Rage Against the Regime rally in Dearborn

 

By SUE SUCHYTA

Times-Herald Newspapers

DEARBORN – Local activists gathered to hear speakers during a Rage Against the Regime rally Aug. 2 at PEACE Park West before taking their signs to protest along Michigan Avenue. 

Event organizer and activist Korey Morris said those present were trying to defend democracy.

“We’re going to share some words about getting involved and what we can do to fight back against the fascism and tyranny of the Trump administration,” he said.

Yasmeen Saeed, of U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s staff, said that she has decided that silence is no longer an option.

“Like many others in my generation, I’ve grown up with a front row seat to the chaos, injustice and failures of leadership,” she said. “We’ve inherited a world that’s literally on fire, that’s facing climate disasters, mass shootings, censorship, attacks on bodily autonomy and the slow erosion of our country’s democracy.

“None of this was our doing, but we’re being told it’s on us to fix, and I believe we can.”

Saeed said that while some older people criticize the younger generation’s use of social media, they don’t understand its value as a way to educate, organize and mobilize.

“We will fight for the next generation, for our communities, and for a future where truth and justice win,” she said. “And we will do more than fight: we will run not from danger, but for office, because we deserve representatives who are living in this moment, not stuck in a version of America that no longer exists.”

Saeed said censorship doesn’t look like book-burning, but it is instigated by the algorithms that control what one sees in their media feed.

“It’s prioritizing profit over truth, and leading us down a path where it is easier to manipulate the public,” she said. “This moment demands that we show up and that we resist with strategy, solidarity and the courage to lead.”

She was followed by Laila Sanford-McKisic, 16, who is working for Tlaib through the Youth Civic Engagement Fellowship.

She said the fellowship is allowing her to help build a better world and to make change on a significant scale.

 

“I want to live in a world where we can all live fulfilling lives, where we can have the luxury of free time, to only have one job to pay the rent and where owning a home is not a dream,” Sanford-McKisic said. “For our children to grow up with joy and hope, and the only ICE they see are ice cream trucks driving through their neighborhood.”

She said young people should be able to dream of a career without incurring debt, and where genocide is only read about in history books.

“I want to live in a world where we are not suffering to line the pockets of those with no conscience,” Sanford-McKisic said. “Without billionaires who want to control our government, our families and our lives, without factories polluting our air and farms polluting our water.”

She called for people to protest, vote, march, boycott and organize together to make change happen.

“We refuse to be silenced and stand by while this administration and the oligarchs strip away our ability to thrive,” Stanford-McKisic said. “It’s our future at stake, and young people are ready to organize, lead and resist.

“That’s how we take our power back.”

State Rep. Erin Byrnes (D-15th District)  said she is co-sponsor of a bill that would prohibit ICE agents from wearing masks in Michigan.

“They are pulling up in unmarked vehicles and grabbing people off the streets,” she said. “It’s terrifying, and it’s something no human being anywhere on this Earth should have to deal with.”

Byrnes said in some cases, people are dressing up as ICE agents to grab people, specifically women, off the streets to assault and harm them.

“This is sick, it’s disgusting and it’s inhumane,” she said. “I want everyone to be aware of this.”

Byrnes said it hasn’t happened in Michigan yet, but it is happening across the country, which is why she has co-sponsored the bill to ban masks on ICE agents.

“Please be vigilant,” she said. “We have to be vigilant, and we have to keep each other safe.”

Byrnes also called for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

She also said it’s disheartening to see institutions such as universities that were stalwarts to democracy caving in to the Trump administration’s demands.

Byrnes urged people to hold on to the hope that they feel when attending rallies with like-minded people.

“Know that you are not alone, know that we are stronger together, know that in the Dearborn community and across the country there are more good people out there than the alternative,” she said. “We have to stay united, and as long as we stick together and stand up, we will be stronger than this authoritarian regime.

“(President Donald Trump) will not last, but we will because community lasts, and people coming together are more powerful than anything.”