On Jan. 23, many Minnesotans will not go to work, attend school or shop as part of a one-day, statewide economic blackout to protest the aggressive deportation campaign led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in their state –– and several states away in Massachusetts, Jim Badger-Aguilar will protest in solidarity with them, too.
“We’re rallying in solidarity with the people in Minnesota, because we don’t know who’s next,” Badger-Aguilar, a public employee and chapter president for Massachusetts Commission for the Blind, told HuffPost. “It’s really all of us that are at risk here.”
Badger-Aguilar is also a member of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents nearly 2 million service and health care workers across the nation, and will have members participating in Friday actions in more than a dozen U.S. cities like Los Angeles, Orlando, Florida, Boston and New York City.
For Badger-Aguilar, his participation is also personal. He has family that has experienced situations of military dictatorship and terror from the state in Honduras and Guatemala, and he is noticing unsettling similarities with what President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown is doing.
