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Protesters honor veterans, rally for immigrant rights on Memorial Day in downtown Boston
The “Rally for a Dream” called state and local legislators to action in the fight for statewide immigrant protections.
Hundreds of protesters gathered on the Boston Common Monday to honor veterans and rally for statewide protections for immigrants.
The Memorial Day Rally for a Dream, organized by Mass 50501, was held on Memorial Day to honor fallen military personnel while supporting the ideals that they died for, organizers said. The group has hosted numerous protests since President Donald Trump’s second term in office began, including the nationwide “Hands Off!” protest that saw tens of thousands of protesters in Boston alone.
“We felt it was really important to do this today,” Rebecca Winter, a spokesperson for Mass 50501, told Boston.com. “We’re calling this march the Rally for a Dream because we see that the American dream is being desecrated right now with all of the harm being done to immigrants in our state.”
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The rally began at City Hall Plaza, where Kylie Bemis, a Mass 50501 member and assistant teaching professor of computer science at Northeastern University, kicked it off with chants like “show me what democracy looks like” and “no hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here.” Bemis has been outspoken about the Trump administration and previously called on Northeastern administrators to do the same.
“I’m Native American from Zuni Pueblo, and I’m a transgender woman, so I feel like I was born into this kind of resistance,” Bemis told Boston.com. “When I saw that things were swiftly moving towards authoritarianism, I felt an obligation to do my part, to resist, to speak up, to point out the injustices that other people seemed to be missing.”
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After Bemis’ opening remarks, the crowd marched along Tremont Street to Liberty Mall at the Boston Common. All the while, Bemis led more chants, like “hey hey, ho ho, Trump and ICE have got to go.”
Protesters showed off their signs on the way to the Common, with messages such as “defend democracy,” “make fascists extinct,” and “keep our neighbors safe.”
The crowd grew restless as they waited for Bemis to introduce Winter, the rally’s first official speaker. Winter called on Governor Maura Healey and Attorney General Andrea Campbell to take action against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“Many people do illegal things, but people are not illegal,” Winter said in her speech.
John Moses, a retired United States Army sergeant and veteran fellow at the Hoover Institution, led protesters in a reflective moment as he asked them to close their eyes and silently think about a veteran from their own lives.
“As a service member and somebody that’s taken an oath, it’s been really difficult for me to watch people just continuously break the rules with no consequence,” Moses told Boston.com. “Coming here and seeing all these people stand up, it means an enormous amount to me to speak for my friends that are gone and even more so to see people come out and support it.”
Moses said that Trump “doesn’t care about veterans” and pointed to the deportation of Afghan refugees as an example of the administration betraying veterans and the sacrifices they have made.
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“They’re deporting Afghans that came here under humanitarian parole, allies, people that the United States worked with and we brought to the United States, canceled their protections, and they’re going to send them back to Afghanistan,” Moses said. “That is not how you honor veterans.”
Cambridge City Councilor Burhan Azeem emceed for the afternoon’s speakers and raised the crowd’s energy by reading out his favorite signs and leading chants like “no kings, no tyrants, we will not be silenced.”
“I think this is a moment where everyday people have even more power than politicians,” Azeem told Boston.com. “There isn’t an election coming up for another year, and so, in this moment, the biggest thing to do is to take to the streets to show people that there is a strong constituency that’s very upset [and] that’s not going anywhere.”
Other speakers included John Downey and Bryan C. Winter, both Mass 50501 representatives, and Leo Gerdén, an international student from Sweden and graduating senior at Harvard College. In his speech, Gerdén spoke about how the Trump administration is “making an example” out of international students, citing the experiences of Rümeysa Öztürk and Mahmoud Khalil.
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“They are only starting with a few,” Gerdén said in his speech. “This is going to be a long campaign of intimidation. And on campus, we’ll continue to fight.”
Protesters fear for local communities, remember veterans
The rally attracted protesters of all ages, and the occasion of Memorial Day led younger protesters to reflect on the sacrifices made by veterans from older generations.
“In World War II, we fought to end authoritarian fascism and that same kind of conservatism that led to it,” said John McGrath, a student from Revere. “I wanted to get fired up, and I wanted to fight. I wanted to start some good trouble.”
Other attendees were motivated by the strife that immigrants have faced under the Trump administration and the impact it has had on local communities.
“We need to know who are these people who are snatching people off the street and who are the masked men and who are the people wielding axes and breaking into cars when people are in there and dragging them out,” said Patty Tobin, a communications director. “We need to protect people from these harms.”
One protester, who asked to remain anonymous under the alias “Lady Liberty,” has appeared at several Mass 50501 protests dressed as the Statue of Liberty. Above all, she hoped that the rally for immigrant rights would remind protesters of who and what veterans fight for.
“I think we need to remember what Memorial Day is all about, and I come from a military family,” she said. “My father was a colonel in the Marines, and my brother is a commandant in the Rangers. If we forget our veterans, we’ve forgotten our heart.”
Bemis told Boston.com that the rally was just as much about veterans as it was about immigrants because they protect the rights that all Americans deserve.
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“Memorial Day is about remembering and honoring the sacrifice of our service members who died fighting for democracy and our rights and liberties, and I can think of no better way to honor that sacrifice than continuing to protect those rights and liberties,” Bemis said.
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