Yesterday ... we melting ICE...!

Pictures: http://zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/19316



MELTING I.C.E.

What do immigrant rights have to do with the youth climate movement?

November 04, 2008

By Joshua Kahn Russell



Friday was a Halloween to remember. I had the honor of participating in an
inspiring action organized and led by Bay Area Latino & Latina youth. Over
400 high school students walked out of school on Halloween to protest the
vicious I.C.E. (Immigration Customs and Enforcement) raids that have
terrorized their communities, violently ripped apart their families,
traumatized children, racially profiled neighborhoods, and demonized hard
working people in the Bay Area and across our country.

When speaking at a convention the National Council of La Raza, even Barack
Obama has said: "The system isn't working, when 12 million people live in
hiding...when communities are terrorized by ICE immigration raids; when
nursing mothers are torn from their babies; when children come home from
school to find their parents missing; when people are detained without
access to legal counsel." And yet we see no action being taken on a
national electoral level. So yesterday young folks have decided that they
must act directly, challenging the concept that a human being can be "illegal".

I began to write a reportback of the event for the blog
itsgettinghotinhere.org. Its Getting Hot In Here is a clearinghouse for the
Youth Climate Movement - a constellation of students, grassroots
organizations, NGO nonprofits, entrepreneurs and inventors, activists and
politicos, who comprise a young but rapidly growing U.S. social movement.

As I wrote, I realized it may not be evident why someone would talk about
the struggle for immigrant justice in a forum about the Climate Crisis.

Indeed, there has been little discourse on the obvious connections between
these movements, and the case has not been adequately made to
Environmentalists that it is in their immediate interest to forge
connections with other sectors of justice struggles. In an era where the
Right is co-opting everything "green", and environmental issues move from
fringe to center, we are seeing opponents of change greenwash their ideas
and products. More recently, this has been true for anti-immigrant zealots
(see this recent Guardian article about anti-immigration groups courting
Enviros).

I decided to preface my reportback with the very beginnings of a case for
young climate activists to join forces with immigrant justice organizers.

Yesterday I felt the power of youth, and the moral legitimacy of young
people speaking truth to power - of being bold and not letting injustices
stand; of offering leadership; of youth organizing for a better world. A
Youth Climate Movement holds this same power, and as young climate
activists strive to integrate a deep understanding of power, race, class,
and gender into our movement, we would do well to explore the links between
our work and the struggles of immigrant youth and their families across the
country.

We in the U.S., as principal carbon emitters, have responsibility to bear
when it comes to this issue. The young people in our immigrant rights
demonstration held signs that said "our immigration is forced migration" -
articulately making visible the effects of policies like NAFTA, and the
havoc they have wreaked on many Latin American countries, creating the
economic hardship that forces families to move in order to survive.

We know that as Climate Crisis intensifies, millions will be displaced from
their homes - especially along the equator (and disproportionately in
countries that are not responsible for the crisis).

Where will they go?

Once again the effects of U.S. behavior will create a tidal shifts in human
migration. Will we step up to the responsibility for helping our world to
adapt to a shifting climate? Will our country be the beacon of hope it has
aspired to, a refuge for tired, huddled masses, yearning to breathe free?
Unless we sharply move toward a sane and humane immigration policy, we will
see an acceleration of barbaric dehumanization of people searching for a
better life, as more and more people are displaced, forced to adapt to a
world with increased drought, famine, floods, new pathways for disease,
super storms, intensifying wildfires, shortages of water, and rising sea
levels.

The political challenge of transforming our immigration policy to one that
is compassionate and human will only grow more difficult as more people
search for a new place to call home. Let's work for immigrant justice now.

Yesterday morning was kicked off when hundreds of East Bay youth were
prevented from riding BART to cross into San Francisco for the event. Some
were detained. Ironic, huh? Several BART stations in poor neighborhoods
were temporarily closed down. The students rallied outside the BART
stations, and started making news headlines for the disruption.

Meanwhile in SF (and eventually joined by some of the East Bay youth who
made it across), hundreds of young folks and allies, mostly Latino/a,
gathered and rallied in downtown SF. We honored the dead and disappeared by
painting our faces as skulls and dressing in black. Some wore masks on
their faces to avoid police harrassment; there were undocumented brothers
and sisters in the crowd. Traditional Cherokee and Aztec blessings,
prayers, and drums were offered, grounding participants in the large Native
presence and solidarity there, and casting the hypocrisy of the U.S.
immigration debate itself into sharp perspective. Signs crying out "I am
indigenous to this land!", "We didn't cross the borders, the borders
crossed us!" were held alongside "Immigrant rights are human rights."

