Thousands take to streets in Washington, around U.S.
WASHINGTON >> The rally began with drums and a reminder that the story of most Americans began somewhere else.
A representative of the Piscataway Indian Nation addressed a crowd of thousands assembled in Lafayette Square on Saturday in Spanish, then English. Sebastian MedinaTayac burned tobacco, a Native American prayer tradition, said a prayer and then sang an indigenous-language song from Bolivia that means, “take courage.”
“We don’t believe in borders. We don’t believe in walls,” Medina-Tayac said.
The rally ended with a march past the White House and the Trump International Hotel and on to the Department of Justice, where protesters affixed signs to the building gates:
“We are better than this,” one said.
“Las familias merecen estar unidos,” said another, which translates to “Families deserve to be united.”
Starting around 9 a.m., thousands had made their way to Lafayette Square, with many more filling in along 16th Street and into Farragut Square, areas that had been blocked off in anticipation of 50,000 protesters’ arrival in the District of Columbia.
The crowd seemed somewhat shy of that, although organizers said aerial photographs indicated it was still in the tens of thousands.
About 750 similar Families Belong Together rallies were planned throughout the country in every state; from big cities such as Boston, Chicago and New York to tiny ones such as Antler, North Dakota, which has a population of 27.
The message: End President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy, which has split
children from their parents and detained families crossing the southern U.S. border.
With temperatures hovering in the 90s in downtown Washington, organizers made repeated calls to the crowd to drink water and use sunscreen. About two hours into the rally, several demonstrators received medical attention after apparently falling ill from the heat. A few hundred yards from the stage, a firetruck began spraying its hose into the air, cooling off the crowd. Children attending the march with their parents streamed into the spray.
There were many immigrants in the crowd; some whose families came long ago and others much more recently arrived. Several near the stage cheered and shouted “Bienvenidos,” or “Welcome,” as one of the latter, a woman named Jocelyn,
took the microphone early in the day.
Jocelyn, who did not give her last name, said she came to the United States with her son from Brazil in August of last year. That’s when it happened to her, she said: The two were separated.
Held in a detention facility in Texas, Jocelyn did not know where her child was for two months, she said. Authorities at the facility told her he could be relinquished for adoption, she said, as gasps came from the crowd.
“I spent many days sick and without hope,” she said in Portugese. “I wanted to join this fight to get my son back and for all the mothers who are suffering so far away from their children.”
It took nine months to be reunited with her son, she said.
At each mention of the government, Border Patrol
agents or the Trump administration, the crowd erupted into chants of “shame, shame, shame.” Later, as they passed the Trump International Hotel, protesters booed and chanted, “vote him out.”
Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., and Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Kamala Harris, DCalif., attended rallies in their home states. In New York City, marchers heckled the headquarters for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, as they passed. Demonstrators in Kentucky gathered outside Republican Sen. Rand Paul’s Bowling Green office, and massive crowds in Chicago chanted “sí, se puede” — yes, we can.
Some protesters held signs calling for the dissolution of ICE, a recent rallying cry of lawmakers and immigration-rights groups.
But that was not the purpose of Saturday’s march, organizers said.
“We have three main demands,” said Anna Galland, executive director of MoveOn.org, which cosponsored the event. “Reunite families now, end family internment camps, and end the zero-humanity policy that created this humanitarian crisis and chaos in the first place.”
Several celebrities, including Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of the musical “Hamilton,” singer-songwriter Alicia Keys and actor America Ferrera, lent their fame to the protest.
Miranda, who walked out to screams from the Washington crowd, said simply: “We’re here because there are parents right now who can’t sing lullabies to their kids. I’m just going to sing a lullaby that I wrote.”