from Writings from Occupy ICE Philadelphia
What follows is a group statement from the OccupyICE encampment, currently occupying space in front of Arch St Methodist Church. This statement does not reflect the view of everyone at the encampment, however it is based on the general line of unity within the camp, arrived at through days of conversation and created through a cooperative writing and editing process.
We are writing to the coalition of organizations that inaugurated the OccupyICEPHL encampment at 8th and Cherry on July 2nd. We recognize the work and resources deployed to initiate that encampment and hold it for three days in the face of direct confrontation with the Philadelphia Police Department. There was also a great deal of political and press work done by the coalition in that time and over the following weeks and we are sure there were a lot of interventions behind the scenes to sustain the City Hall encampment to #EndPARS that we are ignorant of. We are grateful for this work and it is undeniable that we would not have gotten this far without it.
A lot has happened and many waves of organizers have passed through OccupyICE since those first few days. OccupyICE members who remain on the ground today have had very limited contact and few direct relationships with the coalition in that time, and there are real questions about who the coalition is and what its relationship to OccupyICE as an umbrella organizing body is given that distance. These questions have unsurprisingly also dominated discussions within the coalition meetings. Similarly, many difficult and problematic class dynamics have come up between coalition members who have largely decamped, organizers who have remained engaged with and close to OccupyICE but have access to housing and electronic communication with other organizers and access to other resources, and the many homeless and impoverished comrades living at the camp.
It may be confusing to some in the coalition what happened between the 2nd and 3rd encampment and why many in OccupyICE chose to support the continuation of the camp in a new location. We could spend a lot of time explaining the diverse political motives behind the move, but to put it most simply, at the time of the PARS victory, almost the entire camp of 30+ people were unhoused and had been self-managing camp for almost two weeks with bare bones logistical support, while participating and initiating a campaign of escalating actions during the final week of the campaign. In that time the comrades that joined and became the core of OccupyICE, and who ultimately pushed the PARS campaign over the finish line, rapidly developed a community, political consciousness, intitiative, strategy and leadership. In the final days of the city hall encampment, very few of the comrades on the ground were willing to stop the occupation and give up their organizational base. Additionally, members of OccupyICE who are unhoused had no option to “go home,” or even to vanish from the public sphere and enjoy the relative safety and anonymity that most residents of large cities can enjoy. These comrades are on the streets and are now known by the police to have participated in forceful and militant demonstrations for immigrant rights, in a very real sense, these comrades have committed to the struggle and there is no turning back for them as long as the continue living on the streets of Philadelphia.
The 3rd encampment has survived less than a week, and comrades are currently literally sleeping on the sidewalk, in the rain with no shelter and a very limited supply and support base. Without committed support from other organisations, Occupy ICE will not be able to set up a safe, clean and stable encampment — it should be considered that the more the coalition is stalled on a way forward, and the further it drifts from its street presence, the more real damage is done to the bodies and mental health of real comrades who have maintained that street presence despite feeling forgotten about, and even at times disrespected.
In fact, what some of you should find most startling is that these comrades are still committed to the fight. We are already mobilized around the Shut Down Berks and Abolish ICE campaigns and desire to continue waging that fight. Homeless organizers have also articulated and begun developing a campaign against Stop-and-Frisk and have many ideas around pushing politically on housing and other issues effecting the homeless. The camp is politically conscious, decidedly working-class and proletarian, multi-racial, multi-gendered and intergenerational.
Politically, we feel the camp has a great deal to offer any political alliance. We have demonstrated the willingness and skills necessary to occupy indefinitely with minimal material support. We have demonstrated the ability to sucessfully initiate militant demonstrations and disruptions with very little advanced planning or resources. We have demonstrated a great deal of tenacity, fearlessness, creativity and independence of action. We think the camp, in making strikes against the power of ICE and the PPD, and in its ability to accomodate a large diversity of tactics, is an invaluable base of operations for an ongoing street movement. We have persevered through the resourcefulness and initiative, at a small-group level, of small autonomous groups of highly-skilled and creative individuals taking whatever action seems politically or logistically best-suited to a given situation. What we have left over from losing our numbers, two homes, most of our shit and a lot of outside support has in large part been held together by these individuals, whose work in Occupy ICE has been a radicalising and motivating experience for everybody on the ground here, themselves included. In fact, far from needing political education or organisation by the coalition, we believe that any given coalition member could become a more capable, self-sustaining, initiative-oriented and radical organising force by learning from and working with these comrades at the street level. We have.
