Above, Rep. Pressley flanked by Rep. Brandy Fluker-Reid and members of her Congressional staff, at the Dorchester YMCA gymnasium on Sat., May 2. Yawu Miller photo
The Trump administration has deported more than half a million immigrants, waged war on Iran, and released the names of the victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking operation – but redacting the names of the perpetrators – while tax cuts to corporations and high earners combined with cuts from his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have eroded health care and social safety net programs.
Yet at a town hall meeting in Dorchester last Saturday (May 2), US Rep. Ayanna Pressley argued that now is not a time for Democrats to feel defeated.
“I want to speak to victories, because we are in a fascist state,” she told the 60-or-so constituents gathered in the gymnasium at the Dorchester YMCA on Washington Street.
“What a dictator or an authoritarian wants you to believe is that their dark, divided view of the country is an inevitability,” she said. “They want a citizenry that is ignorant and uninformed. They want a citizenry that is indifferent to the suffering of their neighbors. And they want a citizenry that is inactive.”
Pressley instead made her case for activism in the face of what she described as an onslaught of attacks on Blacks and immigrants in the United States, citing her work to block the Trump administration’s withdrawal of temporary protective status from Haitian Americans — a move that would have led to the deportation of more than 300,000 Haitian refugees now living in the United States.
She described to the audience the process of getting signatures from 218 House members, including Republicans and independents, for a discharge petition — a procedural tool used to force a vote on bills that are stalled by House leadership. Pressley said she targeted Republican House members to reach the threshold in the GOP majority chamber.
“I was able to reach that 218-vote threshold with the support of four Republicans and one independent who joined me in signing that petition,” she said. “So I got the Democratic caucus, and then I went and talked to Republicans who represent large Haitian constituencies — Ohio, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania. They’re all running for reelection, and I reminded them of this.”
The House then voted in favor of a three-year extension of the TPS program for Haitian refugees, 224 to 204.
The effort was far from routine in the US House. Only 15 discharge petitions have passed in the last 40 years. But Pressley and her Democratic colleagues have used the process to force votes on releasing the Epstein files and on extending the Affordable Care Act. Those victories were significant counters to the Trump administration’s narrative of dominance, she told the audience.
Some of the audience at the town hall. Yawu Miller photo
“They want you to believe we’re losing all the time, which is why I am deconstructing this victory,” she said. “So you understand what went into it, that it is possible when we agitate, when we organize, when there is public outcry.”
Beyond the victories that she has eked out during the first year-and-a-half of the second Trump administration, Pressley pointed to legislation that she is currently fighting to get passed, including a bill that would end qualified immunity for federal officers, making them subject to lawsuits stemming from their actions while on the job.
“For families who experience injury and harm, there can never be justice, because that would mean the harm would never have come from the first place,” she said. “But there must be a pathway to some sort of accountability. Some sort of restitution. They should be able to sue.”
Pressley said the push for the bill is in response to the “chaos and terror” that ICE agents have unleashed in cities such as Chicago and Minneapolis, where they have shot and killed both immigrants and US citizens.
House Republicans last week passed a budget resolution that will enable them to fund ICE to the tune of $140 billion. If ICE agents come to Boston, Pressley said, she fears there would be more of the same as in Minneapolis. “They would make it rain on our communities,” she said.
“And I’ll say this to my African American community,” she added: “They will not care if your name is Jermaine or Joseph. They won’t know the difference. Those agents mean harm to people young, old, disabled, LGBTQ, Black, brown, white — they don’t care. So it can’t be about law and order because it is creating chaos and terror in our communities.”
She pledged to continue fighting the agency’s deportation regime. “I’m leveraging every tool available to you, the power of my pen, the power of my letterhead, the power of my platform, the power of convening, the power of the movement,” she said.
Pressley also used meeting to highlight $39 million in earmarks in the budget that she said will benefit the 7th Congressional District — funding that will enable Bunker Hill Community College to offer tuition-free degrees to students, expanded substance abuse disorder programs at the Dimock Community Health Center, funding for an LGBTQ-friendly housing development in Hyde Park, for the St. Mary’s Center for Women and Children in Dorchester which received $1.5 million and for the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, which received $1 million.
“Community project funding and earmarks are some of my favorite collaborations, because it allows us to do work in a way that is cooperative,” she said. “Instead of governing top down, you’re governing community up. You say, ‘This is what we need.’ So, it’s community informed, government endorsed, and government invested.”
Elected officials at Saturday’s event included state Rep. Brandy Flucker Reid, who emceed the meeting, and City Councillors Julia Mejia and Brian Worrell.
Pressley’s overall message was upbeat. While she at times spoke about the threats facing local communities during the current presidential administration, she urged the audience to remain active and look out for immigrant communities.
“Every time we practice radical love and do the work of mutual aid, that is how we oppose an authoritarian state,” she said.
