chicago. Huge crowd, great signs, high energy (could hardly hear the speakers, including Sen. Durbin), and a marching band.
Walked from Daley Plaza to the immigration office on Congress, then back to Daley Plaza. Crowd was so big the people going back north could see the tail end of the crowd still going south.
Oh, saw only two tiny counterprotests in Chicago: an anti-abortion picket with a megaphone, and a man with an anti-immigration sign who marched near the front of the march for a couple of blocks.
and will probably skip it.
