Rebellion and Possibility: Voices in the Anti-ICE Struggle

  • August 9, 2018 7:26 pm

from It’s Going Down

The following is the introduction to Vol. 1 of the new zine Rebellion and Possibility: Voices in the Anti-ICE Struggle. Vol. 1 of the zine can be found here. Vol. 2 will be released shortly.

Download Booklet HERE

“COMBINE, INTENSIFY, FEDERATE: Radical struggle and the anti-ICE movement”

By Redrick of the Radical Education Department

0. Overview

The nationwide rebellion against ICE is a pivotal moment in American radical struggle.  It burst forth as part of a historic, massive wave of revolt that has been shaking the US for the past year and a half.

But the anti-ICE rebellion is helping to radicalize that struggle.  In the face of the fascism that ICE embodies, the struggle combines some of the most radical currents of struggle in the US: antifascism, pro-immigrant and anti-xenophobia struggles, movements for police and prison abolition, and revolutionary socialism, communism, and anarchism.

Through that combination, radical struggle is intensifying.  It is developing a combative and militant stance against cops, prisons, the state, and the capitalist class war they all exist serve.  In their attacks on ICE facilities and beyond, they are spreading a recognition that ICE is a symptom of a systemic capitalist domination, and that the solution itself must be a new social order.  We must not forget, though, that the explosion of anti-ICE actions in May, June, and July is only the latest in inspiring struggles against xenophobia, deportation, and white supremacy, struggles that have been led by detainees, immigrant-rights groups, and the anti-police and anti-prison movements for many years.  Those uprisings have laid the foundations for this work and they continue to lead it in some of the most inspiring and powerful examples of solidarity.

But the anti-ICE movement is at a crossroads.  It has won important victories, like disrupting the operation of ICE in many cities.  Here in Philly a coalition has forced the mayor to end the city’s sharing of information with ICE as it hunts for undocumented workers.  At the same time, occupations are under constant, brutal attack.  They are being swept away, and the limits of occupation as a tactic are becoming painfully clear.

More importantly: the forces of revolt are running up against the limits of their too-narrow social relations.  In other words: the rebellion being unleashed by the combining of revolutionary currents is more radical and more powerful than the movement knows what to do with.  Its inner dynamics are pushing it further left: from legal marches and protests to illegal ones; from there to occupations, blockades, and clashes with pigs; from there to demands to transform structural elements of the police state.  Local uprisings have found themselves, time and again, facing the possibility of overtaking ICE offices, overwhelming police forces, and spreading the disruption of capital across cities and across the country.  But they usually stop short.  The piece “Portland, OR: Report Back from #FamiliesBelongTogether March” below puts it:

We had the numbers to overrun, in that moment, and re-barricade the building. The crowd seemed confused about suddenly finding themselves in a situation where they have more power then police. As the police moved their cars into the street and got in formation the crowd just kind of gently moved back. the moment was gone, the spear tip of praxis had dissipated.

What possibilities are opening up for deepening radical struggle?  How can the explosions of radicalism and militancy be developed and channeled into bigger, more powerful organizations?  What can we learn from each other’s struggles so far?  The first two volumes of this zine try to help ask and answer these questions.

First, Vol. 1 offers an introduction to the two volumes.  That piece—“Combine, intensify, federate: Radical struggle and the anti-ICE movement”—places the anti-ICE uprising in the context of capital’s regressive, fascistic, and uneven development over the last four decades.  It ultimately asks: what’s next?  How do we shift into the next phase of revolutionary struggle?

The introduction points to two major possibilities: (a) multiplying local “direct action committees” to coordinate the struggle beyond occupations, (b) and—above all—building a nationwide federation of anti-ICE struggles to deepen, broaden, and intensify the attack on ICE and further our revolutionary goals.

Then, Vols. 1 and 2 collect some of the writings generated by those involved in the anti-ICE movement over the last year.  The selection is explicitly from those expressing radical, and especially anti-authoritarian, perspectives.  Our aim is to help share some of the inspiring and essential ideas and lessons that radicals are generating.  The hope is that, more and more, we can move past this powerful but still fragmented phase into one in which our struggles are federated across the country.

This zine is radically incomplete. The anti-ICE struggle is producing an avalanche of powerful and important reflections—strategy, tactics, analysis—and this is barely a scraping. But I hope it contributes to developing the struggle.

With this in mind, the first two volumes of the zine are only a start.  I hope to continue this work of sharing the voices of this crucially important struggle. But the project was never “mine” to begin with. I rely on my comrades across the country and beyond, known and unknown to me, to produce more volumes that can help collect and connect the ideas cascading out of this movement.

The combination of radical struggles in the anti-ICE revolt is intensifying and broadening revolutionary power in this country.  Sharing the ideas, experiences, and strategies of the many disconnected parts of the movement will be essential if we are to transition from rebellion to a revolutionary movement.  These zines hope to contribute to that transition.

I. Context: Capitalism in Crisis

ICE is a symptom.  It is one of the most brutal arms of the emerging fascism in the United States that is driving towards a white ethnostate, escalating attacks on the working class, and increasing militarization and aggression of police forces so they can expand their attack, imprisonment, and murder of those deemed “threats”—all for the enrichment and preservation of the white supremacist, patriarchal ruling class.

