People gather in downtown Raleigh's Moore Square to protest President Trump's immigration policies
I think
And you fight back
You're welcome here
And the
So
Yeah
He
Yeah
Here here
And Yeah
Yeah Come here come here
Racism has to go
Right
Hi
00 you tell me Oh
Oh
Yeah
First
I
But Donald Trump
But Donald Trump
Chi chi chi mira
Yeah
Chia Chia Chia
Tina
Yeah
Yeah
Yeah
Yeah
Yeah
Yeah
What you say Please
Now what they
So
I would want is freedom
This is what the power of an organized community looks
like
Around you look at your neighbors
This is your people
This is your community
This is the resistance
I when I say people you say power people
Oh
That one and
So
I
I can hear you
Make some noise y'all make some noise make some noise
I wanna call the people in the back to come
just closer because I know in the back y'all probably
can't hear me so come closer
I want every single person here to hear a message
today
Thank you all for coming out today for being brave
in the face of repression for choosing to stand on
the right side of history
My name is Victor
I'm an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation
I'm also a very proud Mexican immigrant from the beautiful
state of
that's why make the noise
I like it
This fight this fight was passed down to me by
my people's sacrifices
Every immigrant and every child of an immigrant inherited this
fight this struggle
My reason for fighting is because my consciousness does not
let me be silent as I watch not just my
people but all oppressed people around the world be oppressed
for a for a lucha liberacion our fight is a
fight for liberation
Initially We plan to call this mass protest in response
to extreme anti-immigrant legislation trying to be passed here in
North Carolina like Bill SB 153
This bill if you don't know it's really terrible but
really the worst part about it it will force the
state police to virtually act like ICE agents
But after seeing what happened in Los Angeles and seeing
the terror and the repression our communities started facing there
on last Friday we knew we had to expand just
beyond attacking this bill but standing in solidarity with our
immigrant brothers and sisters in LA and across the nation
I I want to talk about what's happening in LA
because there's a lot of confusion amongst our people but
what we are witnessing in Los Angeles is a result
of decades and centuries of oppression and exploitation
What is happening in Los Angeles is the result when
people have no other option but to resist and we
have seen we have seen how the media have twisted
this narrative
They call us criminals
They call us gangs
They call us invaders
Well I ask you who are the real criminals who
are the real gangs
On the real and waiters
Oh The biggest criminals are in the White House
Biggest criminals are in Congress
The biggest criminals are in the Pentagon and on Wall
Street
Those are the real criminals those are the thieves and
they call us invaders
Really really it is the US Empire that funds wars
all across the world that funds genocide all across the
world are the invaders
Not immigrants it is I who goes into our communities
and takes away our parents from their children children from
their parents that's an invader
That's a terrorist
So How dare they How dare they speak about our
people this way How dare they talk about the people
who have no social security no health care can't even
vote and try to say that they're the problem
They try to blame immigrants while they're trying to pass
the biggest tax cut to the rich in US history
Think about that for one second
While they terrorize our community the billionaire class the richest
in history is getting the richest it's ever been in
history
The richest most powerful people in the world are trying
to convince us that the person the people who risked
their lives to be here who face deportation at any
moment are somehow the enemy they've been able to convince
so many people but right here we're showing that we're
not confused we know who the enemy really is
the question is
What are we gonna do with this anger and this
energy when I see into this crowd
Yes when I look into this crowd I see organizers
I see fighters
I see revolutionaries
I see people of conscious
I ask you what are you what are you gonna
do to fight for your people's liberation I
Are we are we gonna build a movement Because it
doesn't matter how radical you think you are
With organization without a movement without real political clarity we
cannot win
And if we know and without unity without unity we
cannot win because we know if we know anything if
we know anything from history we know that the enemy
will try to divide us
That's exactly what we're trying to do right now
And guess what We don't got time for that and
we don't got time for that right now at all
Our people are suffering right now
Masses of people across the world are suffering right now
Workers are getting poor
The genocide against the Palestinian people has not stopped
And the little shreds of the so-called democracy that we
have is being destroyed
And I don't know about you
But I'm tired of asking for our rights
I'm tired
I'm tired of having to beg for our humanity and
I don't know about you but I'm ready to start
taking what belongs to our people
I'm ready to start And how do we defeat this
giant enemy because without organization we have nothing so above
everything else above everything else we must be organized
The Trump administration is counting on us to be scared
to be silent to be paralyzed but the time to
be brave is right now
Our people our people are counting on us
We have a duty we have a duty to dedicate
our lives to struggle not just today not just come
to a protest not just by calling your representatives but
dedicating your life to struggle your existence to liberation
Our families did not risk hear me right hear me
right
Our families did not risk crossing the border for us
to be silent and to be scared
We owe it to them
We owe it to all the oppressed people
We owe it to the people in Palestine to fight
back
That's why we're here today
We're here to reaffirm our commitment to fighting for immigrant
rights and to the fight for all oppressed people across
the world
We will take the streets and we will show Raleigh
and show all of North Carolina that we say ICE
out of North I out of NC
I see
Yeah
Yeah
And as we enter this next phase of struggle let's
remember the words of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata when he
said
That's memo de que Rodilla
Thank you and I'm gonna introduce our next speaker with
the Palestinian youth movement
Get it up for S
Sorry from Palestine to
Yeah
Thank you
Go So everyone my name is S and I'm a
member of PA Youth NC a network organization of the
Palestinian Youth Movement which is a Palestinian Arab transnational grassroots
movement dedicated to the liberation of Palestine
and the Honduras
And Lebanon Pompeo
Yeah
I see both communities I belong to experiencing horrific and
violent acts led by groups that can only be described
as evil whites
ine forces
