There was singing in three languages, chants, even a prayer Monday night at Veterans Park in Manchester. There, demonstrators gathered in a chilly rain to protest the Trump administration’s immigration policies. The administration had created a new urgency for this annual May Day rally.
Father Gurdak oversees a Catholic church in Manchester with a largely Latino membership. Into a microphone, he described an immigrant worker’s dilemma. "What do we force them to do? We force them to use fake documents. And they are called criminals because they use fake documents. We made them do these things."
Soon after, an immigration attorney beseeched unauthorized residents to "have a plan."
Eva Castillo has helped organize the event every year for about a decade. The point of the rally, she said, is to get everyday people to see immigrant workers not as statistics or criminals, but as human beings.