But fascism is on the rise today only because capitalism is failing.  In the 1970s and 1980s the ruling class tried desperately to halt falling profits and slowing growth—and the radical struggles that were shaking capital’s foundations: the global, overlapping, radical struggles of people of color, women, LGBTQ communities, indigenous people, and workers.  The bourgeoisie used every economic and state weapon it could to restore profitability.  It murdered and imprisoned members of radical struggles and invented mass incarceration to pacify Black community struggle.  Over the next few decades, women, immigrants, and people of color were targeted for increasingly brutal control, rolling back the historic legal, political, and economic gains those groups had won through struggle.  The state, managers, and capitalists attacked strikes, moved manufacturing away from unionized workers (inside and outside the country), and shattered unions.  Bosses froze wages for the next forty years.  They automate to cut jobs, shorten breaks, increase hours, eliminate pensions and full-time positions, and push workers ever faster and harder to maximize profit.  And through a wave of deregulation, corporate and financial firms could unleash their blind, catastrophic drive to expand. It is no surprise that in the 1980s and 1990s profits jumped and the income and wealth of the ruling class skyrocketed while the working class languished.

This model—freeze wages, decimate unions and radical struggles, strengthen white supremacist and patriarchal social structures, deregulate capital—is called “neoliberalism.”  It means class war.  It is a program of regression.  The ruling class tries to destroy what radical struggles have won over the past hundred years and concentrate more and more power and wealth in the hands of the white supremacist patriarchal bourgeoisie.  This development was uneven.  Feminist, LGBTQ, worker, student, and anti-police and anti-prison movements have mounted important and powerful resistance—though often fitfully and often in a disconnected way.  All the while, the ruling class’ neoliberal project has continued to crush working people and the environment.  The radical left has been left shattered and weakened by the violent onslaught of recent decades.

But capitalism failed to solve its most basic problems.  The working class is the source of all profits.  Firms compete with each other by pushing workers harder, faster, and longer.  The goal is to increase productivity—automating production, cutting jobs, lowering labor costs.  But the more this happens, the more profit rates fall.  Capitalists turn to finance for salvation.  Extremely risky gambling by finance firms, predatory lending: all this was meant to overcome the falling profit rate and slowing of growth.  And this led to 2007: the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression.

And the more that the working class, with all the dominated communities that comprise it, are being squeezed, the more they are connecting and fighting back.  Shattered by the 1980s, the working class has been slowly and unevenly developing its power to fight once again.  We see that power growing fitfully in the Global Justice Movement in the 1990s, in Occupy after the financial meltdown, in militant feminist and radical LGBTQ revolt, in the explosion of anti-white supremacy struggles in Ferguson, Baltimore and beyond, in the drive towards police and prison abolition, and in growing waves of wildcat worker revolt by teachers.  By trying to tame its exploited population, the ruling class is driving the working class to fight back.  In the GJM, Occupy, Black Lives Matter, and well beyond, we see currents of struggle connecting and combining, developing the capacity for mass revolt.

Fascism comes from the failures of neoliberalism.  The goal of fascism is to divert the anger and discontent that capitalism creates in order to save capitalism from itself.  Trump’s push for a white ethnostate through ICE and anti-immigration policies are meant to rally white workers and small business owners, squeezed more and more by neoliberal capitalism, to support the ruling class that attacks them.  Immigrants, people of color, women, activists, other countries become scapegoats.  This sets Trump free to deregulate even more, and to offer historic tax cuts to the ruling class.  We shouldn’t be fooled by Trump’s spats with companies.  Fascism is good for business.

All this means that American fascism did not begin with Trump.  It is a fundamental reflex of capitalism itself.  The more its internal contradictions start tearing it apart, the more it tends to turn to fascism to save itself.  State fascism’s roots lie deep in the desperate neoliberal project of the 70s and 80s.  And it mobilizes a white supremacy and patriarchy that are certainly not new, and that have been a part of police and military attacks on people of color in this country and abroad for a very long time.  ICE’s attacks on immigrants are a result of this fundamental capitalist dynamic.  It is the most direct weapon—alongside the police and prison systems—of fascist capitalism.

But the revolt against ICE is a key development in US radical struggle.  It is an important step in the intensification of working class rebellion that has been developing unevenly for decades.

II. Anti-ICE as Intensification of Radical Struggle in the US

In the anti-ICE movement, radical struggle is intensifying in a few basic ways.

1. Connecting and combining the forces of revolt

If the radical left was shattered by the ruling class by the 1980s, the anti-ICE movement is helping to connect and combine currents of revolt against fascist capitalism. In the attacks on ICE, antifascism, pro-immigrant and anti-xenophobia groups, and movements for police and prison abolition are coordinating with socialist, communist, and anarchist struggles.  In the face of fascism’s attacks, the radical left is converging and combining its power. 

2. Revealing radical opportunities

In the revolt against ICE, widespread outrage is connecting to revolutionary challenges to state power.  Because the movement is so visible, it is helping to spread an awareness of the vulnerabilities of the state to mass struggle.  It is obvious that the state is struggling to respond to barricades, blockades, occupations, various forms of civil disobedience, and beyond.  The fractures in its power are becoming more and more obvious.  With that awareness comes the potential to push further—to experimentally develop our power to destabilize capitalist and state power.

