Emergency Rally to Defend DACA

Wayne State University
5425 Gullen Mall
Detroit, MI 48202
United States
September 5, 2017, 12:00 pm

Defend DACA!
Make Detroit a Real Sanctuary City! Make Wayne State a Sanctuary Campus!
Trump Must Resign or be Removed!
Charlottesville: Never Again!
Defeat the white supremacists—stop racist, violent, fascist attacks
No Muslim Ban! No Wall!
Stop Anti-Immigrant, Anti-Muslim Scapegoating! Full Citizenship Rights Now for All Immigrants, Refugees, and Asylum Seekers! Open the Borders!
Take Action to Stop ICE Raids and Deportations, and Racist Attacks on Immigrants!
Abolish the Electoral College!

Now is the time to take action to defend DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). Rumors have been spreading of Trump’s imminent announcement to end DACA Tuesday Sept 5. The movement cannot be paralyzed by our hopes and fears, waiting to see whether this becomes a reality or not. The best way to defend DACA is to act now, and act decisively. This is the time to make our schools, campuses, cities and all of Michigan a real sanctuary for immigrants, by coming out in mass numbers to defeat Trump’s attack on DACA, stop his deportations and demand that Trump resign or be removed BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY!

We are on the offensive. The events in Charlottesville, including the murder of Heather Heyer, although tragic and horrific, have reignited the fire in the Movement. We have successfully shut down following attempts of the Alt-Right and Fascists, Trump’s most dangerous support base, to mobilize and recruit. The white supremacists’ numbers in Boston, in San Francisco, where they ran and hid throughout the day, and later in Berkeley, were pathetic, despite Trump’s gross attempt to mobilize them by pardoning Arizona’s notoriously racist and Trump-fanatic Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

On the weekend of August 26-27, California’s Berkeley and the Bay Area community mobilized in the thousands, ignoring the calls of established governmental and community “leaders” to stay home. In Berkeley, over 7,000 people came out strong and shut down the less-than-a-dozen Alt-Right Trump supporters. The mobilizations were a success in the simple unified goal of coming out into the streets and shutting down Alt-Right and Neo-Nazi groups that came out to terrorize our communities, especially Black, Latino/a, LGBTQ, Muslim and Immigrants. The Mass actions made sure Charlottesville did not happen in California or elsewhere. 

Trump’s disastrous administration has failed to meet any of his promises made to his racist voters - repealing Obamacare, a Muslim ban or building the wall - except for his racist deportations, which he has only been able to do in part by continuing to deport immigrants already detained under Obama’s administration. Immigrant-bashing is the only real strength of the Trump regime, but it is also Trump’s greatest weakness. It is the only issue that can tear him down just as quickly as it built him up. Thanks to the resistance of the movement, his raids have not been as open and effective, his deportation courts are a clogged mess, people have also started now to listen to our call and are not showing up for check-ins, evading bogus arrests.

Even Trump’s scandalous attempt to deport hundreds of Iraqi immigrants and refugees to their deaths have not resulted in a single deportation thanks to the movement’s mass militant actions in Detroit on June 11. That morning, dozens of Chaldean and Muslim Iraqi refugees who had escaped genocide and war in Iraq and lived in the US for decades, were rounded up by I.C.E and taken to the Detroit I.C.E office. Protestors, mostly family members of those detained, members of BAMN and other community members, boldly confronted the police and I.C.E., blocking the bus for over an hour as they attempted to take them to detention centers to await deportation. People driving by supported by honking, shouting curses against Trump and the police, and some joining the protest and helping to block traffic. Even though the bus was finally able to speed away, the brave stand by protestors that night set the standard for what it means to stop deportations.

In Ann Arbor, students and community have repeatedly stopped deportations and raids on our community by mobilizing mass demonstrations, making clear we will not walk on by and allow our family, friends and neighbors to be kidnapped and deported by I.C.E. With every attack on our community, our movement has responded with anger and determination to grow stronger and more organized. 

TRUMP MUST GO! A weak Trump administration crumbling in the White House, with an untamed Trump demagogue that cannot hold his tongue or twitter fingers, who now openly defends KKK and fascist terror, with his most vicious supporters cowering in their houses and fuming on the internet cannot be sustained.

Now, we must build on our success on the streets, we must mobilize to Defend DACA, and make Michigan a real Sanctuary for all immigrants as the next catapult to defeat Trump. Misleaders get out of our way- we are marching militantly today, tomorrow and will keep on marching until Trump is defeated.