Squirrel Hill: mourners find ‘safety in solidarity’ as they grieve after shooting
(A woman stands at a memorial outside the Tree of Life synagogue after a shooting left 11 people dead in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh on Saturday. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)
Writing for the Guardian, Payday Senior Labor Reporter has a look at how activists are using the massacre to organize for immigrants’ rights:
Riffat Chughtai, a Muslim activist, took the microphone. She spoke of how when hate crimes were directed at Muslims after 9/11, Muslims in Pittsburgh used the opportunity to build support systems for immigrants.
“Immigrants are a huge component now of the success of Pittsburgh,” she said. “Pittsburgh is one of the cities that hosts a lot of immigrants from every corner of the world and we always do.”
“Remember,” she implored: “Pittsburgh Strong.”
Ru Emmons led the crowd in a chant.
“Ignoring antisemitism will not make us safer,” Emmons said.
Mike Elk is an Emmy-nominated labor reporter who covered everything from Lula & the Brazilian labor movement to major league baseball. He spent years covering union organizing in the South for The Guardian and was labeled by the New York Times as an "abrasive gadfly" for exposing within the labor movement.
Raised in a UE union family in Pittsburgh, Elk was illegally for union organizing at Politico in 2015 and used his NLRB settlement to start the crowd-funded Payday Report. He lives in his hometown of Pittsburgh and is fluent in both Pittsburghese and Portuguese, which he learned when attending journalism school at PUC-Rio de Janerio. Email: [email protected]
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