3. Increasing militancy

This revolt is moreover a step in an unevenly growing militancy.  In Occupy and the Global Justice Movement, clashes with the police were generally marginal.  In Occupy Philly, for example, many thought cops were part of the working class that should be respected.  That is much less the case in the attacks on ICE.  The collaboration between pigs and ICE is clear; cops are attacking protesters to ensure the deportation machine continues to function.  And so cops are generally seen as the class weapon against workers, women, and people of color that they are.  As a result, the wave of revolt is overall a more aggressive one than in the past; overall the movement is much less willing to passively obey, and even willing to clash with pigs to keep ICE offices closed.

In fact, the growth of militancy is outstripping the movement itself.  In the piece “Portland, OR: Report Back from #FamiliesBelongTogether March,” the author points out that anti-ICE actions escalated more quickly and more powerfully than the movement itself was ready for.  Protestors suddenly faced the prospect that they could overrun the cops and take over an ICE facility—and balked at that power.  We see something similar in “Abolitionist Contingent Breaks Away from #FamiliesBelongTogether” and again and again in the movement: the struggle’s inner dynamics push it further and further left, making it more and more militant, but without a clear path for developing the new powers and orientation.

This contradiction—between exploding militancy and power and the retreat before it—is a sign of more radical things to come.  But it is also a signal: there is much work to be done to organize and express that power more fully and more radically.

Another important part of the growth of militancy is a potentially widespread disillusionment with “progressive” politics.  While radicals struggle on the ground for the safety of immigrants, the Democratic Party is wringing its hands in terror over whether the slogan “abolish ICE” will hurt its chances in the midterm elections.  All the while, cops in “progressive” cities with democratic mayors are beating activists.  The Democratic Party is more and more obviously bankrupt; it is increasingly clear that “progressive” politics is no solution to the problems of capitalism.  Does it make a difference whether the cops beating you over the head to protect white supremacists are sent by a democrat or a republican?  A popular outcry is giving rise to a growing sense of the need for a revolutionary challenge to the state and capital.

4. Revealing the systemic problem

Radicals are driving a popular realization about the systemic problem underlying ICE.  The movement is pushing popular outrage significantly to the left.  Calls to abolish ICE are being followed by popular discussions about the state’s long-standing white supremacy and about the corporations profiting off of ICE.  The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee points out below that ICE is merely one branch of a “prison-industrial-slave complex” inseparable from capitalism.

In other words, we’re experiencing a crucially important moment in the growth of revolutionary power.  But where do we go from here? 

III. The Writings Collected Here

The anti-ICE movement itself is at a crossroads.  Occupations are under attack or have already been swept clear of the offices they were occupying.  Important victories have been won, but the movement is reeling, trying to discover a path forward in disrupting and ending ICE.  What have we learned and how do we make the struggle more radical, more powerful, and more effective?

This collection of writings aims to help spur the planning of the next stage of the movement.  The struggle against ICE, while powerful, has also been largely disconnected.  Occupations and other actions have developed locally and too often without formalized links of communication and resource-sharing across sites.  This fracturing limits us in important ways.  We tend to work in “silos” in which the vast and rich set of ideas from one site develops in separation from other sites.  We’re often left reinventing the wheel or missing insights that could help groups or actions survive and grow.

The goal of this zine, then, is to help forge the links between people and groups—to help connect ideas and experiences, formalize lines of communication, and build a more federated and coordinated struggle.  We provide links to each article, and where possible, to the names of authoring groups too.  Like in a nuclear reactor, huge amounts of power can be released when we build machines to combine fissile but disconnected materials.

This zine also tries to help connect the anti-ICE struggle with a broader history.  The collection below quickly makes obvious that the movement against ICE did not start in the summer of 2018.  It includes statements by and about radical immigration struggles in 2017—though the history of such struggle stretches back much further.  If we want to build the most powerful struggle against ICE possible, we need to learn from the vast storehouse of experiences, tactics, and strategies of groups that have been engaged in the fight against borders and xenophobia for decades.

With these zines, I don’t pretend to be “representing” the groups and individuals involved in the movement.  The zines overemphasize writings from Philadelphia, since that is where they were created; and they overrepresent struggles in the Pacific Northwest, given the leading role played by detainees and activists there in the recent struggle.  I also don’t pretend that these are even the most “important” that have been written.  Much more has to be done to collect and share the work radicals are doing and to correct the inevitable limits of this zine.  The pieces gathered here are only one possible selection, and many others can and should be made.

IV. Some Tentative Lessons and Possibilities

What have we learned?  Where do we go from here?

Here are a few tentative reflections.  They try to draw some lessons from the writings below, from my own experiences in the movement and in past movements, and from the movement generally.  But they are experimental and incomplete.  They await the additions and corrections of other comrades.

1. Increasing International Solidarity: Between Bars, Across Borders

In the fight against ICE, detainees, activists, and immigrant rights groups have led the way in creating possibilities for revolutionary international solidarity.  This solidarity has taken inventive tactical form.  Detainees are producing statements and exposés and engaging in hunger strikes on the inside, coordinating their efforts with political agitation on the outside.  The terror of the detention centers is clear from the threats against detainees for their hunger strikes.  (See the statement from detainees below in the piece “Tacoma, WA: At Least 170 Detainees Launch Hunger Strike Against Family Separations.”)

