Hundreds of people assembled in downtown Lexington to protest the Trump administration and the recent actions of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in Minnesota.
Citizens held signs protesting ICE and the GOP at the Robert F. Stephens Courthouse Plaza on Sunday, Jan. 11.
(Jack Bates)
According to the Associated Press, on Jan. 7, Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother, was shot behind the wheel of her vehicle by an ICE officer. Many have criticized the shooting as unlawful and an act of vigilantism by the GOP.
Paul Stevens, a graduate student at Miami University majoring in chemistry, said his mother told him about the event and he decided to participate to show his support for the community.
“This is how fascism works. If people don’t speak out, they’re going to abuse people’s rights and bad things are going to happen,” Stevens said. “So this is how we fight back.”
Stevens said that while he isn’t directly impacted by ICE, he believes if an individual, like Good, was harmed, then the entire community should be concerned.
“I’m lucky to be a US citizen and a white male. I certainly have a lot of privilege, but I mean, I recognize that a violation of anybody’s rights here affects us all,” Stevens said. We need to speak out for these other people before it’s us.”
Edith Ingram, a student at Bryan Station High School, decided to attend the event because she was concerned for the country’s future.
“I read the news a lot, and I’m very worried about where the country’s headed. I mean, I’m 18 years old, I’m starting my life. I don’t know where I’m gonna go to college,” Ingram said. “I’m just worried about the future of the country. I’m worried about my friends, what their future is gonna look like.”
The large crowd of people gathered for the protest, Ingram said, was a sign that people care about what’s going on.
“I think that there’s definitely a sense in America that we need to do something. I mean, things are changing really quickly. And I know from my experience in Lexington that we’re a community that cares a lot about every member of the community,” Ingram said. “I think it’s just kind of showing support that we’re all gonna come together and function as a country when people are trying to separate us.”
(Jack Bates)
Ingram said that the protest was a sign of concern for what ICE is doing and for getting “more and more confident”.
According to Ingram, she watched interviews of Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller and noted his language. At first, he said that ICE was against immigrants and then said they were against children of immigrants, and now a woman who was not an immigrant was murdered by ICE.
Kathy Jacobson, a retiree, said she became aware of the event on Facebook through the organization Peaceful Bluegrass Resistance.
Jacobson said the actions ICE is taking have shocked her, and if she doesn’t speak out through events like protesting, then she has no right to complain.
“I used to have a 6-year-old kid and picked him up from school. The fact that just her (Good’s) presence was enough to infuriate those ICE agents. It was just appalling that they behave that way,” Jacobson said. “I didn’t see anybody trying to stop the guy with the gun, and I didn’t see anybody trying to stop the guy who was trying to reach inside her car … To the extent that they’re not standing up, they’re just as guilty.”
Additionally, Jacobson said that she reads the writings of historian Heather Cox Richardson and said the government acting tyrannically and harming citizens is a cyclical conflict.
(Jack Bates)
“It’s repeating itself. I mean, we keep having smaller groups, particularly of white, rich men, who are trying to tell everybody else how to live and in such a way that it benefits them and not the other, the majority of the people,” Jacobson said. “There’s a whole long list of dictators. I couldn’t even name them all, but this is what they do. They take away the people’s voice, and they do what they want to, and nobody is willing to stand up to them.”
