More than 250 people turned out for a rally to support immigrants and refugees in Lewiston on Saturday.
Organized by the Maine People’s Alliance, it was part of a national day of action to declare that immigrants are here to stay despite what President-elect Donald Trump has said on the campaign trail about deportations.
Mitch Thomas, executive director of the Franco Center in Lewiston, which hosted the event, told the crowd that the venue was appropriate for the gathering because Lewiston itself was built by the children and grandchildren of immigrants.
“Not unlike the folks who are here now and in this room today who continue to build this community,” he said.
Those people include several thousand Somali refugees who settled in Lewiston and Auburn over the past 15 years and opened businesses that now dominate a stretch of Lewiston’s downtown. Many of them are nervous about what the future holds under a Trump administration, but Fatuma Hussein of the Immigrant Resource Center urged them to stand up and speak out.
“No more fear. No to discrimination. We are a welcoming community. And the state of Maine has changed, some 30 years ago,” she said.
Hussein said it is not the responsibility of a few people to say no to racism. It is, she said, the responsibility of everyone.
Bates College multifaith chaplain Brittany Longsdorf acknowledged that the times ahead are uncertain, but she said there are values like compassion that are far more important than politics to connect people to one another.
“We can stand unified in compassion with whatever storms may come. We stand for the human dignity of all people and believe that the sacred is embodied more fully in radiant diversity,” she said.
Joe Baldacci, president of the Bangor City Council, said immigrants aren’t the only ones who will suffer with extremism. America as a democracy and world leader will suffer, he said, and so will all Americans.
As the grandson of Italian and Lebanese immigrants, Baldacci said that’s why he is joining others in demanding justice, tolerance and reason on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend.
“We are Americans and we choose freedom, diversity and dynamism, and I am honored to be here,” he said.
Other elected officials and immigrant advocates pledged to work on behalf of immigrants at the state and local levels and to call for preservation of the Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals Program, or DACA, which currently protects about 750,000 young immigrants who entered the U.S. as minors from deportation.