The solidarity between activists, detainees, and immigrant communities generally is one of the most crucial dimensions of the anti-ICE movement.  International solidarity is essential in the fight against fascism.  Fascist leaders like Trump need to appeal to white supremacy, nationalism, and the danger of foreign “hordes” so they can drum up support for the ruling class and weaken the working class’ ability to resist.  And the ruling class needs racial and national divisions so that it can hyper-exploit some sectors of the workforce—like immigrants and women—thereby driving down wages and working-conditions for all workers.

The anti-ICE movement contains the germ of an emerging and growing revolutionary internationalism. It opens up new paths beyond the occupations, opening the possibility for strengthening and multiplying links across borders and through detention center walls. How can we develop these links more?  How can we help create even more radical working class solidarity between immigrants and citizens?

2. Increasing the Combination of Struggles

Radicals are not just developing solidarity internationally.  As noted above, the anti-ICE struggle combines some of the most revolutionary currents of struggle in the United States.  The Anti-ICE movement opens the door to developing this kind of radical combination. And by creating physical spaces of radical combination, Occupy ICE is creating opportunities to experimentally build intersectional coalitions and organizations, moving us past the shattered state of the radical US left.

Can further experimental coalitions or coalition actions be formed in the coming months to deepen these connections and build the bonds between groups? For example: What can we do to coordinate anti-ICE struggles with the August 21st prison strike?

(One possibility is to create a coalitional and federated system of “direct action councils.”  See below—“Beyond Occupation: The Direct Action Committee”—for more.)

3. Seeing the Power and Limits of Occupation

The revolt against ICE in 2018 is using occupation as its central tactic.  In fact, occupation has been perhaps the most basic tactic of mass struggle in the radical US left for two decades (in the Global Justice Movement, in Occupy, in squatters’ struggles against gentrification, in the wave of student revolt in 2008, etc.).

Occupation can be a powerful tool.  When done right, it can focus mass attention on an issue and temporarily disrupt the flow of business as usual in an office, school, business, or town or city.  It can also result in real class gains. Students occupying of a cafeteria played a major role in saving a number of jobs at the New School; in Philly, the anti-ICE occupation of City Hall helped end the sharing of information between the city and ICE. And as a comrade pointed out to me recently, occupations can be important places for otherwise separate radicals and groups to mix, sparking new ideas and possibilities.  For these reasons and others the occupations should be supported.

But as the articles below plainly show, this is also an extremely limited tactic.

First, it is basically reactive rather than active.  After a group or coalition first overtakes a space, it then must defend it against an enemy that knows precisely where it is at all times.  For this reason alone it is very difficult to consistently convert occupation into a project that builds radical power.

Second, occupation increasingly drains a movement.  The first general law of occupation in the US is this: the longer it exists, the more resources and energy it will need to continue to function.  The publicity that may have drawn larger numbers to a camp fades rapidly, along with the energy of comrades.  All but the most committed tend to drift away.  Police repression will tend to gradually ramp up—through undercover agents, direct assaults, and so on.   And the collected writings below show the major problems that occupations bring with them.  Combining long-term in public spaces with strangers often brings sexual, gender, and racial violence that must be shut down.  The “prefigurative space” of the camp, for all its good intentions, is riven by these social forces.

Thus, a camp needs constantly increasing inputs of energy and resources to keep people there and to ensure their safety and well-being.  The general law of occupation leads to the following conclusion.  The longer an occupation exists, the more the purpose of that occupation will tend to become simply surviving in the space, rather than mounting revolutionary programs and actions.

An important lesson learned from the fight against ICE as well as from Occupy is occupation as a partial tactic to be seen developmentally: as a phase that should be paired with a plan with and beyond it for aggressive, active attacks on capital and the state.

4. Beyond Occupation: Direct Action Committees

One possibility of moving beyond the occupation phase is this: coalitional direct action committees (DACs) for the struggle against ICE.  Such committees would help combine the radical groups working together in a locale, but remain largely independent from maintaining or creating an occupation.  They might work to simply coordinate direct actions against a host of sites well beyond the occupation site—businesses and banks profiting from ICE, for instance.

Such committees likely already informally exist in many anti-ICE struggles.  This is certainly true in Philly.  Here, a shifting core of radicals bridge a number of groups, coordinating and connecting those groups and their resources.  This happens in a largely ad hoc and accidental way.  But there is a possibility to formalize one or more direct action council across a city or town.  Councils need not be large or ambitious; just enough to connect a couple of members from sympathetic groups willing to share information and coordinate disruptive actions.  Such committees could be highly unpredictable to and deeply destabilizing to the functions of ICE and the systems that support it.

Direct action councils also provide a base for the radical federation of struggles in ways not bogged down in the details of occupation.  (See below, “Federation, federation, federation.”)

5. The Tactical “Toolbox”

The writings below showcase a wide array of tactics: occupying and/or blockading ICE offices; bailing out the detained; publicly embarrassing public officials; projecting anti-prison and anti-ICE messages on a wall at night; and beyond.  Oftentimes, movements or sites will develop their own toolboxes in separation.

It is crucially important to share tactics with each other.  Some of these tactics work better than others within certain situations.  It can be extremely time-consuming to develop that toolbox for a group or location, and very costly to discover the limits of some tactics over others.  The anti-ICE struggles point out the need to share information with each other, so we can minimize the amount each of us is reinventing the wheel—again, something that direct action councils are ideally designed for.

