From the JFK Protest

Thousands Block Airport Street: “No deportations. No Muslim registry. No fascist USA!”

January 28, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

We received this report direct from the January 28 protest of thousands at JFK Airport in New York City.

Several thousand people were here at one point at John F. Kennedy Airport. When we first arrived here around 6 pm, there were people who had been here all day. For the last hour or two, people have been blocking the road outside Terminal 4, shutting down the traffic, and demanding that the people who had been detained be released. People were chanting “No deportations. No Muslim registry. No fascist USA!” This is what the people who were leading the protest were chanting. They were also chanting at different times “No Trump, No KKK, No fascist USA!," "No ban, no registry, fuck white supremacy!” “Refugees are welcome here—let them in, let them in!” “Fuck Donald Trump”—that was very popular. There’s still (around 9:30 pm) hundreds of people in the streets, blocking traffic. There were a lot of people holding the “NO!” sign from Refuse Fascism.

There is a whole determined atmosphere here among the people of: This has to stop! We’re not going to allow this. There were a lot of people calling Trump a fascist. There was an extended Egyptian family out here, agitating about doing here what the Egyptian people did in Tahrir Square (during Arab Spring in 2011,when they drove out the U.S.-backed ruler, Mubarak). This was a very young crowd. Obviously, there were a lot of people from the Middle East, but this was a very diverse crowd. White, Latino, Black—but among people generally, again, a real feeling that we cannot let what Trump is trying to do happen. There were people saying that they follow RefuseFascism.org.

An Egyptian-American woman at the protest told Revolution/revcom.us, “I’m an American citizen, here at JFK, I’m at Terminal 4. I came here today with my family to defend the rights of fellow Americans that have been banned from coming back home, or poor refugees that have been forced out of their homes by tyrants and dictators in their own countries, and have been seeking refuge at our home. And we’re turning them away. We said it before, ‘Never again,’ and we say it again, ‘Never again.’ We cannot let such a travesty take place and be quiet about it. We cannot. We have to keep up the fight, we have to let them know that this is not right. This is not about Republicans and Democrats. This is about morals, about principle. This is about what’s right and what’s wrong. And this is absolutely wrong! Not acceptable. And we are not going to stand for it.”

 

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