By Larry Felton Johnson

With chants of “No ICE! No fear! Immigrants are welcome here!,” Indivisible Cobb, along with other progressive groups, held a rally Saturday at the intersection near Home Depot’s corporate headquarters in the Cumberland/Vinings area.

One of the event’s organizers told the Courier he did a headcount of the demonstrators lined up along all four corners of Cumberland Parkway and Paces Ferry Road, and tallied 233 people.

The location of the intersection was between the corporate headquarters for the home improvement retail giant, and its Cumberland Parkway store.

Drivers passing the intersection honked their support continuously during the two hours the Courier was present, and there were no hecklers or counter-demonstrators in evidence.

Other organizations participating in the event included the  The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), 50501 Georgia, the Woodstock Community Action Network and the NO KINGS Smyrna Activists.

The ACLU had representatives on hand as observers.

Stacey Parlotto, a spokeswoman for Indivisible Cobb, told the Courier, “We’re just out here in protest of Home Depot’s complicity with ICE.”

“They say that they’re not coordinating or cooperating with them, but we believe that they have been sharing Flock data and other surveillance materials with them,” she said. “They also are not saying anything or preventing ICE from coming onto their private parking lots and rounding up migrant workers, especially since ICE was supposed to be going after all of the violent criminals.”

“They’re coming onto Home Depot’s property and taking day laborers and Home Depot is not stopping them,” Parlotto said. “So we’ve got a demand list for Home Depot that they start standing up for human dignity and putting more protections in place for their customers, their employees, and just private citizens in general.”

Gabriel Sanchez, the state representative from Smyrna-area Georgia House District 42, was at the event with a megaphone in hand.

“We’re right outside my district,” he said. “We’re right here in Cumberland Parkway, around the Home Depot.”

“We’re out here to hold ICE accountable,” he said. “They’re a fascist authoritarian agency that’s gone rogue.”

“They’re not respecting people’s rights. They’re not following the law. And we have to do everything we can to protect our community and come together as Americans, all Americans, to fight back against authoritarianism, especially on the 250th anniversary of us declaring independence from a king,” said Sanchez.

Tim Franzen, of the American Friends Service Committee, said to the Courier, “This country’s problems didn’t start with Trump and they’re not going to end when we get rid of him.”

“But just the erosion, the gross erosion of civil and human rights … I’ve never seen anything like it in my lifetime,” he said. “An American gestapo roaming the streets, arresting citizens and non-citizens, executing people in the streets.”

“It’s something that many of us didn’t imagine could ever happen in this country,” Franzen said. “And so right now is a time to stand and be counted.”

“The American Friends Service Committee (is) here to stand with folks and to march, to demonstrate, to show up in the halls of Congress and Senate until people are treated with dignity,” he said.

Laura Judge said, “I’m here with Indivisible, specifically Indivisible North Metro Atlanta, doing media communications.”

“And I’m out here today to show support with my community members because as we’ve seen from the Department of Homeland Security and with immigration and customs enforcement, they’re just acting out and they’re killing American citizens.”

“We’re just asking for accountability and showing our neighbors that we stand up with them,” Judge said.

Steve Killian, with Indivisible Cobb, said, “if anybody’s been paying any attention, there have been over a dozen people killed in ICE and CPB custody just this year alone, just in the last month or so.”

“And of course, almost everybody knows about Renée Good and Alex Pretti,” he said. “And these people right here believe sincerely that we have a country that is based on a system of government with checks and balances and we’ve got an agency at least that is not being forthright in its operations.”

“It is hiding its officer’s identity so that when somebody is parked somewhere and a whole bunch of people come up and say, open the door, they don’t want to come out,” Killian said.

“And we’ve gotten several examples of people who have been dragged from their cars under these circumstances in which we’ve got a rogue so- called police agency. And these folks believe that there is a thing called rule of law.”

“If you’re going to quote me on anything at all, the main thing is these folks, we, Indivisible Cobb and all the other people here, all the other organizations here believe in the rule of law and we’re not seeing this regime obeying the rule of law,” Killian said.

Photo Gallery

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Unedited video from the rally