City Council Member Carlos Menchaca (Sunset Park, Red Hook) yesterday led hundreds of people through the streets of Sunset Park in a unity march in support of the large Latino and Chinese immigrant communities that live in that neighborhood.
Menchaca also recently sent an open letter to the chancellor of schools, Carmen Farina, about the recent racial discrimination immigrant students have been facing since the election of Donald Trump.
“People from all over Brooklyn are here today, celebrating our culture and our diversity and that’s what’s going to get us through any dark moments that we are anticipating in the future,” said Menchaca. “We have some very serious issues that we have to take care of in our city and we have the power to do that. We’re going to find those opportunities, take them and be fierce about our response”.
The many Latino and Chinese families that attended the event chanted things like, “The people united can’t be defeated”, and “Immigration is our nation,” including singing “ Across Sunset Park I’m going to let it shine.” The group also turned to the Spanish motto “Si se puede” (“Yes you can”), the immigrant slogan that in recent weeks has been brought back to light.
Many minority groups across the country have been voicing their concerns over the changing political climate that they expect will affect them negatively once Trump is sworn into office. The billionaire ran on a platform that specifically targeted immigrants, in which he promised to “build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico” and to deport undocumented or “illegal” immigrants back to their home countries.
One concerned Sunset Park resident was Violeta Gomez-Uribe who came with her family from Mexico over twenty years ago and is hoping that she can continue to live in America without fearing the incoming Trump Administration, “I think that the best thing we can do right now is that everybody unite regardless of our differences, we need to find our commonalities to stand together, and the best thing we have right now is our community.”
Also attending the event was Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez, who later in the day went to the United Nations where she was joined by Congress members Hakeem Jeffries, Gregory Meeks, Jerrold Nadler and Yvette Clarke to publicly denounce Trump’s recent administration appointments.
Among the attendees were also such non-profits as ATLAS DIY, which works directly with immigrant youth in the community. “I believe that the United States is a country built on immigration and that’s why we’re strong. And I believe we are all human, it doesn’t matter if we’re black, muslim, or LGBTQ. I’ve been really disappointed seeing our country torn apart in this way and we’re not going to let hate and fear reign,” said ATLAS DIY Executive Director and Brooklyn resident Lauren Burke.
The march started at the corner of 5 avenue and 44th street and went until 60th street, at Our Lady of Perpetual Help (Notre Dame Hall), and ended in a solidarity festival where the community further supported each other and shared their messages of hope for the future of the immigrant population in Sunset Park.
