Rev. J. Alfred Smith, Johanna, La Colectiva de las Mujeres, Alex U. Inn, Tony Serra
Rev. J. Alfred Smith, Jr., Senior Pastor, Allen Temple Baptist Church, Oakland California
“Folks seem to be very conversant about the atrocities that are multiplying daily but they have not in many cases put a face on this. There’s been an elephant in the room, and nobody wants to name the elephant. Today, that elephant has been named many times but in case any of us are slow in seeing the picture, the face of the elephant in the room, all we have to do is connect the many dots that describe this elephant. We’ve heard that this is an autocratic, authoritarian regime that rules by fear: that’s a dot. This is a racist, white supremacist regime that promotes state-sponsored persecution, discrimination, and violence against people of color, particularly Black lives, Brown People, our Native People.
It has perpetrated this against immigrants, against Muslims, against LGBTQI sisters and brothers, against women. That just about includes all of us. Against the poor, against those that are vulnerable. This regime has assaulted science, has raped the environment. This regime is taking sections of government that are supposed to be led by civilians and turning them over to military generals. These are all dots. Many other dots have been identified. If we would just connect the dots we would see a three dimensional, panoramic view of the ugly face of fascism. An organizer of the protest asked me, ‘are you going to use the F-word.” I’m pretty free but when he said the F-word I was taken aback. I said, ‘No I don’t think I’m going to use that word,’ though some other speakers have used it today. But he wasn’t talking about that F-word. He was talking about fascism. My sisters and brothers we are going to have to confront fascism. We’re going to have to fight fascism. We’re going to have to refuse fascism. We’re going to have to resist fascism.”
Johanna, El/La para TransLatinas
As Trans Latinas we are immigrants. They say that we are a danger. But we are the ones that are endangered. We come here to work and we are being denied our basic rights. We demand that international law be respected. We demand full rights for the Latino community and all immigrants in this country. We come here to work as women. We don’t want to live in a situation where our life expectancy is 35 years. We want a full life and to live to an old age and live life fully.
La Collectiva de las Mujeres (translated from Spanish):
We have to unite. We have to unite to say: “No Ban, No Wall.” We have to unite to say we are coming together to get Trump out. We need a different future. A future that is worthy of human beings, a future for humanity. No more chains. No more intimidation. We have to stand up strong, united, and fight until we drive this guy and the whole regime out. We have to overcome fear and fight so that future generations can see that we have fought for them.
Alex U. Inn, 2017 San Francisco Pride March Grand Marshall:
There is a small window of time, people. If we do not act on that we have lost the power. Our voices, our action, everything in you as a human being today is what you need to be holding onto and saying I am not intimidated. I am not fucking going anywhere and you are going to hear my voice, you are going to feel my power. You are someone that I will take from power and I will be in your face to do it.
J. Tony Serra, people’s attorney:
At no time in the last 50 or 60 years though I have participated as a lawyer in many civil rights issues has there been greater challenge than presently. We are engaged in a struggle to preserve the soul of the nation. Trump has declared a war against the poor, the working class and the immigrants. Trump has declared a war against race, against religion… The concept we all must embrace is resist. Resist his racism, resist his religious bigotry. This country does not belong to the wealthy, the white and the Christian. Resist, reject, repudiate all that Trump stands for in any fashion that you are capable of. This is the struggle of this century. The soul of our democracy, the soul of our constitutional liberties, the soul of the great majority of persons is in jeopardy. Time will not reverse itself. We must reject the trajectory. So resist, my friends and we will prevail.