6. Federation, federation, federation

The major lesson I draw from the anti-ICE movement is this: the need for radical national federation.  A national focus is essential since ICE itself is national, and because the broader enemy—capital and its state—coordinates itself not on a local but a national and international level. For example: a number of banks (like Wells Fargo) and corporations (like Comcast) profit from ICE.  Attacking the profits of these firms requires something more than actions at one locale.

Loose informal networks of connections already exist between a number of sites through email, phone calls, websites, statements, and so on.  These loose networks, though, are partial and fragile.  The anti-ICE movement has a major opportunity to move beyond a merely local focus.  Popular outrage is still high, though it is waning; the fight against ICE struggle is nationwide, though it is being swept out of a number of camps.  The moment is ripe to more fully connect and coordinate the struggle on a national level—for example, via weekly national phone calls; national calls for action; websites or zines to share ideas, tactics, and strategies nationally; etc.

National federation (via direct action councils, e.g.) would mean moving the struggle beyond the focus on occupations, and developing a strategy for nationwide disruption.

V. Conclusion

The fight against ICE represents a major moment in the development of revolutionary power in the US.  But it faces a turning point: attacked by the state and undergoing its own inner radicalization, the anti-ICE movement confronts the need to evolve.  I hope these reflections, and the collection of writings that follow, can help connect some of those in struggle and help build towards the second, deeper, and broader phase.

No ICE!  No cops!  No borders!  No prisons!  No capitalism!

Solidarity forever!

Philadelphia, PA: #OccupyICE Gives Trust-Fund Troll Charlie Kirk First Bath Without Maid Present

  • August 8, 2018 3:45 am
from It’s Going Down

This morning, August 6th 2018 at 7:20 am, members of met at the corner of 8th and Cherry in front of the regional ICE office and Governor Wolf’s Philadelphia office in order to shut shit down and distribute information about the Berk’s Detention Center to people on their way to work. Berk’s County Residential Center is one of 3 family detention centers in America. They are a prison that has a history of assault from their “caretakers” towards the imprisoned children, medical neglect of infants and verbal abuse, not to mention they are operating without a license! Governor Wolf has the ability to order an emergency closure, and has proven to us and many other organizers, his bark is worse than his bite, considering he hasn’t done a damn thing. You’d think in an election year he’d at least try, right?

Once we shut down the road in front of the offices and distributed literature to everyone there, we moved further up the road to a busy intersection at 8th and Vine and blocked traffic for roughly 45 minutes. We reminded people in their cars that if they felt inconvenienced being stopping in traffic, imagine what life is like as a detained child in the Berks detention center for years? One guy left his car and joined in the protest, chiding people cursing us out that Black Lives Matter and we need to ! We are planning on seeing him again at an action tomorrow.

We received word from a comrade in center city that Charlie Kirk was having a pleasant meal with Candace Owens at a local brunch spot in the gayborhood and decided we were going to give them our best Philly welcome we could muster so early! We took the streets and marched there chanting “ABOLISH ICE” “SHUT DOWN BERKS” “WHOSE STREETS, OUR STREETS” and more. Once we got to where Charlie and Candace of Turning Point USA fame, also known as Coded Rascists USA, were eating we gave em a lil wave and immediately started chanting “1,2,3, Fuck the Bourgeois 4,5,6 Fuck the Bourgeois” until they came outside. We let them know just how much we appreciated their visit to Philly with a nice cold drink of water down Charlie’s head and an over easy egg to boot. Hope y’all had a great brunch! Police escorted Charlie and Candace away while we chanted, “NO GOOD COPS IN A RACIST SYSTEM” until they were gone.

We then took to the streets again and marched up Broad Street back to our camp, reminding everyone we passed Berks must be shut down and we must put an end to stop and frisk!

Resolution on I.C.E.

  • August 5, 2018 7:14 pm

From Philly IWW

Whereas, many of our members are participating in protests and actions against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); and,

Whereas, the actions of ICE target the most vulnerable of the working class, splitting up families and incarcerating workers for trying to make a better life for themselves; and,

Whereas, ICE drives down the wages and working conditions of immigrant workers, attempts to pit immigrant & non-immigrant workers against each other, and is an obstacle to the progress of all working people; and,

Whereas, An injury to one is an injury to all;

Therefore Be it Resolved, the IWW Philadelphia GMB:

  • Officially endorses the Stop ICE rally & activities scheduled for July 2nd, 2018;
  • Demands the abolition of I.C.E. and a return to open borders;
  • Calls for the Closing of the Berks County Family Detention Center;
  • Opposes all cooperation between ICE and the Philadelphia police department, including ICE’s access to PARS;
  • Will give material assistance to anti-ICE protests, civil disobedience, and other actions as we are able.

Nothing in this resolution shall be interpreted to imply endorsement of any political party, candidate for office, or any position on any election whatsoever.

Comcast truck got fucked up

  • August 1, 2018 9:36 pm

Submission

We saw a Comcast truck in a quiet Philly neighborhood, painted it and let the air out of the tires. Comcast provides electronic services that enable ICE officers to kidnap people, separate families, and deport migrants.
We wrote “Comcast works for ICE” and “no borders no prisons” on the windshield and sides of the truck. We let the air out of the tires by putting a ball bearing and a piece of wood in the caps of the tire valves and screwing them back on. We took turns watching each others’ backs, planned our route with cameras in mind, used gloves when touching anything we left behind, and changed clothes to help stay anonymous.
Information technology has historically been used to facilitate state control and genocide. IBM created and maintained the information systems that enabled the Nazis to orchestrate the deportation and genocide of millions of people.
Now Microsoft and Comcast are providing the tools necessary to carry out deportation and torture on a massive scale.
Aspects of the border are all around, and the possibilities for attack on the tools of state terror are endless. Their vehicles, offices, fences, communication and surveillance technologies, and all policing apparatuses are impossible to protect all the time.

