By Bradley Fargo, news correspondent
As part of the national Writers Resist protests against President-elect Donald J. Trump, the Boston Public Library in Copley Square hosted a series of performances Sunday afternoon.
The free event began at 1:30 p.m. and featured City Councilor Ayanna Pressley alongside a host of playwrights, authors and activists. They spoke on behalf of various minority groups and organizations such as Planned Parenthood and shared some of their written work.
“We really wanted to offer a platform to communities that are going to be affected by this incoming administration,” said Daniel Pritchard, who organized the Boston event and is also the founding editor of the Critical Flame, a local literary journal. “We wanted to foreground the kind of inclusiveness and diversity that we believe is essential.”
There was not enough seating for everyone in attendance, so approximately 100 people who couldn’t get in stayed and listened to the performances through the speaker system in the basement.
Kofi Dadzie, a senior at Westborough High School, performed an original spoken word performances that included “Police Brutality from the Point of View of a Baton,” and “A Letter from Muhammad Ali to Kanye West.”
Marianne Leone spoke during the event in support of people with disabilities. Her son Jesse, who passed away 11 years ago, had a disability.
“Quite frankly, I didn’t think it would be a huge turnout, so I was kind of shocked,” Leone said after the show. “I think that a lot of people felt helpless about the incoming administration and this is a way for people to focus on what comes next.”
Fred Marchant, a poet and professor at Suffolk University, read quotes from 19th century American poet Walt Whitman. The passages Marchant chose talked about “the odd ways Americans are hypocritical and betraying their core national values.”
Inside the event hall, a projector displayed an image of a closed fist holding a pen superimposed on an orange background. The text on top of the image changed with every speaker, but the background remained throughout.
Martin Espada, a Latino poet and professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, recited two of his own poems “in response to Trump” – one bilingual and based on a mistranslation in a courtroom, and the other written in response to the events on Sept. 11, 2001.
“The perception of immigrants as dangerous is dangerous,” Espada said.
Pritchard advised the crowd to take out their phones and find a way to donate or contribute to organizations such as the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition.
“It’s important from my point of view that this event was not just readers reading to an audience, but was authors and civic leaders addressing issues essential to our democracy broken up by specific calls to action,” Pritchard said. “The immigrant population community have been openly and specifically targeted. They are a really vulnerable community; they need us to support the civil institutions that defend them.”
Photo by Dylan Shen
