On Saturday, activists around the country will come together to send a powerful message to Donald Trump: Families Belong Together.
This weekend’s protests will mark another powerful moment in the women-led resistance to Trump’s immigration policies. Local Women’s March organizations and other feminist organizations, including the Feminist Majority Foundation and the Domestic Workers’ Alliance, are working together with immigration rights organizations to make these events possible—and form a front line in the fight for immigrant families.
“We stand up for what is right and just for women,” Sarah Dolgen Shaftel, Allies for Women founder and co-chair of the San Diego Women’s March, told Ms. “What is happening to these families, women and children is inhumane. We will not sit by and allow it to continue. Families belong together and the children who have already been separated must be reunited with their families.”
Earlier this month, Feminist Majority president Eleanor Smeal risked arrest at a rally alongside lawmakers and other movement leaders demanding an end to family separation policies; in the weeks since, organizations like FM have been on the ground building the movement to reunite over 2,000 children in the custody of the government with their parents.
The Trump administration, despite issuing an executive order ending its own ordered policy of separating families at the border, has yet to announce a plan to reunify them. A federal judge just this week ruled that they must do so within 30 days. Children detained at the border are living in abandoned Walmart stores, tent cities and prison-like detention facilities—many in overcrowded rooms, with only two hours of time outdoors each day and scheduled shifts for meals.
Enough is enough. Tomorrow, we rise up and demand better. Tomorrow, we rise up in the face of these inhumane policies to declare that we are better.
You can find a local Families Belong Together event using this zip code database. If you can’t attend in-person, please consider donating to a sponsoring organization or the local march in your area.
