Undocumented Youth Hold Community Protection Gatherings

From Connecticut Students for a Dream: Immigrant youth and community members, together with people of faith and labor advocates, hosted three community protection gatherings around the state of CT in Hartford, Torrington and Danbury to mobilize sanctuary spaces and deportation defense teams ahead of a Trump administration.

For more than a year, Donald Trump has vowed to kill the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) which has protected nearly 800,000 young people from deportation, provided them with the ability to work and which has improved the wellbeing of their entire families and communities. He has promised to create a Muslim registry, to force every undocumented person out of the country and has hired anti-immigrant extremists to develop his immigration strategy.

Gatherings took place at St Peter Church in Torrington on Sunday, the Ecuadorian Civic Center in Danbury on Tuesday, and Assembly Of God Church in Hartford on Sunday. At each gathering, over thirty immigrant and ally community members underwent a Know Your Rights training and launched into sharing anticipated legal and survival needs. The community healed, discussed and strategized the first steps towards an inclusive initiative to defending immigrants and refugees from deportation and incarceration within their local communities. CT Students for a Dream (C4D) partnered with local ally organizations - including with the Greater Danbury Justice Network in Danbury and with Working Families Party, Manos Unidas, UACT, ACLU, and Hartford Legal Group in Hartford.

Photo and video of the gathering in Hartford can be found here and here, photos of the Danbury gathering can be found here, and photos of the Torrington gathering can be found here.

Image via Pixabay