Temperatures well below freezing could not keep a crowd more than 100 strong from gathering outside Worcester City Hall on the evening of Jan. 20 as City Council members filed into the building for their weekly meeting and drivers passing by laid on their horns in support.
Side by side, members of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters’ Local No. 336 held signs protesting a city tax break for the Menkiti Group, which owns several downtown buildings, and immigration rights advocates chanted “ICE out of our cities” and “We protect our neighbors.”
Former City Councilor Etel Haxhiaj, one of many speakers, called listeners “to act on our shared values, which are compassion, justice, solidarity, and love,” and recalled the day last May when she and and a crowd of neighbors tried to prevent an ICE agent from detaining a Worcester woman…