We began to march to the I.C.E. building, circled it while chanting and
asserting that no human being is illegal, while out front of the building
people spoke out, including social movement veteran and Latino/a rights
activist Betita Martinez. After, Danza Azteca as well as others offered
traditional dances and prayers.

As we circled the building again, students aged 18-21 non-violently locked
themselves to barrels and lock-boxes, forming two blockades on each side of
the I.C.E. alleyway that deploys their vans for raids and to transport
prisoners. It was a beautifully and gracefully executed non-violent direct
action. Until the facility closed at 6 pm, two groups of demonstrators
supported the blockaders, sharing stories of their fathers being taken away
in the middle of the night, poetry, music, and chants of justified and
palpable pain and anger. At the close of the building, blockaders declared
victory and peacefully left the area, no arrests were made.

The organizers' words were far more powerful than anything I could write
here. The young folks who put their own bodies on the line to blockade
I.C.E. wrote a letter to San Francisco. I've shared it below, along with
more pictures.

Our Dear San Francisco,

It has begun. Last week we saw government officials blow open people's
doors in the middle of the night to kidnap so called "gang members." They
came for us. Each night we wait in panic, waiting to see who next of our
friends and family will be disappeared. But today is something else.

Today, a day when we celebrate the dead and disappeared - a day when we don
masks to make the real monsters tremble in their empty coffers - it begins.

Some say it began 516 years ago with the arrival of European colonizers -
but how do we trace the beginning of domination? Fist we will try to offer
you, in the language of numbers, what they will call "evident." We are told
we must begin with what is evident:

I.C.E. disappeared 4,956 people in the past 11 months, from Oct 1, 2007 to
Aug 31st, 2008.

Last week over 20 I.C.E. disappearances were carried out in the Bay.

How do we explain to our neighbors that what is evident for us began so
many years ago? How do we explain that so many of our grievances stem from
the way in which wealth is organized, exchanged, and stolen? The North
American Free Trade Agreement of 1994 brought many of us here, into this
country, following the wealth as the working conditions in our own
countries were degraded, as our farm lands were stolen. The rich in our
countries lined their pockets while we found that our best option was to
leave behind our communities, loved ones. That, we suppose, is our first
disappearance.

For us, it began there, in our leaving.

AND HERE, IN THE U.S., WE DISAPPEAR. Our schools disappear us from their
histories so our young people fight each semester to recognize themselves
in the books they study. We are disappeared into the dark corners of
streets - for a breath of cold SF air, or to catch up with the block, the
cops maddoggin us. Restaurants disappear us into the back rooms of
kitchens. We walk babies of the walthy; our own motherhood disappeared
behind a $1,200 stroller. We clean their homes. We are disappeared in the
house between check-in and check-out, folding new bed sheets, replenishing
the toilet paper for businessmen. We are disappeared into the gulf's
economic disasters and have our passports held by new corporate masters. We
are disappeared into labor camps under firearms. We disappear in the brush
behind manicured lawns. We are disappeared inside of sewing lairs and
strung between trunks of new fall fashion. We disappear in the drowned out
steam of spas and massaged into other people's pleasure. We are disappeared
behind filer masks to hide our gagging from the feet we touch and clean
every day. We are disappeared into homeless and women's shelters, SRO's
publish housing hi rises. We are disappeared into their marriages. We are
disappeared into their ballot boxes.

And finally we are disappeared in the middle of the night, shoved into
black vans, bound to the labyrinth of cells in the I.C.E. building
downtown. We are disappeared to Guantanamo, into the industry of terror, or
we are disappeared into the city, state, or federal prison industry so they
can turn millions of dollars each year - so they can disperse our communities.


But today is something else.


FOR US, we who laugh in the face of this absurd situation, we who are not
so much in awe of the enormity of oppression as we are freedom fighters,
community organizers, mothers, rebel workers, rebel students - those of us
who with our feet walk today towards their terrible theaters of power and
dominance, with our arms push back harder, and with our hands build new
worlds - today, we do not only denounce at our late night kitchen tables,
we do not speak quietly, wounded, overwhelmed by the federal police.

Today we do not vanish into this terrible era of disappearances, today we
become more than our enemies, more than their workforce, more than their
electoral base - today we become more than our own private traumas, today
we learn to trust one another more than we trust the politicians, the
bosses, and their police - we take a confident step towards a world where
we meet our own needs with dignity, where we make justice real, malleable,
palatable. Last week, they came for us. And today we come for them.


TODAY, IN SAN FRANCISCO, WE SHUT DOWN I.C.E. with the hope of creating a
culture that will shut every last one of their institutions down, finally,
and for good.


It is always beginning.


It was our backs you saw on the cover of the Examiners being hauled away by
I.C.E. agents,