Teachers, community members protest NYC DoE officials, demand protections for immigrant students

NYC, NY – On the steps of Tweed Courthouse in Lower Manhattan, at least 200 unionized teachers and community members gathered June 4 to demand the New York City Department of Education provide more protections from ICE for immigrant students.

June 4 was “Chancellor’s Day” and DoE officials, like Chancellor Kamar Samuels, gathered at Tweed Courthouse for meetings and for professional development. The activists chose this day and location to pressure them while they were inside the building.

The plans for the rally began with a small grassroots group of educators in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where ICE attacks on immigrant students and their families have been extremely prevalent. The organizers then brought the idea to the NYC Immigration Coalition, a group of local progressive non-profits, which includes Hands Off NYC, which then took up the call and helped organize the event.

They also brought the call to the Movement of Rank and File Educators, MORE, the reform caucus within the teachers union, the UFT. Members of MORE brought numbers and militancy to the event, providing signs with slogans like “DOE: We demand support for immigrants” and “DOE must act now to support immigrant families.”

MORE activist and Sunset Park teacher Caitlin Cahill, one of the original organizers of the event, said, “Schools are such natural places for organizing to happen, and in this case, teachers came together organically because we could see the need. We saw what was happening to our students and parents in our communities. The UFT helped to get the ball rolling with training on creating a School-based Plan to Support Immigrant Students and Families. This gave us an initial framework to work from. Then, I looked to MORE for guidance on rally support and amplification of our message because MORE knows what grassroots organizing looks like and shows up.”

The leadership of the UFT also officially endorsed the rally, which helped build up the numbers of union members in the crowd. Katie Kurjakovich, the UFT’s English language learners specialist, gave a speech on what the UFT is doing to protect immigrant students and teachers, including the Know Your Rights trainings that they have been providing.

The organizers delivered a petition demanding more centralized guidance, funding, and training to protect immigrant students, signed by more than 2000 people, to the DoE officials exiting the building.

nJess Mary, another MORE organizer and teacher, said, “Myself and fellow teachers attended the rally to make demands of the mayor’s office and the DOE to protect our immigrant communities. Our union has the power to put pressure on educational leadership to protect us and our students. The protections for our immigrant students, coworkers, families and communities cannot wait.”

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