Good turn-out for Rhode Island protest
Over two thousand people, mostly students from Rhode Island universities, colleges and high schools, rallied and marched outside the Rhode Island State House on Friday as part of a nationwide shutdown, walk-out, and general strike called by the Somali Student Association of the University of Minnesota in response to the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) murder of Alex Pretti and the escalating campaign of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) terror.
Participating schools included, among many others, Brown
University, the University of Rhode Island (URI),
the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Johnson
& Wales University, Roger Williams University, Rhode
Island College (RIC), and the Community College of
Rhode Island (CCRI), The Wheeler School, Moses
Brown School, Lincoln School and Providence, East
Greenwich, and Barrington Public Schools.
The event began with a short speaking program before
marching through downtown Providence and returning to the State House. For more
information, see: ICE
Out! National Day of Action: Protest in Providence as part of the national
shutdown to stop ICE’s reign of terror
Here’s the video:
Diego Castillo, an organizer with the Party for Social Liberation:
It fills my heart to see so many people out here. Minnesota
called, and Rhode Island is answering right now. Today, our country’s at an
inflection point. ICE agents have been invading cities across the country.
They’re tearing apart families, they’re destroying communities, and terrorizing
workers for how they look, for how they speak. Over the last few weeks, over
3000 ICE agents invaded and occupied the City of Minneapolis in a racist
campaign of terrorism, specifically targeting the local Somali population.
During this time, agents have killed at least two
people: Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti. Renee
and Alex were murdered because they dared to stand up for their neighbors. It
is the duty of every person here today and every person in the country with
even an ounce of empathy, with even an ounce of solidarity, to stand up.
Last Friday, the City of Minneapolis pulled off something
historic. They pulled off a general strike with hundreds of thousands,
something that we had not seen in nearly a century. However, the murder of Alex
Pretti and the continued state violence against the immigrant community have
made it clear that our job is not done. We need to take it to the next level,
and this is exactly why Somali and Black student unions in Minneapolis put out
the call to expand the strike to the national level, and that’s exactly why
it’s so crucial for every one of us to be out here today sending the message
that there will be no more business as usual as workers and students. When we
don’t go to work, when we refuse to go to class, nothing in this nation can
move. It doesn’t matter how rich the billionaires backing Trump are. If their
employees walk out, they won’t make a dime, and that’s what makes this shutdown
important, and that’s precisely why the billionaire ruling class is so afraid
of it. Last week, 60 major corporations issued a joint letter seeking to lower
the temperature. All this week, Democrats in Washington have been doing
everything that they can to cover for ICE, pursuing meaningless mitigator
reforms.
Let’s be clear. You can’t reform slave catchers. You can’t
reform the Gestapo. You can’t reform ICE. We know why Democrats are saying that
our calls for abolition are too idealistic. It’s the same reason that
Democrats, every year that they control the White House, have given record
increases to ICE. It’s the same reason that Obama deported hundreds of
thousands and built the very same detention centers that Trump is using today.
It is the same reason why, under Biden, 8-year-old Anadith Danay Reyes
Alvarez died in Border Patrol custody simply because they refused to
give her the medical care that she needed.
We know why. It’s because the same billionaires fund both
parties, and they demand that their secret force terrorize the working class
into not organizing, not speaking out, and not fighting for our rights on the
job. We can’t reform ICE anymore than we can reform the capitalist system,
where a few billionaires control everything and leave us begging for scraps.
That’s why workers across this country are rising to say, Abolish ICE! Abolish
ICE! Abolish ICE! Abolish ICE!
Pastor Santiago Rodriguez: Gloria Dei Lutheran Church and the Ascension Episcopal Church:
Thank you to the organizer of this powerful protest. I stand
here in solidarity with Minneapolis and its Black and Somali students. We stand
here as people of faith who work for justice, peace, and love. You people from
ICE are receiving your salary from our taxes. Your salary is not for you to use
your power to abuse people in our communities. We have the call from the
students in Minneapolis, and we are here to say, but peacefully, “ICE out of
our communities, out of Minneapolis, and out of Rhode Island.”
The kingdom of God is here. The kingdom of God is peace,
love, and justice. You are doing the work of God here. I want to invite the
whole faith community to stand up and protest what is happening in our country.
We can’t be quiet anymore. We have to fight. We have to be present, fighting
for peace in our country and saying together, “ICE out!”
Diego Castillo: We’re so grateful for the leadership that
Pastor Santiago has offered in this moment. In cities across the country,
across all religions and denominations, faith leaders have stepped up and stood
up to ICE. During last week’s general strike in Minneapolis, a hundred local
clergy were arrested during a sit-in at the airport, demanding that ICE stop
terrorizing their community. Clergy play an invaluable role, and we cannot do
this without them. Thank you, Pastor Santiago.
Sophia and Catarina - Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance (AMOR):
We’re here today because we know we are stronger together.
The people protect the people, from Rhode Island to Minnesota, Maine, Oregon,
Arizona, and every corner in this country where there is resistance. Resistance
is in our blood. In 2002, our Rhode Island Cambodian community mobilized a
march to the INS office to defend the folks being targeted for detention and
deportation. The federal government was targeting permanent residents who came
to the U.S. as refugees from a genocide in the sixties and seventies. Why?
Because immigration law expanded the grounds for deportation to include any
misdemeanor or felony that received a sentence of over one year. This law was
retroactive and applied to people who had already served their time.