Abolish ICE & the Police – A Discussion

  • August 1, 2018 12:51 pm

from Facebook

Hear from a panel of movement leaders from the im/migrants, anti-police brutality, and Palestine solidarity movements and join in a discussion on the need to abolish ICE and the police.

In recent weeks, a powerful movement has risen across the country to fightback against the war on im/migrants and refugees, with the call to abolish ICE gaining greater momentum.

In Philadelphia, the ongoing occupation at the ICE offices and now City Hall has helped to elevate this demand, along with the longstanding fight to shut down the Berks Detention Center and end PARS – a program of cooperation between the Philly police and ICE.

The Philadelphia Police work not only with ICE but also with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), and send cops to Israel for joint training. Israel – with economic, political, and military support from the U.S. – continues its brutal occupation of Palestine, recently enshrining the apartheid state into law.

Much like the IDF, the police play a similar role in terrorizing Black and Brown communities here. For many years, the streets have been filled to fight back against police brutality, and call for an end to stop and frisk and to abolish the police.

How can we link and unite the struggle to abolish ICE and the police? Can we build greater solidarity between our movements for liberation here with international struggles? What’s the connection between ICE, the police, and U.S. wars waged against people abroad?

Join us for the discussion, including:
* Teresa Gutierrez, national leader of FIRE – Fight for Im/migrants and Refugees Everywhere\
* Carmen Guerrero, Shut Down Berks Coalition
* Reportback from recent delegation to the U.S./Mexico border
* more TBA

Newest OccupyICE Camp Under Threat of Eviction

  • July 30, 2018 7:45 pm

from Instagram

Hey y’all so even though we were evicted from our occupation at City Hall we moved down to the East side of the municipal services building HOWEVER The City of Philadelphia is trying to evict us from there too! This occupation is run by Homeless Against Stop and Frisk and it is important that we help all people being oppressed by the state

#OCCUPYICEPHL ENDS CITY HALL ENCAMPMENT: MAYOR KENNEY SERVES 24 HR EVICTION NOTICE AFTER ENDING PARS AGREEMENT

  • July 28, 2018 9:55 pm

from Instagram

CONTACT: occupyphl@protonmail.com
We the activists of the #OccupyICEPHL encampment are pleased that Mayor Kenney has met our first demand: to end Philadelphia’s resource-sharing agreement with ICE, known as the PARS (Preliminary Arraignment Reporting System) Agreement. With this municipal collusion with ICE, fueled by stop-and-frisk, Philadelphia has the highest arrest rate of immigrants with no criminal convictions in the country. We see the decision not to renew the PARS Agreement as a major victory for our occupation and for reducing the state-sanctioned violence against Philadelphia’s immigrant communities.
In response to this victory and Mayor Kenney’s demand that we leave by 2pm today, we are taking immediate steps to de-camp our City Hall occupation. Our decision to leave City Hall was reached to ensure our most vulnerable comrades are not placed at risk of police violence. We are not going home, we are not finished with our efforts; we are packing up this encampment and securing our resources before another raid, like the raid at the ICE office, takes and trashes the majority of our resources the community has been so helpful to provide.
We are taking today to safely organize our comrades and resources around our remaining demands: to end stop-and-frisk in Philadelphia, to shut down the Berks County Residential Center, and to abolish ICE in all its forms. Yesterday we celebrated a victory. Today we remember what steps are left to complete for our goal of a sanctuary city and eventually a sanctuary country. We stand in solidarity with Juntos, Cosecha, New Sanctuary Movement, our community and everyone affected by the unjust practices of our government.

Mayor Ends PARS Agreement Between PPD and ICE

  • July 27, 2018 9:00 pm

from Instagram

Alerta! Alerta! Mayor Kenney just announced that he will NOT renew the PARS contract! This is nothing to thank @phillymayor for- He’s dragged this along for how many weeks and watched his police force brutalize us. WE ARE STILL FIGHTING AND WE STILL HAVE DEMANDS Governor Wolfe you’re next #shutdownberks #expandsanctuary

This Movement is Not Ours, it’s Everybody’s! A message to “the activists” about Occupy ICE Philadelphia

  • July 24, 2018 6:05 pm

from Friendly Fire Collective

This text belongs to a new zine that speaks to the current#OccupyICEPHL movement. This was not written by a Friendly Fire member.

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Something incredible is happening at OccupyICE Philadelphia right now.

The encampment, which is in its third week at city hall, is developing in a truly revolutionary direction. Yesterday a crew of unhoused folks militantly and autonomously took to the streets around city hall in an unplanned spontaneous march, shutting down one of the busiest intersections in Philadelphia for almost an hour in support of immigrants. We talk a lot about solidarity and about unifying proletarian struggles: this is the real thing. At this point the encampment is primarily run by unhoused comrades and they are holding down a fully built out, autonomously run and organized immigrant solidarity occupation that is a beautiful eyesore on one of Philly’s most esteemed tourist attractions.

