Schneiderman (podium): “People are awake who were asleep”
NEWBURGH – Fresh from joining the battle to block President Trump’s latest immigration ban, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman addressed a capacity crowd in the City of Newburgh Thursday night.
Community Voices Heard, an organization founded in 1994 to build power to secure social, economic, and racial justice for all through grassroots organizing, hosted the visit by the state’s top legal eagle.
“People are awake who were asleep,” Schneiderman told the crowd at the Newburgh Armory Unity Center. “This is what movement building looks like. This is what it means to build a political movement. It starts out on the grassroots. People romanticize sometimes, great movements in American history – the Civil Rights Movement or the abolition movement or the labor movement, but it always starts out on the grassroots in meetings like this and coalesces into something, and the next big movement for American equality and American justice is starting now, and you are starting it.”
Thursday’s rally was held in response to what some believe is the
Trump Administration’s recent attacks on immigrant communities and working
class communities all across America. Community Voices Heard, along
with Schneiderman addressed these issues and led further discussion related
to how community leaders could help push back against the President’s
recent policy agenda that many in the audience considered unnecessary
and malicious.
“President Trump’s latest executive order is a Muslim Ban by another name, imposing policies and protocols that once again violate the Equal Protection Clause and Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution,” said Schneiderman. “As the Trump White House has already said, the Administration’s latest Muslim Ban seeks to accomplish the same unlawful and unconstitutional outcomes as the original order.”
Schneiderman, who first sued President Trump in 2013 over what he referred to as “Trump’s phony university,” told the audience that “whether it’s standing up for those caught in the chaos of President Trump’s draconian immigration policies, or fighting back against policies that seek to harm working families, I won’t hesitate to act to protect New Yorkers. And I can’t do it alone; we must all stand together in the fight for justice.”
