PADUCAH, Ky. – Four Rivers Indivisible’s first protest of the new year attracted a first-time protester.
“Seeing the footage in Minnesota was infuriating,” said Eliza Goins, 22, of Paducah. “I’ve been wanting to come for a long time, but I felt scared. I’m not scared anymore.”
Goins joined about 200 protestOrs from western Kentucky and southern Illinois on a chilly Saturday afternoon at the city’s Noble Park. Most of them held up signs and waved at vehicles passing on busy Park Avenue. Most of the motorists honked horns in support.
Four Rivers furnished some printed signs. Other rally goers, including Goins, brought homemade signs. She wrote “Love Thy Neighbor, ABOLISH ICE!,” “WWJD” and Bible verses on cardboard.
Goins said she’s “getting back into my Christian faith and reading my Bible.” She added that ICE abuses are “not something Jesus would have stood for.”
Four Rivers, a branch of the national Indivisible organization, titled the protest “Honor the Constitution Rally – ICE Out for Good.”
The Paducah rally was part of a national “ICE Out for Good” mobilization called in response to the Trump-ordered coup in Venezuela and “ongoing lawless actions and abuses by the Dept. of Homeland Security and in particular, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE),” said a Four Rivers news release.
On Jan. 7, Renee Nicole Good, an American citizen, was shot to death by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. “This killing is part of a broader pattern of unchecked violence and abuse carried out by federal immigration enforcement agencies against members of our communities,” the release also said.
Four Rivers co-leaders Leslie McColgin of Graves County and Calloway countian Karla Johnston organized close to two dozen rallies last year. Both are retired. “We’re not antifa, we’re ‘grantifa,’” said McColgin, smiling.
Paducah is the largest town in far western Kentucky, arguably the most crimsoned corner of Republican Red State Kentucky. All three times Donald Trump ran for president, he won all but two of the state’s 120 counties – Jefferson (Louisville) and Fayette (Lexington). Even so, Four Rivers has grown to include 200 members, according to McColgin. “We’re still growing,” she said. “We have the courage of our convictions to keep speaking the truth, and eventually we hope the other people are going to listen.”
Polls show that Trump’s popularity is waning nationwide. “But that doesn’t mean the administration won’t keep on doing bad things,” McColgin said, adding that groups like Indivisible are “changing public opinion, and that’s going to lead to change.”
Also at the rally, the Rev. Amanda Groves spoke; 16-year-old Anna Johnston read a poem written by poet, writer, and activist Amanda Gorman in memory of Good; and Scott McKeel, the Rev. Gregory Waldrop, and the Rev. Jim Gearhart read the names of 32 people who died in ICE detention last year, the agency’s most lethal year in more than two decades, according to McColgin.
McColgin said of ICE: “It’s time to stop the lies, stop terrorizing our cities and time to get out of our lives.”
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