Chelsea has a huge Latino population—and according to Gladys Vega, the executive director of the nonprofit Chelsea Collaborative, some 10,000 of them are undocumented. Given Donald Trump’s hard line on illegal immigration, it’s no surprise his election sent a shock wave through that city just north of Boston.
“People are in despair,” Vega said. “I’ve never shed so many tears with community members together, because of the outcome of the election, and because of what our future president represents.”
Vega says there’s especially sharp anxiety among so-called “Dreamers,” young people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children. The Obama Administration’s DACA program allowed them to study, work, and avoid deportation. But they still don’t have permanent legal status.
“Now, the U.S. government has all their information,” Vega noted. “President Trump has all of their profiles, their pictures, their addresses. You know—is he going to…take that information and turn it over to Homeland Security?”
In Trump’s inaugural address, Vega says, she’d love to hear him announce plans to pardon the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants—but she’s not holding her breath.
Also on Vega’s inaugural wish list: a significant shift in Trump’s tone.
“He has to prove that he’s not about hate,” Vega said. “This whole thing about making fun of people, making fun of disabled people, talking about females as if they were just sex objects and stuff like that—it’s completely out of line.”
Debra Robbin heads Jane Doe Inc., the Boston-based anti-sexual assault and domestic violence organization. During the presidential campaign, Robbin says, she saw allegations of sexual misconduct by Trump take a toll.
“A lot of survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence,” Robbin said, “felt triggered, felt unsafe, even more unsafe than they might on a daily basis—that the world we have come to feel that we can operate in with some integrity and autonomy was being dismantled.”
Robbin knows what she’d like Trump to say in his inaugural speech. She just can’t imagine him actually saying it.
“I’d want that person”—i.e., Trump—“to reassure…people that they’re safe in their homes and communities, that they’ll be respected with integrity, that their bodily autonomy and reproductive choices will be preserved,” Robbin said.
“I can be hopeful, but I’m not necessarily being optimistic about that,” she added. “I think that we’ve entered a new era.”
Like Robbin, Harvard Law School professor Ron Sullivan is deeply skeptical of the incoming president. He’s concerned about the tenor of the campaign Trump ran, saying it made him fear for the health of American democracy. He’s also worried about the direction of the nation’s courts.
Still, some of Sullivan’s hopes for Trump’s inaugural address don’t seem far fetched.
“I’d seriously advise him to make it clear he’s the president for everybody, that democracy is larger than any one individual, and that he in a very real sense is a caretaker, a steward of the democracy,” Sullivan said. “And in that vein, that he’s going to do everything he can to ensure that every citizen receives equal protection under the law.”
But Sullivan also supports the Black Lives Matter movement, which Trump has blamed for stoking fatal assaults on police. In Trump’s speech today, Sullivan says, he’d like to hear him take a different tack.
“I think it’s important for our new president to recognize that there’s a problematic history between law enforcement and people of color,” Sullivan said. “That complaints from Black Lives Matter, and people sympathetic to Black Lives Matter, are not made up, they’re not pretend, they’re not overreaching.”
“Based on what I’ve seen so far, I can’t imagine anything close to what I’m suggesting,” Sullivan added. “But hope springs eternal, so we’ll see what happens.”
Still, even if Trump’s inaugural address is packed with inclusive rhetoric and policy proposals that disarm his critics, Gladys Vega of the Chelsea Collaborative says she won’t be celebrating.
“The guy says something today—tomorrow he changes, two hours after he changes, then he denies it,” Vega said. “So how can you trust a government like that? I have no confidence in the guy.”
That’s a level of mistrust that one speech, however well-crafted, may not be able to change.
