Groups to protest border detention centers
Vigils planned in Greenwich and around Connecticut
GREENWICH — Throughout the state and country Friday evening, groups will gather in protest of the detention of immigrants at the MexicanAmerican border.
Many of the protests in Connecticut, including the one planned for Greenwich, are organized under the auspices of Lights for Liberty. The human rights coalition has called for nationwide demonstrations on July 12, dubbed “A Vigil to End Human Concentration Camps.”
Lights for Liberty events will also take place in Fairfield, Stamford and Westport. In other municipalities, including Norwalk, nonaffiliated gatherings, also in protest of the conditions at the southern border, are scheduled.
The activist group Indivisible Greenwich will hold its vigil from 8:15 to 9 p.m. Friday outside Town Hall. The event is “in opposition to the Trump administration’s inhumane treatment of asylum seekers and immigrants at the southern border,” according to an Indivisible statement.
“This treatment includes: separating children from their parents, using massively overcrowded cages and cells, failing to provide soap and toothbrushes, serving inadequate amounts of food, failing to provide adequate medical care to sick children and making them sleep on cold concrete floors,” the organization said.
Indivisible Greenwich cofounder Nerlyn Pierson said the group and others are demanding an end to the policies.
“We cannot become desensitized to the dehumanizing of the most vulnerable,” Pierson said. “We must stand together, raise our voice and speak out against these injustices and human rights violations. If not us, who?”
The Norwalk event will begin at 7:30 p.m. on the Norwalk Green.
“Every day, we learn more about the cruelty migrant children and families are experiencing at (President Donald) Trump’s detention camps on the U.S.Mexican border. We can no longer just sit by and lament the torture, we need to speak out in unison and make our voices heard,” Eloisa Melendez, Norwalk Common Council member and vice chairman of the Norwalk Democratic Party, said in a press release.
“This is inhumane,” said Melendez, who helped to organize the Norwalk event.
In Westport, the site of several recent protests, most of which have been carried out on the Ruth Steinkraus Cohen Bridge, the location and tone of the gathering will be slightly different this Friday, according to organizer Darcy Hicks, founder of local activist group DefenDemocracy.
“It’s not a typical protest where we’re trying to get drivers and anyone who sees us to recognize the topic,” Hicks said. “Everybody’s pretty much aware of what’s going on and, for the most part, really cares about these kids. Especially in a community like Westport — a community of family and parents — it’s kind of hard to go about your day without thinking about other family’s and parents who are being torn apart and children being traumatized.”
On Friday, the gathering is scheduled for Veterans Green, across from Westport Town Hall, from 8 to 9:15 p.m., with an alternate location at the Unitarian Church in Westport, 10 Lyons Plain Road. The vigil will include performances from Staples Orphenians and solo musician Canyon.
Speakers will include Alicia Kinsman, immigration attorney for the Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants, Ingi Soliman, a specialist in childhood trauma, and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, DConn., who will speak about his trip to the border.
“We’ll have people speaking on the issue and educating us about what we can do, what’s really happening, what the laws actually are and put to rest a lot of the misunderstandings and that facts that aren’t quite right out there,” Hicks said.