Hundreds Protest Trump’s Immigration Ban at Marsh Plaza Rally
“No hate, no fear! Refugees are welcome here!” students chant
A crowd of approximately 350 gathered at Marsh Plaza Monday afternoon for a rally protesting President Trump’s executive order banning people from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States.
A protest that was quickly organized by BU students in response to President Trump’s sweeping executive order on immigration drew several hundred people to Marsh Plaza Monday afternoon.
Chanting “Sanctuary for all! No ban, no wall!” and “No hate, no fear! Refugees are welcome here!” the crowd, comprising mostly students, cheered speakers for more than an hour despite the cold temperatures.
“I believe our democracy is under threat,” said Jack Davidson (GRS’17), a graduate student at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, about why he had attended the No Ban, No Wall: Rally against Xenophobia. “I believe when you take away the rights of some, it’s just a matter of time before the rights of the rest of us go with them.
“We’re sending a message and pushing people off the fence,” Davidson said. “People who haven’t spoken up on where they stand—they’d better speak up.”
“I’m here today because I believe that Trump’s executive orders are misguided and wrong, and we need to raise our voice to show what we think,” said attendee Katherine Seaton (GRS’17). “I was at the march in Boston yesterday, where 20,000 people showed up, and it was all over the news, and so I hope President Trump sees that and notices that people are unhappy.”
The BU rally was organized quickly through a Facebook page after Trump signed an executive order last Friday banning all refugees from entering the United States for 120 days, blocking entry for all residents from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen for at least 90 days, and indefinitely banning all refugees from Syria. The executive order spurred numerous legal challenges and massive rallies in many cities, including Boston, on Sunday.
“All of us Muslims know that complacency is not okay,” said Ibrahim Rashid (CAS’19), a Pardee School international relations major, one of an ad hoc group of Muslim activists and allies who organized the Marsh Plaza rally.
“We’ve all pooled together our resources and our connections and are getting organized,” says Rashid. “We’re all scared, but we’re not going to be silent while our community suffers.”
A Town Hall meeting, hosted by Global Programs and the Dean of Students office, is being held today at 5:30 p.m. at the George Sherman Union’s Metcalf Hall to address the concerns of BU students and faculty about the executive order. Speakers will include Willis Wang, vice president and associate provost for global programs, Jeanne Kelley, managing director of the International Students & Scholars Office (ISSO), immigration attorney Elizabeth Goss, and Kenneth Elmore (SED’87), associate provost and dean of students. The event will be livestreamed here.
BU President Robert A. Brown penned a January 30 Boston Globe op-ed decrying the executive order. He wrote that the executive order is “fundamentally inconsistent with the values that are the bedrock of higher education, and indeed, of our pluralistic, welcoming society.”
BU has 102 undergraduate and graduate students and 16 scholars from the seven countries that are under the 90-day moratorium. But many at the rally said they see the administration’s immigration order, along with the proposed border wall, as part of a larger threat to Arabs and Jews, blacks and Hispanics, non-Christians and LGBTQ people. Jordan Zepher (STH’17) read two poems at the rally, one characterizing the lives and activism of people of color as “a love letter to a nation that doesn’t love us back.”
“I’m here because the ban is a fundamental threat to the way society should be structured and a menace to people I know and care about, and I’ve got to take a stand now,” said Keegan Blute (CAS’17).
“You go through middle school and high school learning about things like the Holocaust and segregation, and you think, what would I have done if I was there?” Blute said. “And now that this is in front of you, that’s something you can answer. I want to be on the right side of this.”
“The protest today touches on two different events, but both of them I believe are not in spirit of what this country stands for,” said Kelcey Rusch, a cook from Somerville, who was holding a “No ban, no wall” sign. “The travel ban is illegal; the wall is a complete misuse of funds.”
Joining the rally “makes me feel like I’m contributing to some kind of action.” Rusch said. “I can’t sit back and do nothing, because it feels like it could get worse.”
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