We saw fathers, teenagers, and young adults ripped away from
their families and their communities, forcibly removed to a country they had no
memory of. In 2006, hundreds of immigrant Rhode Islanders mobilized as part of
a nationwide movement known as the Day Without Immigrants. Back then, like now,
they could not silence immigrants through fear. These same community members,
organized through the Olneyville Neighborhood Association, fought to protect
their neighbors by launching the First Defense Network in Rhode Island. Back
then, it was just a cell phone passed from one volunteer to the next, to
friends and neighbors who were ready to mobilize in the middle of the night to
protect their loved ones.
In 2008, the brutality and medical neglect of ICE agents at
the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls killed Hiu Lui (“Jason”) Ng, a
father and green card holder who was being held there. Our community, including
Pastor Santiago, stood up to push ICE out of the Wyatt. Around that same time,
this community rose to fight for the Dream Act when our undocumented young
people demanded a pathway to citizenship and to be able to pay for their higher
education. In 2010, Rhode Islanders joined the nationwide pushback against the
SB 1070 in Arizona law that allowed for racial profiling and forced immigrants
to carry their documents or face a misdemeanor.
For decades, our immigrant community in Rhode Island and
across the country has fought for basic freedoms: the right to due process,
pathways to citizenship, and what some would call immigration reform. But our
so-called representatives won’t talk about immigration reform. For the past
eight years, Democrats and Republicans alike have forced our movements to focus
on how our immigrant community will survive until the next day with their
families intact.
The Alliance to Mobilize our Resistance was
founded in 2017 to fight back against an administration that promised to ramp
up attacks against our immigrant community. That’s why we’re here today, to
shut down their profits and exercise our power as a movement to say enough to
the atrocities that the immigration system and ICE are committing against our
communities every day. If they’re killing people in daylight, in front of
cameras, on our streets, what crimes are they committing against our people
behind the walls of the detention center?
This year, with Senate
Bill 2278, Rhode Island state legislators will fight alongside us to
shut down the Wyatt.
Shut it down! Shut it down! Shut it down!
Join the Deportation Defense Network, a statewide
movement to defend against ICE terror. If you are not already involved, please
take out your phone and text “Defense” to 401 675-1414 to get
involved.
Today we’re striking to interrupt a wave of violent
suppression across the country. Like those who came before us, we’ll not be
silenced by fear. We’re joined by high school and college students from 14-plus
schools. We’re joined by union workers and small businesses. The more we
organize and mobilize, the stronger we become in taking care of each other. Our
resistance does not end when we go home tonight. We’ll continue until ICE is
abolished and all our people are free. Free them all! Free them all! Free them
all!
Kenneth - Brown Rise Up!:
I am speaking on behalf of the thousands of students from
Brown, URI, RISD, Johnson and Wales, Roger Williams, RIC, and CCRI. We are out
to shut it down!
We have shut down our campuses, far-flung across Rhode
Island, in opposition to the brutality and violence that we have seen rule our
streets for months. I am deeply moved by the show of strength that we’ve
managed to assemble out here while it is seven degrees. I’m so proud to be out
here in solidarity with the Black and Somali student organizers, bearing the
brunt of it in Minneapolis, who called for this strike.
I’m also proud to be out here with UCLA, Princeton, Harvard,
U Miami, the University of Florida, Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Connecticut, and
thousands of universities that are walking out right now. ICE is waging a
terror campaign against every sector of society, and our schools are not
exempt. Across the United States, ICE agents have kidnapped thousands of
undocumented and international students. ICE has deported professors with
anti-Trump memes on their phones and targeted students who speak up for Palestinian
liberation.
I remember standing on those very steps last year when our
professor, Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a kidney transplant surgeon at the
Medical School at Brown University, was
deported.
ICE is the agency responsible for some of the worst crimes
we have seen in this country. The morning after the shooting that took two of
our classmates, literally two hours after the shelter-in-place order was lifted
on our campus, ICE agents kidnapped a person on Chalkstone Avenue. ICE
exploited our shock and fear - the fear that the entire community was feeling
after the shooting - to break into a house and kidnap one of our community
members.
ICE is a fascist militia. It is an armed formation comprised
of the worst dregs of American society. You know why you haven’t seen any Proud
Boys or Nazi rallies recently? Because they all joined ICE.
We all walked out today because we know that our elected
leaders will not dismantle this pack of white supremacists. The Republicans are
a group of fascists who want immigrants and minorities dead. Donald
Trump himself said that if Stephen Miller had his way, America would
consist of a hundred million people and they would all look like Stephen
Miller. That means every non-white person is removed from this country.
At the same time, too many Democrats serve as enablers for
this fascism. Last week, seven House Democrats joined with Republicans to pass
legislation that provides billions in funding to ICE. Why were they able to do
this? Because Hakeem Jeffries and House Democratic leadership
were too feckless, they refused to use their legislative power to get Democrats
to vote against ICE.
Congress will not protect our campuses and communities from
ICE. The police won’t protect us from ICE because they collaborate with
ICE. The Supreme Court won’t protect us from ICE because Clarence
Thomas is on it.
Who’s going to protect our neighbors from ICE? We are!
That’s why all of us students are out here today, participating in this
shutdown alongside every other member of our community, and that’s why we are
ready to shut it down again and again until we evict ICE once and for all.
Today is the foundation on which we build tomorrow. We can only defeat ICE if
we are organized. If it takes one strike, if it takes two strikes, if it takes
a hundred strikes, we will be striking until ICE is defeated.
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