Members of the Granite State Organizing Project joined up with our sister organization in Faith in Action, Essex County Community Organization (ECCO), the American Friends Service Committee, Indivisible, and others to bring the fight against unjust detention and deportation of our immigrant neighbors to the NH Democratic Party Convention last Saturday.
What a madhouse! Some of the campaign staffers had gotten there at 3am to claim the best corner or street side location. The entire 3-block area was a cacophony of candidate chants: “Mayor Pete, Mayor Pete” “ I say Julian – you say Castro” and “Bi-den, Bi-den” echoed through and around the arena, blending into meaningless background noise punctured by the occasional banging on a Bernie drum.
Our De-Fund Hate team got a great response, most of the deletes eagerly defied the ban on stickers to take our “Defund Hate: no Cages no Camps” message into the convention.
Things got fun when the ECCO folks brought their child size coffin to the door of the convention, set it down and began the funeral for all who have died at the border. The police soon materialized and insisted that we move on which we did … after we finished the funeral!
We spent the next half hour parading the coffin around the convention center chanting our support for immigrants. The Beto kids were on the ball, they immediately stopped their Beto chants and joined ours “No Hate – no Fear, Immigrants are Welcome Here”, and the Warren campaign jumped in right away too.
Sadly, none of the 19 candidates made immigration a top priority once they got inside the convention. What will it take to get the Primary candidates to live up to the values we claim to hold so dear?
Next up…….which candidate takes the best selfies?
#LOVE2020 #petebuttigieg #juliancastro #joebiden #berniesanders #elizabethwarren #NHDP #