Red Bank Dreamers Take To Street In Protest

RED BANK, NJ - The streets of downtown Red Bank this weekend was overcome - not with holiday shoppers but with several hundred marchers determined to protect immigrant rights in a political climate that seems adverse to principles some would say founded this country.

According to the website redbankgreen, they chanted “Up, up with education, down, down with deportation,” waving American flags and carrying banners that read “Immigrants built this nation." On the march from the borough train station to Riverside Gardens Park via Monmouth, Broad and West Front streets, marchers chanted, “No wall, no fear, immigrants are welcome here” as downtown shoppers stood by, some snapping photos and clapping. The marchers gathered around the Christmas tree at Riverside Gardens Park, where they heard an expression of moral support from the borough police department.

Sergeant Juan Sardo, a Venezuelan immigrant, read a statement on behalf of Chief Darren McConnell, who was unable to attend, assuring immigrant residents that police “are here to help, protect and serve the entire community, regardless of anyone’s background or status.

“I want you to know that all the men and women of the department are proud to serve such a diverse community and that we will always strive to do so in a fair and just manner, treating everyone with dignity and respect," Sardo said.

These marchers are hardly alone. Similar protests have been popping up in towns all across this nation, in protest to the Trump Administration's approach to immigration which includes limits, a wall and wholesale deportations.

Brenda Codallos, Ozzie Rodriguez and Alvaro Aguilar, who organized the event under the name Awaken Community told redbankgreen in an statement that the event's aim was “to bring dignity and respect for the undocumented community.

"We are workers, neighbors, and families who are the backbone of this country," the statement read. "We are not just the future of this country, but we are also the present workers that it depends on.”

Awaken Community, they said, “was started by young people affected by President Trump’s September 5th killing of the DACA program.” The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA, was created by executive order of then-President Barack Obama in 2012, and gave immigrants who came to the U.S. as undocumented minors temporary protection from immediate deportation and permits to work here legally.

The Trump administration plans to do away with the DACA program, putting the nearly 800,000 so-called Dreamers at risk of deportation, many to countries they left as babies.

“The owner’s certificate for our nation starts with three words: ‘We the people,'” 19th-district state Assemblyman and 2017 gubernatorial hopeful John Wisniewski told the crowd. “It doesn’t make a distinction about where you were born.”
As he and other spoke, a man who described himself as the event’s only counter-protester stood among the crowd holding a sign decorated with snowflakes and holly berries above his head. "All I want for Christmas is deportation," according to the redbankgreen website.

Protestors put up giant letters spelling "Dream Act" to provoke Congress into passing what they call "A Clean Dream Act," which would save 800,000 young people from deportation. Photograph by Lynne Sladky/Associated Press.