Fifteen demonstrators, including four DACA recipients, were arrested Wednesday (page translation required) in Austin, Texas, part of a new wave of protests that the groups involved described as “the first civil disobedience action of the Trump era.”
The protest was presented as the first step in a “new strategy” to force the country to respond to the attacks on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and mass deportations.
“As DACAmented [immigrants], we want to show that we stopped being afraid a long time ago, when we came out of the shadows. Now we have a new motto, #OutragedandUnfraid,” activists said in a statement released by the new organization Movimiento Cosecha.
The immigrant movement follows closely on the heels of the first-ever “African-American Clergy Advocacy Day” held on Capitol Hill last week to protest federal budget cuts proposed by the Trump administration.
“Since all of these folk make a big deal about putting their hand on the Bible and swearing themselves into office, we’ve come to let them know what’s in the Bible,” said the Rev. William J. Barber II, a North Carolina pastor at the forefront of state and national protests focused on poverty and civil rights.
The Rev. Raphael Warnock, pastor of Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, said that while Trump asked the black community to give him a chance during the presidential election, his budget proposal showed his true priorities.
Sixteen of the protesters were arrested on charges of “crowding, obstructing or incommoding” while trying to raise awareness of what they said was unjust legislation.
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