Chicago, IL – 300 activists, mostly from Latino communities, and many who are immigrants, packed into City Hall this morning to oppose an attack by city council members against Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance.

Cook County Commissioner Anthony Quezada kicked off the rally with chants alternating between Spanish and English. “When Black people are under attack, what do you do?” “Stand up, fight back!”

“When sanctuary is under attack, what do you do?” “Stand up, fight back!”

Then in Spanish, “Pueblo, escucha! Estamos en la lucha!” Which roughly means, “People, listen! We’re in the struggle!”

Frank Chapman, field organizer for the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR), led a chant of, “The people united will never be defeated,” and remarked that the movement here learned this chant from the struggle in Chile in the early 1970s. He explained the importance of the multi-national character of the rally, with immigrant organizations of Latinos, Asians, Arabs and Africans coming together with a Black-led organization such as CAARPR.

Chapman told the crowd, “Donald Trump is on a mission to divide us. This proves he has not succeeded!”

The rally was a response to reactionary members of the city council, Alderpeople Raymond Lopez and Silvana Tabares, introducing an ordinance to allow the Chicago Police Department to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to terrorize those immigrant communities. This attack is intended to work hand in glove with the agenda of the Trump regime.

Trump hates Chicago, and the feeling is mutual

Donald Trump will take office on January 20. Because he is a racist, he has a special hatred for our city which began when Chicago sent Barack Obama – the first Black president – to the White House. Trump launched the trajectory that brought him to the White House in 2016 by leading the campaign to deny that Obama was a citizen.

Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) knows another reason for Trump’s anger at Chicago. “Students here rejected his racist hate campaign in 2016,” explained Liz Rathburn of SDS. “He tried to rally at UIC in April that year, and when 5000 people confronted him, he cancelled and fled.”

There is a determined mood in the movement here. Despite often brutally cold weather, activists have spread out to working-class neighborhoods around the city, distributing 20,000 flyers and over 1000 posters in English, Spanish and Arabic.

Immigrants and Chicago: Trump’s first targets

As Trump prepares to take power, he says he will carry out severe attacks on immigrants, promising the largest deportation operation in American history. Trump and his “Border Czar,” Thomas Homan, are planning an all-out assault. Homan said his planned deportation of millions of undocumented workers and their U.S.-born children will “start right here in Chicago,” as he threatened local officials to open the city and its county jail to the will of federal immigration agents.

Homan has even declared he would prosecute Mayor Brandon Johnson for his actions in defense of asylum seekers.

Inauguration Day protest bringing upwards of 200 organizations together

Monday, January 20 is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In a perverse coincidence, it’s also the day that a white supremacist will be inaugurated president of the country.

To kick off the anti-Trump movement, at 11 a.m. that day, when Trump begins his swearing in, thousands will gather in Federal Plaza in Chicago to protest his agenda.

The January 20th Coalition lists 72 endorsers, but one of those endorsers is the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, with over 100 organizational members. Another endorser is Consejo de Resistencia pro Inmigrante (Pro-Immigrant Resistance Council), which gathers another 40 organizations, mostly Mexican and Central American community organizations.

The demands of the protest are: Stop the Trump Agenda; Defend and Expand Immigrant Rights; Legalization for All; Stand with Palestine; Defend the Right to Unionize and Strike; Stop Police Crimes; Defend Women’s LGBTQIA+ and Reproductive Rights; and Defend Education and Academic Freedom.

Nazek Sankari of the US Palestinian Community Network noted, “We have organizations representing the Black liberation movement, immigrant rights groups, labor rights, anti-war groups, Palestinian groups, voting rights, and environmental groups.”

Solidarity among organizations representing the many fronts of people’s struggles is exactly what is needed to stand up to the attacks coming at us from Trump and his billionaire backers.

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