It was a weekend filled with protests and rallies for Greenbelters, beginning with a vigil outside the U.S. District Courthouse on Friday, April 4. There, a vocal group of over 30 turned out to sing songs, raise signs and support Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Beltsville and his family. Garcia’s deportation to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a maximum security prison in El Salvador, has been called an administrative error by the Trump administration, yet they are fighting a court order to bring him back. For more, see pages 1 and 6 of the April 10 issue.
On Saturday, April 5, many Greenbelters attended a large protest at the National Mall, while here in the city over 300 rallied locally, taking their voices and signs through the city to the Spellman Overpass for Baltimore-Washington Parkway traffic to witness. For more, see story on page 1 of the April 10 issue.
Greenbelt’s Matt Neufeld attended the national Hands Off! protest in Washington, D.C. and estimated there was a crowd of at least 100,000. The protest was excellent, he told the News Review. “Jamie Raskin and several others delivered speeches of a lifetime,” he said. “Hands off our freedom.”
Among other protesters in Washington, D.C. were members of a Greenbelt Mahjong group and Greenbelt parents and children. Greenbelter Elise Young attended and described it as “a critical moment to show up in solidarity for the protest and announce to the world that we are not OK with dis-criminatory policies that are being put into place by the U.S. government at this time.” Young was with her husband, their seventh-grade daughter and friends who were once part of the same Greenbelt Girl Scout troop. “It was wonderful to be there with other Greenbelters, including middle schoolers, who were leading the way in speaking up for human rights for all,” she reflected. Young said they “took the Greenbelt spirit of justice down to the Washington Monument … speaking up for better U.S. federal policies that protect the rights of all people.”
Greenbelter Jessica O’Roark said she had gone into Washington, D.C. recently to protest USAID being cut. Her 13-year-old wanted to come then but had school. This time her child felt good about attending and the posters they made, she said. “We both enjoyed being around others in solidarity,” said O’Roark, but afterwards her child asked some tough questions about the difference it made. “I’m not sure!” she said. Though it felt good to do something, she wasn’t sure they were able to create the change or impact her child hoped for.
