NYC bodegas to shut down to protest Trump immigration ban

Golden Deli, a Yemeni-owned bodega in Manhattan, was swelling with customers who picked up early lunches before it closed.

The Thursday strike is set to take place from noon until 8 p.m., with over 1,000 stores slated to participate in the protest.

“The great thing about a bodega is that they have everything you need as a New Yorker”, said Will Luckman, a Brooklyn resident and protester.

Better get your sandwich and coffee early today.

“Like many immigrant communities, this Yemeni group works the jobs we need to keep the city going, but that we often neglect when we think of how a city works”, Rashid said. “We have to practice our democracy”. It took five years for Namer, his mother, and his two siblings to get visas to come to the U.S., during the Obama administration.

“Why do we come here? You can not divide us”. “Why do you make me odd in the country?” “That’s why it breaks my heart every time“, Alsulaimi said.

“I’ve seen people I haven’t seen for years”, said AlSaidi. All over the Yemeni community there was this feeling of we could speak and people are here to help us and we have a voice.

“You are NY, you are part of our city, you belong here and we stand with you”, says Brewer. “It doesn’t say that”.

Now, Muharram says, having family and friends visit is impossible, at least during the order’s 90-day duration.

As night fell, a raucous but orderly crowd of at least 1,000 people including numerous shopkeepers filled a plaza in Brooklyn to protest the travel ban.

So, at noon across NY, shop owners pulled down their stores’ corrugated metal gates. They mocked him with signs like “Grow a spine, Chuck!” and “Chuck’s a chicken”. “I’m here essentially out of solidarity to support our bodega owners”.

This was Muharram’s first protest in the US. “I want just to feel like anyone else, live just my life”, he said.

The Trump travel ban upset the city’s Yemeni community, since so many have their families overseas in Yemen.

Thursday, the bodega owners went on a strike of their own. “It separates families”, he said. The mood Thursday is distinct from many prior marches and rallies: The enormous crowd of Yemeni workers and shop owners, along with their allies, fly hundreds of American flags, outnumbering Yemeni flags, frequently interrupting the speakers with jubilant cries of, “USA!”

The throngs of people chanted, “No ban, no wall, U.S. for all”.