Hundreds of people marched across the Brooklyn Bridge on a cold Martin Luther King Jr. Day morning Monday to honor the civil rights leader’s legacy while demanding an end to ICE and what they describe as its brutal operations in the United States.
Protesters gathered at Cadman Plaza for a memorial rally before crossing the iconic bridge to 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan. There, speakers noted that the mobilization sought to continue the teachings of Dr. King, by raising their voices against what they described as an increase in authoritarianism and racial profiling by ICE agents.
“If Dr. King were alive today, he would be calling on the entire country to stand up and march for Renee Good,” said Minister Kirsten John Foy, referring to the Minnesota woman who was shot and killed by an ICE agent earlier this month.
“If we let this moment pass, our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will pay the price: a planet in crisis and an authoritarian and tyrannical America, where women have no autonomy over their bodies, black and brown people live in chains and white women are shot to death in the streets,” Foy added. “That’s not Dr. King’s America.”
New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams agreed with these concerns about the future of the country. Referring to the murder of Renee Good and the increase in violence attributed to ICE agents, Williams called for profound change with future generations in mind.
“Let’s join hands in the name of Dr. King and move forward. I want to do it for my children, but also for my children’s children. People who are not yet born depend on us to leave them a country better than the course we are on today, and in the name of Dr. King, we have to do it,” Williams said.
For his part, Murad Awawdeh, president of the Immigration Coalition, noted that the march not only demanded justice for immigrants detained by ICE, but also paid tribute to King’s legacy in defending their rights.
“Today we honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. not as a monument, but as a mandate. Dr. King warned us that ‘injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,’ and today that truth is reflected in the fear experienced by immigrant communities, families who carry the constant fear of separation and deportation, treated as disposable in a country they help build every day,” Awawdeh said.
The protest started from Cadman Plaza, led by a banner with images of Martin Luther King Jr. and Renee Good, moved across the Brooklyn Bridge and ended in front of 26 Federal Plaza, where federal agents — many of them with their faces covered — have been detaining immigrants attending their court hearings.