The Kenney administration is livid, although thanks to the beatings they took in the press for the beatings we took from police when they cleared the first encampment at ICE offices at 8th and Cherry, they’re playing friendly and looking to reconcile. Long term immigrant activist groups and people inside the administration expect the declaration of the end of PARS—the police information sharing agreement that has helped Philly’s ICE office become the highest per capita arrest and capture major city in the country—any day now. Ending PARS is the first of the movement’s three demands, the other two being shutting down Berks, a horrifically abusive “family detention center” in PA, and Abolishing ICE.

This would be a huge victory, and the culmination of almost a decade of hard work from the city’s Immigrant movement. But we haven’t won yet, and many in the Philly activist networks, tired from weeks of hard work, infighting, and social agitation, and having heard the news that Kenney is likely to give in, have stepped back and become demobilized (myself included): right as we are on the cusp of winning!!!

We need to keep fighting, keep pushing right now, because if momentum completely slips Kenney can waffle on PARS and we could achieve nothing for all our efforts.

Luckily for all of us, the unhoused community has held it down and kept this movement alive. Over the last two weeks activists of all ideological stripes, anarchist, socialist, Marxist, nihilist, ultra and whatever else, have almost entirely stepped back from living at the camp, and those that do come down rotate in and out for brief periods while the unhoused people keep it going. As one of those organizers, let me just say: this has been an incredibly good thing. Some of the unhoused folks have political experience from Occupy Philadelphia back in 2011, others from their day to day lives in the streets, others still 2 have very rapidly politicized within the OccupyICE encampment. They are maintaining a 24/7 protest and keeping attention focused on ICE, opening up room for people to join the fight on other fronts. They are asking us to take advantage of this opportunity!

In the shadow of the obscene monument to power that is Philly city hall, a majority Black coalition of unhoused folks add their voices in opposition to the mayor and the city and in defense of immigrants. Occupiers stay on the megaphone all day long. Today, Gramma Kim, an unhoused comrade living at the camp, spent three hours making heart-wrenching statements to the people of Philadelphia, soap boxing with the megaphone all afternoon:

“What would you do if your children were in a cage? Wouldn’t you fight? We have to stop this!”

Every morning the camp crew wakes up the marriott hotel across the street with humorous musings on the loudspeaker. By 9am, comrades from the MOVE organization drop off fresh vegetables grown in their garden, and Food not Bombs is dropping food for lunch and dinner while unhoused occupiers are staffing the kitchen to distribute it. Donations have slowed to a trickle, but there are still a whole lot of shared meals, cigs, and experiences.

To give you just one example of what I see down here: There was an unhoused man, I wont name him but folks from the camp will know who I’m talking about, that during the first few days at City Hall would come through camp and just overturn tables, yell and scream, he even shoved someone, and we had to physically remove him from the camp multiple times. We got him to a shelter one night, but when he came back the next night some concerned activists were considering sectioning him. I’m so glad they didn’t, because now he holds down the kitchen and is one of the people most concerned with keeping the camp tidy. He’s part of the movement, more a part of it day to day now than me or the other people who had to chase him out of camp those few times. OccupyICE has become a transformative space for people joining in struggle.

Of course, it’s not at all rainbows and gumdrops. As a comrade said: “…it’s certainly messy down here. There’s no way to keep your hands clean, figuratively speaking. You get pulled into some shit and some drama pretty quickly if you aren’t careful.”

It’s true. A lot of us occupiers have serious addictions, as well as physical and mental health problems. Often times there are moments of anger and conflict that can erupt in camp, which can feel scary to people, especially those of us who don’t come from working class/street/hood backgrounds, but it’s important to understand and know that these moments of conflict often lead to resolution, even if it doesn’t look the same as it would in 3 4 a more middle class or activist space. If for whatever reason people don’t feel they can be down here that’s totally legit: there’s lots of other ways to support the encampment and struggle in solidarity.

OccupyICE is demonstrating that the activist milieu’s tendency toward taking a social worker’s attitude toward unhoused folks —rather than a comradely and restorative one—is a serious political error. The fact is that unhoused people are keeping the movement alive. They are the movement right now.

The well-intentioned but misguided activists (I include myself here) haven’t been able to see this: some even keep insisting that we have to shut down the camp that they rarely go to and have little investment in anymore since it’s problematic and uncontrollable. But word inside the camp is that campers are ready to move after we win and continue the struggle, and even expand it to include police and prison abolition and other issues facing the unhoused.

Comrades, can’t you see, we’ve helped to build something truly uncontrollable?

Something proletarian, communal, autonomous and buck-wild?

From the first march called by the alphabet soup of socialist orgs to this moment, everyone has put their shoulders to the wheel and pushed. It’s been an amazing, inspiring effort. But comrades, victory is so close. We can’t stop now!

While there is a political and tactical advantage to the unhoused people running and keeping the camp, we still need to support it logistically with donations/supplies and politically with marches, actions, and keeping up the pressure on Kenney. We can do the things we’re good at: banner drops, direct actions, street marches, teach-ins. If we don’t, it’s possible the internal pressures of the camp will prove too much for our mostly-new-to-organizing-comrades.

Let’s stop thinking of the unhoused people as anything other than our core comrades in this movement and this struggle. Do you know their names? Have you gone down to camp and talked to them about the political prospects of the situation? If you did you would see they don’t need our help, they need our solidarity! They need us beside them fighting! We started this current wave of struggle, we can’t leave them to finish it alone!