Organizers and cadre coming into prolonged contact with the encampment will have their class politics and analysis challenged and sharpened, should they be willing to listen and learn from comrades who have been actually living on the bottom, in the front lines of late capitalism. All of us have learned and grown tremendously, have been inspired, challenged, frequently uncomfortable, and (we hope) permanently changed by the experience. We have also demonstrated a strong capacity for doing street level organizing and outreach. During the last week of the OccupyICE city hall encampment, we demonstrated the ability to serve as a militant ally/umbrella for other left organizations, as we linked our demonstrations with ADAPT, MOVE, REAL Justice and the struggle for Puerto Rican independence. In that time we also distributed untold thousands of zines and fliers in direct street level outreach.
We understand that personal conflicts exist regarding drugs and alcohol use on site, and that for many open conflict can be disturbing, even triggering. We obviously support anyone in recovery from substance or mental health troubles that were stirred up by the camp. Perhaps this kind of support work is something the coalition, with its experienced organizers and its ties to non-profits, is perfectly positioned to provide and offer. But we do not believe that this is the only issue keeping people from the camp, nor do we believe it is a major political divide. We want to meet the coalition where it’s at, and interface with it as comrades.
However — this is not an offer to perform work narrowly in line with the strategy of organisations that are fully disengaged from the camp. The camp’s leadership has a level of political-strategic finesse that deserves to be taken seriously. The coalition, meanwhile, has not proven to be the most efficient deployment of the deep levels of creativity, power, organizational experience and revolutionary fire represented by its members. Meetings have seemingly become conflictual and demobilizing: after the last meeting, one of the central organizers in the coalition resigned in disgust and frustration, while the critiques that caused them to do so were treated as bad-faith “wrecking” behavior. This level of tension and burnout is not a desirable result from anyone’s perspective: we also think it’s unnecessary.
From the perspective of those of us still on the ground, there needs to be a renewed strategy about acheiving the remaining goals of the coalition (Shut Down Berks / Abolish ICE / making sure PARS expires / Ending Stop and Frisk). To date we have heard no proposals that includes a role for the militant core of the occupation. There seem to be limited opportunities to re-establish an occupation or blockade targeting Berks in Philadelphia and though we have had serious internal conversations about reestablishing the blockade or otherwise interfering with ICE, we have not heard it proposed from any other organized body. We are worried that the coalition is claiming OccupyICE in name only at this point and would rather continue the campaigns in a diminished and less intensive manner. We think that is an error, but by refusing to admit that such a diminishing is what the coalition wants, the coalition doubles down on this error by creating grounds for conflict, fragility and frustration in the gap between stated desires and actual actions. We believe that honesty and clarity of purpose, no matter what decision they lead to, from the total abolition of the coalition and refocusing on organizations’ autonomus projects to a commitment to totally reengaging with and rebuildling the camp, or anything in between, will greatly reduce tension, sectarian conflict and burn out among coalition organizers.
We are proposing moving forward with a strategy that centers occupation among other tactics around our political objectives, to both advance the campaigns as well as providing political cover and support for the autonomous working-class organizing coming out of the homeless community. If we do not re-establish an encampment that has the political backing of established organizations in Philadelphia we will lose all the political organization and momentum that we have built and the comrades who have put their lives on the line, believing in our cause, will be left to fend for themeselves and face the violence of the state, alone. Obviously we don’t feel that is a principled political or ethical option, but we also don’t feel it is a strategic one.
We ask that the OccupyICE coalition will seriously consider our proposal and do us the courtesy of giving us a straightforward response, in a reasonable timeframe, about its level of commitment to these campaigns, so that we may make our own decisions moving forward. Please remember that as these conversations wind their way through various organizations and commmittees, we are actually living on the street and our logistical support, our strength, our ability to organize and to mobilize is deteriorating with each passing day without sustained support from the activist community. We also want to raise the question to the broader coalition of whether or not it is justified to continue claiming the mantle of OccupyICE if occupation is not being discussed as a tactic for acheiving our campaign goals.
We will have to make our own moves soon, and we hope that we can move together.
