ICE Out! protest in Providence tomorrow

Protest in Providence as Part of National Shutdown to Stop ICE’s Reign of Terror

Where: RI State House

When: Friday, January 30th at 2 PM

From Beka Yang, rebekahbyang@gmail.com, (410) 402-0602

In Providence, more than one thousand demonstrators will gather at the Rhode Island State House at 2 pm for a rally and march as part of the nationwide shutdown on Friday, January 30th. After hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans led the first general strike in the U.S. in 70 years this past Friday, federal agents murdered VA ICU nurse Alex Pretti in cold blood the very next day. In response to this escalating campaign of ICE terror, the Somali Student Association of the University of Minnesota has called for a nationwide shutdown on Friday, January 30th with the call: “No Business as Usual! – No School, No Work, and No Shopping.”

Hundreds of organizations have answered the call and are preparing actions all across the country. The growing list of endorsers can be found at: https://nationalshutdown.org 

Students across Rhode Island are organizing walkouts to join the protest at the State House, including high school students from across the Providence Public Schools as well as the Wheeler School, East Greenwich, Moses Brown, Barrington, the Lincoln School. College students from Brown University to URI are also walking out. 

Immigrant rights organizations in Rhode Island have taken up the call and endorsed the national day of action, including the Immigrant Coalition of Rhode Island, Refugee Dream Center, and the Rhode Island Deportation Defense Network. Faith leaders and congregations of local churches and mosques have also pledged their support for the day of action, and will be mobilizing together as participants. Local businesses in and around Providence are putting up signs promoting the national day of action, and have pledged to close outright and instead participate in the mobilization.

This day of action will be a powerful demonstration of the increasingly militant resistance to the Trump administration's full-scale assault on our most basic rights. ICE, CBP, other federal agencies, and local police collaborators are waging a war on immigrants and citizens who dissent or just happen to be racially profiled. In addition to the horrific murders of Alex Pretti, Renée Good, Silverio Villegas González, and Keith Porter Jr., these enforcers of Trump's racist agenda have subjected the people of this country to brutal kidnappings and deportations; arbitrary arrest and imprisonment; forcible, warrantless entry into homes and workplaces; shootings with live ammunition and with "less than lethal" weapons causing severe and permanent injuries; and targeted reprisals for political expression and community organizing. 

Meanwhile, the same administration is depriving working-class and poor people of basic necessities by cutting vital support for food and heating assistance and slashing healthcare coverage, and at the same time escalating the US' longstanding imperialist siege of independent countries like Venezuela, by kidnapping President Maduro; Cuba, by cutting off their access to oil in the midst of an energy crisis; and Iran, by once again threatening to bomb and invade them.

According to an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, “These attacks are all part of the same war being waged on the people of the whole world by the same racist elite, headed by the Trump administration, escalated to the level of an occupying force openly murdering people in the streets. But this dramatic escalation of repression has provoked a dramatic escalation of resistance, on a level that hasn’t been seen in decades, and taking many different forms. The historic Minnesota General Strike has given the people a historic opening; if we use this growing momentum to stop business as usual, shut down everyday life, and threaten the profits of the elite keeping our racist government in power, we can put a stop to the killings, the kidnappings, and the growing attacks on our most basic rights.”

Organizations involved in the protest in Providence include 100+ organizations, faith institutions, businesses, labor unions, and student groups. Some of these include: AMOR Network, AFT Local 6516, Alliance of Rhode Island Southeast Asians for Education, Direct Action for Rights and Equality, Refugee Dream Center, Immigrant Coalition of RI, Cranston Forward, Providence Student Union, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Reclaim RI, People’s Port Authority, Reentry Campus Program, DWRI Letterpress.