A Rapper, the Pope, and the Quakers Advocate for Immigrants
Protesting on Pentecost Sunday for Justice
New rappers and the new pope are calling for compassionate justice. We all need to join them.
“There are ruthless attacks that are creating fear and chaos in our communities in the name of law and order. Trump is using military forces to stop a protest — I want y'all to consider what kind of government it appears to be when every time we exercise our democratic right to protest, the military is deployed against us,” American rapper Doechii said in her acceptance speech at the BET Awards on Sunday night.
She was nominated for six awards and won the 2025 award for Best Female Hip Hop Artist after LA police arrested 113 demonstrators who were legally protesting against the recent MAGA administration’s illegal mass deportations and kidnappings.
MSNBC Opinion Blogger Ja'han Jones commended her lone act of bravery. Not one celebrity at the podium during the five-hour event spoke out against the militarized response to the anti-ICE demonstrations in Los Angeles, where the BET Awards were hosted. Doechii was the only one to directly criticize the federalizing (a verb most of us have never heard until this week) of the National Guard in an unconstitutional deployment against California Governor Gavin Newsom’s authority.
“Where L.A.-bred icons like Kendrick Lamar, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg (who performed at a Trump inaugural event this year) took the stage and stayed silent on the matter, Doechii — a relative newcomer to the music industry — did not,” Jones pointed out.
“The bravery was notable: Doechii potentially putting her fledgling stardom and rising popularity at risk to speak out. But with her speech, Doechii joins the ranks of other popular female rappers who have spoken out on social justice issues while prominent men in the industry twiddle their thumbs,” Jones concluded.
As demonstrations continue, President Trump has deployed 700 Marines to join the National Guard. The Pentagon estimates the cost to taxpayers of this mobilization will be $134 million.1
On the other side of the country, young Quaker faithful are continuing a long legacy of standing for equality and social justice. On May 22nd, 2025, they started their three-week walk from NYC to Washington, D.C. “to protest recent policies from the United States government and Trump administration that undermine the universal freedoms granted to all in this country.”2
They walked 300 miles to stand with immigrants.
“It is a scary time, but it is essential that we, who are in the least danger come into the fullness of our courage, and speak out for those who will be punished themselves,” Max Goodman, one of the Quaker Walk lead organizers, said solemnly at the Interfaith March for Freedom.
This modern-day pilgrimage was an ecumenical effort to deliver an unequivocal message to our legislators, the taxpayer-funded employees who represent us: “Mass deportation and detention are NOT the answer.”
They delivered a formal, comprehensive statement titled the Walk to Washington Remonstrance Of the Quaker Walkers of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, to the United States Government.3
It begins, “Through your action or inaction, you have permitted the intrusion of federal officers into our houses of worship to abduct our friends and neighbors,” and continues unflinchingly: “Being ourselves immigrants, or their descendants, delivered to this land by a violent history, we cannot judge anyone else seeking freedom and shelter here today. We are bound instead by a sacred obligation to do good to one another in all circumstances.”
You can read the entire beautiful text here.
The BET Awards coincided with Pentecost Sunday this year. As Pope Leo XIV celebrated his first Pentecost Sunday Mass, he called for a spiritual opening of borders. Speaking to some 70,000 people from more than 100 countries in Rome, he said, “Where there is love, there is no room for prejudice, for ‘security’ zones separating us from our neighbors, for the exclusionary mindset that, tragically, we now see emerging also in political nationalisms.”4
While he did not explicitly condemn the illegal and immoral U.S. immigration policies terrorizing communities, or the accelerating militarization like Doechii did, his invocation appeals to our individual morality and our collective responsibility as Christians.
The Church, he said, “must open the borders between peoples and break down the barriers between class and race. In her, there cannot be those who are neglected or disdained,” he said in his homily.5
As the LA protests grew and additional demonstrations began in other U.S. cities6 against the current immigration policies, our new pope said, “At Pentecost, the Apostles spoke the languages of those they met, and the confusion of Babel was finally resolved by the harmony brought about by the Spirit. Whenever God’s ‘breath’ unites our hearts and makes us view others as our brothers and sisters, differences no longer become an occasion for division and conflict but rather a shared patrimony from which we can all draw, and which sets us all on journey together, in fraternity.”7
Language does not divide the human family. We always have a shared harmony.
The Pontiff said if we accept the gift of love, “We then become capable of opening our hearts to our brothers and sisters, overcoming our rigidity, moving beyond our fear of those who are different, and mastering the passions that stir within. The Spirit also transforms those deeper, hidden dangers that disturb our relationships, like suspicion, prejudice or the desire to manipulate others. I think too, with great pain, of those cases where relationships are marked by an unhealthy desire for domination, an attitude that often leads to violence, as is shown, tragically, by numerous recent cases of femicide.”8
As Marine Corps Veteran and Harvard alum Jos Joseph responded to an NYT carousel of photos from the LA demonstrations, “MAGA riots for felons. California riots for families.”
It’s a politically sticky word choice. We are not rioting. But we are fighting. You don’t have to be an award-winning rapper or the world leader of a major religion to stand up for what’s right.
Good people of all faiths, or none, we have more in common than not. Major change is most effective when we stand together.
https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/la-protests-ice-raids-trump-06-10-25
https://www.fcnl.org/updates/2025-06/quakers-walking-washington-justice
https://www.fcnl.org/sites/default/files/2025-05/Flushing%20Remonstrance%2C%20Modern%20Document.pdf
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/264615/pope-leo-xiv-on-pentecost-sunday-the-holy-spirit-inspires-us-to-break-down-walls
https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/homilies/2025/documents/20250608-omelia-pentecoste.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/anti-ice-protests-held-coast-coast-l-unrest-national-movement-grows-rcna211980
https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/homilies/2025/documents/20250608-omelia-pentecoste.html
https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/homilies/2025/documents/20250608-omelia-pentecoste.html