On the evening of Oct. 30, 2017, at a special Town Meeting, Conway voters were deprived of an opportunity to ask questions, learn, debate and vote for, or against, the Conway Safe Community Bylaw.

Remarks were made referring to undocumented immigrants as drug dealers and criminals, followed by the misuse of a motion to table. Fear mongering and untruths aside, the intent of the Conway Safe Community bylaw is to make ours a safe and welcoming community for everyone who lives and visits here, regardless of their immigration status.

The bylaw prevents Conway police and town employees from stopping, investigating, or taking action against a person based on their immigration status. This prohibition will encourage trust and cooperation between all immigrants and visitors and the police department, by encouraging the exchange of information so necessary for our police department to do its job.

It will also prevent the town of Conway from incurring the additional expense and liability associated with enforcing federal immigration law. Federal courts have repeatedly ruled that requiring communities to enforce federal immigration detainers is unconstitutional and the Massachusetts Supreme Court has ruled that noncriminal detainer requests are contrary to our state constitution. The Conway Safe Community Bylaw will offer no protections for undocumented criminal offenders who are subject to prosecution and all criminal warrants issued by federal, state, or local law enforcement agencies will be enforced.

The Conway Police Department will be required to arrest and detain those people as always.

We ask every voter who would like to join the discussion about the Conway Safe Community Bylaw to attend our annual town meeting on May 14, and thus participate in the purest form of democracy in existence.

The upcoming town meeting will give residents an opportunity to resist the atmosphere of hatred and exclusion that fuels the half-truths and outright lies that form the very foundation of the deportation movement. It will give us an opportunity to reject the belief that people who are not like us, are less than us.

Nelson Shifflett

Linda Driscoll

Phyllis Jeswald

Lynne Hanley

Paul Jenkins

Brendan O’Connell

Conway