We are Indigenous
We are Indigenous.
With those words and a picture, these folks claim to have the right to be able to move and live freely wherever they choose, and as a result, they would expect "ICE" to be abolished and shut down.
They say "If you're an ICE agent, quit your job"
That's the new motto, another occupation apparently, "Occupy ICE"
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Unfiltered: ‘If you’re an ICE agent … quit your job’
On the corner of West Houston and Varick Streets in New York City is a towering beige building. With rows upon rows of dark windows and a waving American flag at its entrance, it looks uniform and yet strangely foreboding. On most days, however, 201 Varick blends in with the rest of the cityscape.
But on June 25 a crowd stood outside its steps. Armed with homemade signs and posters, they yelled at a stream of cars driving past. “Deportations happen here! Deportations happen here!” they chanted.
The Varick Street building is home to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing center, where immigrants are detained and appear before an immigration court. According to data from ICE, the total number of immigrant arrests in New York City has increased by more than 65 percent in just the last year.
On that June day, Marisa Holmes, a filmmaker and activist, was one of the protesters gathered outside the building. She watched as men in chains were loaded into vans, which drove out into the street from the exit of a post office next door after activists blocked ICE entrances. “It was very clear, you know, six guys lined up in handcuffs, being taken away,” said Holmes. “Not brought into the facility for court, but being taken out.” An NYU study found that ICE has routinely denied bail to detainees, having done so in approximately 80 percent of cases from 2005 to 2010. For those detainees, deportation is a very real possibility. Holmes’s group, the Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council, or MACC, is one of the organizations leading Occupy ICE NYC, a group that’s part of a coalition protesting against ICE around the country.
Occupy ICE NYC was inspired by the actions of the first Occupy ICE, in Portland, Ore. When it started on June 17, the movement had no name — it began as a vigil being held outside the ICE detention facility to protest the Trump administration’s immigrant family separation policy. “We have detention facilities for children, and they’re reminiscent of Japanese internment camps,” a horrified Holmes said of immigrant children being forcefully taken from their parents. “Separation of families has always been a way to lay the groundwork for ethnic cleansing and genocidal policies.”
Eventually, the vigil transformed into a full-blown encampment. Individuals brought tents, set up a kitchen and provided legal services for immigrants going through the legalization process. Ultimately, protesters were shut down by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE employees in full riot gear, but not before inspiring other places to create their own Occupy ICE groups — local Occupy outposts have popped up in cities like San Francisco, Tacoma, Los Angeles, Detroit and Philadelphia. They’ve attracted a slew of diverse participants; one city’s Occupy ICE Twitter account is run by a 16-year-old on summer break from school. “ICE is terrorizing certain parts of the population in this country,” explained Holmes. “It’s incredibly dehumanizing and criminalizing, and its very existence calls into question what kinds of values we have. … People are starting to realize that, and that’s motivating a lot of the occupations that are happening around the country.”
Rest - https://www.yahoo.com/news/unfiltere...172940924.html
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Originally Posted by jimnyc