In Palestine we have seen the people who had the
phone for over 600 days
Experiencing genocide
And starvation for over 3 months as the Israeli occupation
refuses to allow aid intoanza
are facing famine
In the West Bank of Palestine we see Israeli settlers
violently taking over homes and villages of indigenous Palestinians
Israeli occupation officers storming into people's houses and arresting them
tearing apart families throwing them into jail without a sentence
On crime existing on their homeland
I see a direct parallel to what is happening to
immigrant communities here in the United States
I see ICE officers Department of Homeland Security and local
police officers hunt down immigrants to kidnap them from their
homes their workplaces and even outside their immigration court hearings
to throw them into poet
Where they can be held indefinitely and fairly crime
And creating their own home here in the United States
These fire forces are not just deeply interconnected
They share the same exact playbook
ICE Department of Homeland Security local police and Israeli occupation
forces
Actively work together and deadly exchange programs where officers from
these different groups are trained together to exchange tactics such
as racial profiling spying and surveillance detention and deportation and
violent
policing in both countries
An imprisoned Palestinian father in an occupied Palestine quite literally
shares the same bars as as a Salvadoran mother trapped
in the ICE detention facility
The Raleigh police officers
Around and behind us right now will aid ICE officers
and abducting people undocumented or not immigrant or not is
the same exact as the Israeli officer at a West
Bank checkpoint that subjects Palestinians to violence interrogation and racial
profiling
The struggle for migrant justice cannot be separated from the
struggle against Zionism and genocide
Same enemy
What we are seeing MLA is resistance
Consciousness who are refusing to allow these pigs
And tear apart our community our friends families loved ones
and strangers
As we speak right now thousands upon thousands of North
Africans from Morocco to Tunisia to Algeria marched all the
way to Egypt to the Hudson border marching to break
the plug
Well
Yeah
with the people in North Africa
Now lies the question what is there to do in
Raleigh What can we do here to fight against fascism
and keep the most vulnerable of us in our community
safe I call on all of you people of consciousness
to get connected to your friends family neighbors and coworkers
on what you will do to keep your community safe
when ICE comes knocking on Raleigh's doors
Hell yeah
Whether that be planning mutual aid like grocery assistance to
those too scared to leave their houses or getting friends
and neighbors to join community members and escorting them to
immigration hearings
Your community
We don't that gives them a free array to keep
doing what they're doing
It tells them that they can continue to act without
consequences
Are we gonna let them do that We are all
tired of seeing crying children and broken families crying children
here in the US because ICE has taken our brothers
sisters mothers fathers neighbors friends and complete strangers crying children
because the same people dropped bombs on family tents and
FASA creating orphans and mothers and fathers without children
Not be a complacent bystander in this violence
We must recognize that we are not each other's enemy
The the danger does not come from undocumented individuals or
immigrants or those resisting ICE abductions and state repression
The real threat to our communities is the ruling class
and the imperial system
A system that treats us as disposable in service to
war profiteers and corporate elites
It's the ICE officer in the in the city police
departments that do the bidding of the ruling class
Those are our enemies
and fight
Where
Hey
OK
Thank you
From Palestine to Mexico
All the walls I've got to go
That
Let's give up her ass in the Palestinian youth movement
Please introduce our next speaker Nicole a community organizer with
El Pueblo give it up for Nicole
Hey y'all we gonna say yes
Organizer
Yesterday the North Carolina General Assembly passed two detrimental anti-immigrant
bills that further expand the collaboration of law enforcement and
state agencies with ICE
Our schools are underfunded the houseless population is rising every
day and people in the mountains are still recovering from
the climate change disaster that was Hurricane Helene
They decided that immigrants were the problem
real and most urgent
urgent needs of our communities
The state legislator is supporting the anti-immigrant agenda promoted by
the federal government
They are fueling anti-immigrant narratives that accuse undocumented immigrants of
receiving public benefits without evidence and label them criminals
They ignore us when our communities go to their offices
and beg them to have basic human empathy
It shouldn't have to happen to you for you to
understand for you to have
We shouldn't have to tell you all the ways that
immigrants contribute to this country to this country's infrastructure the
economy the culture society
We shouldn't have to beg you to see us as
human beings
I have the privilege of standing here because like many
of us my parents left everything they had to forge
a new life a better life for themselves and our
family
They physical labor unfair pay xenophobia racism family separation all
because they believed in the American dream
Oh wait no how How can this country condemn us
for coming here when they practically invited us
How they disrespect and look down on our home countries
when they were the ones who destabilize our government
The dangerous conditions that force people out
How can you call yourself a great democracy and then
deny people the right to protest their free speech and
due process
I am my parents' American dream
I grew up here
I went to school here
I work here
I found my community here and I will fight to
protect that
Our community has a long memory and when elections come
back around our community will remember who stood by us
calls on Governor Stein to veto these dangerous anti-immigrant bills
and stand with North Carolina's immigrant community
No
Oh yeah
I keep it going keep it going El Puebloo
Oh
And Oh Oh
All right thank you y'all
I'm gonna introduce our last speaker before we get to
our march
Give it up for Raul with La Fuerta
Give it up for Raul
Thank you everyone
How y'all doing I don't keep y'all long
I know y'all are ready to march and take to
the streets aren't y'all Why don't we say Buckeye
going
That's right we won't keep it PG
I know there's kids here but fuck us y'all
I know that we say that because that's why we're
here right We're here
And I don't have to remind y'all why we're here
right We're here because people are being kidnapped right They're
being kidnapped from their homes they're being taken from the
streets even from their schools right And they say
ISA continued to terrorize our community our families and our
loved ones
ISIS is an institution of fear not justice