Spanish was the language of choice for the chants of about 70 students and Evanston residents marching from the Arch to the Rock Thursday afternoon as part of a rally for immigrant rights.
The protesters had gathered at the Arch at 4 p.m. to speak, listen and march in response to the University Police decision to report undocumented immigrant Ramiro Sanchez-Zepeda to Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week after stopping him when they suspected he was driving drunk. When Rev. Robert Oldershaw, an Evanston pastor, finished his speech, he initiated the chant, “si, se puede!”
The chant stuck. The prevalence of Spanish in the rally (a later speech was given in both English and Spanish) seemed to reinforce the organizers’ goal of encouraging, as Weinberg sophomore Adam Yalowitz said, a “more inclusive and diverse community” at Northwestern.
Though the rally was originally organized to protest UP’s handling of the case, the precise tone of the rally changed after Chief of Police Bruce Lewis announced a new policy Wednesday whereby UP will “initiate notification to ICE only in cases involving arrests for a felony and or human trafficking.”
“We’re very thankful that the police changed their policy,” said Yalowitz, one of the organizers of the rally. The tone, after Wednesday’s policy change, was meant to be “celebratory,” he said.
But organizers also felt compelled to go forward with the rally because they believe there is much work still to be done — and not only in terms of immigranion policy.
Medill junior Arianna Hermosillo, another of the event’s organizers and president of Alianza, spoke about the university’s continuing struggle to recruit black and Latino students and some current students’ accusations that they have been stopped by University Police and asked to show ID for no reason other than race. “Beyond what happened last week with Ramiro,” Hermosillo said, “I know of my friends who have been stopped by the police, and that’s a problem too.”
Several of the speakers mentioned asking UP officials during meetings to turn over the data on the details and racial composition of the students they have stopped, and said they would probably have this data soon.
The rhetoric of the speakers was, in turns, optimistic and fiery. Keeanga Taylor, a graduate student in the department of African-American studies dismissed the notion that students should thank UP for the policy change. “It reminds me of something Malcolm X once said,” she continued. “He said, ‘When someone stabs you in the back nine inches and then pulls the knife out three inches, you don’t thank them — they shouldn’t have stabbed you in the first place.’”
Another theme of the rally was the role of students in causing the UP policy change.
“We knew that we would pretty much have overwhelming support from the students and campus,” said Weinberg senior Loren Balhorn, a speaker and organizer of the event. But he felt it was important to continue with the rally “as a sign that this was a result of our own efforts,” and, he added, because “the struggle’s not over.”
The rally did not belong to one student group, or even to one specific issue. Beyond immigration policy, protesters addressed a whole range of social justice issues, and Balhorn said he hopes it can give some momentum to the larger movement for social justice on campus.
“We’re not giving up this afternoon,” he said.
View a video of the event below:
Video updated 5/8 11:05 a.m.
Correction: the video identified Mike Waxman as a junior. He is a sophomore.
Disclosure: Mike Waxman is North by Northwestern’s Carnal Knowledge columnist.