Forum on Defending Our Rights, Past and Present
SEPTEMBER 25TH, 6:30pm
CCSU CAMPUS, Student Center, Sprague-Carlton Rms
Our basic rights—free speech, the right to organize, due process—are under attack. But this isn’t the first time! Past movements for freedom have left us with powerful lessons about how to resist and build collective power.
Join us for a panel and discussion with Christine Marie, Movement Historian and activist, and Juan Fonseca Tapia, a leading Connecticut immigrant rights activist. Together we’ll talk about what we can learn from earlier struggles and how we can defend our rights today.
FREE XÓCHITL NOW
FREE XÓCHITL NOW
URGENT: Catalina “Xóchitl” Santiago, a beloved community member, DACA recipient and long-time community organizer, was detained by Border Patrol on Sunday August 3, 2025 at an airport in El Paso, TX.
Xóchitl was confronted by two Border Patrol agents around 4:00 AM MST as she was about to board a domestic flight for work. Despite presenting a valid DACA work authorization card (offering proof of her protection from deportation), Border Patrol abducted and detained her without warrant or cause.
She has been transferred to a processing center in El Paso—and we must demand her immediate release! Xóchitl is a lifelong community organizer who has fought for the dignity and respect of the immigrant community for over a decade. She has made a profound impact on her loved ones and community members from Florida to Texas and beyond. Now, we need to show up for her!
Xóchitl's detention is the latest example of the Trump administration's escalating, inhumane attacks against immigrant communities. Please sign this petition now to demand her immediate release and fight back against the terror of ICE and CBP.
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URGENTE: Catalina “Xóchitl” Santiago, miembro querida de la comunidad, beneficiaria del programa DACA y organizadora comunitaria desde hace muchos años, fue detenida por ICE el domingo 3 de agosto de 2025 en el aeropuerto de El Paso, Texas.
Xóchitl fue cuestionada por dos agentes fronterizos alrededor de las 4:00 AM MST cuando se disponía a abordar un vuelo nacional para ir a trabajar. A pesar de presentar una tarjeta de autorización de trabajo DACA válida que la protege contra la deportación en los Estados Unidos, agentes fronterizos la secuestraron y detuvieron sin orden judicial ni causa justificada.
Xóchitl ha sido trasladada a un centro de procesamiento en El Paso- ¡Necesitamos demandar su liberación! Xóchitl lleva más de una década trabajando por la dignidad y el respeto de la comunidad inmigrante. Ha tenido un impacto profundo y poderoso en muchos amigos y miembros de la comunidad, desde Florida hasta Texas y más allá. ¡Ahora, tenemos que apoyarla!
La detención de Xochitl es solo el ejemplo más reciente de los ataques inhumanos de la administración de Trump en contra de nuestras comunidades inmigrantes. ¡Demanda la liberación inmediata de Xochitl y el fin del terror en nuestras comunidades por parte de ICE y CBP de una vez!
Highlighting individual cases like Xochitl Santiago’s, Mahmoud Khalil’s, and Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s can help focus our resistance to attacks on immigrant communities and our protected civil liberties.
Click photos for updates. We must continue to fight for each and every one of us.
AN INJURY TO ONE IS
AN INJURY TO ALL
Now is the time to fight back and stand up for our rights.
In a mere 6 months the federal government has abducted, jailed and/or deported an unknown number of students for exercising free speech rights, begun confiscating passports held by trans, non-binary and intersex people, sent 238 immigrants - at least 50 of whom have visas - to an overseas concentration camp without trials, hearings or charges, openly discussed sending citizens to such camps, stripped unionization rights from over 1 million union workers, arrested a judge and a mayor, begun a direct challenge to birthright citizenship, requested 20,000 national guard troops to conduct mass deportations, and proposed suspending habeas corpus.
The Trump administration is waging an escalating war on our most basic rights in order to silence its critics and turn back more than a century of gains made by working and oppressed people.
We are at a crossroads. We can hunker down, watching as our neighbors and co-workers are terrorized into silence and inaction, hoping this will somehow be the wiser choice. Or we can take this moment to create new connections with each other and strengthen old ones to build a movement capable of turning back this wave of repression - a movement that draws on labor’s ageless maxim - AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL.