Received word this morning of a march to support immigrants set for downtown Everett. Here’s the information…
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Jeff Ferderer, an educator for the past 37 years, who is employed at Mariner High School in Mukilteo, Washington has formed the organization, Everett in Solidarity with Immigrants and Refugees, which will meet this Sunday, March 5 at 10 a.m. for a walk in solidarity through downtown Everett.
The group intends to gather at Rockefeller Avenue and Wall Street on the north side of the Snohomish County Courthouse campus.
Asked why, when there are so many separate organizations demonstrating against new federal policies on immigration processing, he believes his organization is unique, Ferderer responded, “Everett itself is unique. With its labor union history and strong individualism, I felt that this community has its own story to tell in how it responds to trends at the national level.”
In an essay posted to the group’s Facebook page he states, “I am proud of my former students, young men and women, who have such strength. So many, who have stood in the face of fear and stared fear in the face every day of their lives as they have lived in this great melting pot of a country. Their fear [is] that, at any given moment, their family could be torn apart. These young men and women who at one time provided me joy in our classroom together, who loved to learn and to think, who walked the halls of my school and the streets of my community with a courage that I will never understand or pretend to imagine, who have parents whose only crime they committed was to leave a place where they could see no hope or opportunity for their children and risked their lives and left the only home and family that they ever knew in order to deliver their children the opportunity that they will never have. . .”
Stating his organization stands, “with all immigrants who believe in the U. S. Constitution; and believes that anyone who has risked their lives to escape oppression and has brought their family to the United States for safety and an opportunity that was previously impossible, belongs here,” Ferderer has organized Sunday morning marches over the past month as a show of the organization’s public support for the rights of immigrants and refugees.
Participants in Sunday’s walk will wind its way through downtown to Colby Avenue and 19th Street. The group will then hold a vigil at Grand Avenue Park.
The community organization has 189 Facebook followers and updates are tweeted @EverettForImmigrants. The group’s administrator responds to comments and questions from Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/EverettForImmigrants/
February 28, 2017
Events in Everett