Many of us have become so used to losing that we don’t know how to pull this thing across the finish line right now, right as we’re about to win—but the folks in the camp are planning on winning. As such, they have a firmly established plan— logistically, politically, strategically—to close the camp and relocate it as soon as the PARS demand is won.

This will be a reset for the camp and for the movement, and if the city ends PARS Kenney can have the occupation off his lawn today (you reading this Kenney?!) But it all hangs in the balance right now, material support is visibly receding. People 5 6 are donating less frequently, and most of the original convening organizations are sitting on their hands (and their piles of donated cash) waiting for something to happen.

But comrades, something is happening. Something big, something real. We’re very close to significantly damaging ICE’s ability to round people up in the city, and from there, to building something even bigger.

OccupyICE is creating a working model for how we can open an umbrella organizing space in Philly that breaks through the inaction caused by sectarian turf battles. We can win real victories for the movement while materially and politically supporting Black-led autonomous revolutionary organizing of the unhoused. By its very existence, OccupyICE is realigning the terrain in Philadelphia and pulling activists kicking and screaming into winning demands and sewing the seeds of an insurgent and revolutionary street culture. This is what revolutionary street organizing looks like!

Long live OccupyICE!
End PARS!
Shut down Berks!
Abolish ICE!

-PAJ (Philly Anarchy Jawn), Monday, July 23, 2018

Philly-Area ICE Contractors Locations and Phone Numbers

  • July 23, 2018 4:12 pm
from Scribd
Org. Locations in the Philly region How they enable and profit from Trump’s deportation machine Phone number
  • City of Philadelphia City Hall, 400 John F Kennedy Blvd, Philadelphia, PA 19107 Shares information with ICE via the Preliminary Arraignment Reporting System (PARS), set to expire on August 31, 2018 (215) 686-2181
  • Geo Group See here for PA facilities Operates immigrant detention centers across the country, including one of the country’s three immigrant family detention centers in Karnes County, Texas (561) 893-0101
  • CoreCivic See here for PA facilities Operates immigrant detention centers across the country, including one of the country’s three immigrant family detention centers in Dilley, Texas (615) 263-3000
  • Wells Fargo See here for your nearest branch locations. Finances private prison companies Geo Group and CoreCivic, making sure they have the cash they need to carry out their day-to-day business including detaining immigrants 1-866-878-5865 or see locator for local branch
  • Vanguard Vanguard Campus 100 Vanguard Blvd, Paoli, PA 19301 Is the largest shareholder in both GeoGroup and CoreCivic (610) 669-1000
  • Comcast Comcast Center 1701 JFK Boulevard Philadelphia, PA 19103 Has at least two active contracts with ICE (215) 496-1810 (front desk)
  • Team Sports Planet 1241 Carpenter St, Philadelphia, PA 19147 Have had contracts with ICE in the past (215) 218-2070
  • Microsoft Corporate Sales Office, 45 Liberty Boulevard, Suite 210 Malvern, PA, USA 19355 Microsoft Retail Location 160 N Gulph Rd, King of Prussia, PA 19406 Has an active, $19.4 million contract with ICE for processing data and artificial intelligence capabilities (610) 240-7000; (484) 754-7600

atms glued

  • July 22, 2018 4:38 pm

Submission

We fucked up ATM’s at 3 Wells Fargo banks in Philadelphia using half-sized credit cards and super glue. We chose this bank franchise because it profits from migrant imprisonment, but we know they all have it coming.

Shout out to the Indonesian Anarchists facing state repression! Solidarity with other anarchists fighting more of the same, and those that oppose the borders in their totality.

The Rainy Day Glues

Help Philly Agitate! #EndPARS

  • July 20, 2018 1:56 pm

from Friendly Fire Collective

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As seen at City Hall

As a collective of abolitionists, we are confident that revolution will not be voted in and that our electoral system is inherently built to oppress the working class and people of color.

Our hope is not in this current political system.

But sometimes we can bend it in the people’s favor.

Philly Police allows ICE to access PARS (Preliminary Arraignment Reporting System), a database of police reports. Though these reports do not include individuals’ immigration status, it does include their country of birth.

For a so-called “sanctuary city,” this is beyond despicable.

For years Juntos, a community-led Latinx immigrant organization, have been leading the fight to #EndPARS, but recently due to the media coverage of the occupations and the upcoming date to renew this contract, this issue has been haunting City Hall and Mayor Kenney.

And it seems like he’s beginning to crack.

We encourage folx to continue to call Kenney’s office (215-686-2181) and let them know that this agreement needs to end.

You can also sign Juntos’ petition: Mayor Kenney: End the PARS/ICE Contract

We also encourage folx to explore creative ways of putting pressure on Philly’s Mayor and connecting this struggle to the wider abolitionist movement. Not only does the PARS agreement need to end, but the Berks County Detention Center need to be shut down and, of course, ICE as a whole needs to be abolished.

For more information:

Philly.com: In contentious back-and-forth, Philly officials say ICE ‘likely’ violates data-sharing agreement
Philly.com: Philly’s agreement with ICE: What it is and how Mayor Kenney can show moral clarity by ending it | Opinion
Juntos: Philadelphia Has Won Its Lawsuit Against Jeff Sessions.What Comes Next For Us?
Juntos: Shut Down Berks

Cops Shoot Occupier’s Dog to Death

  • July 17, 2018 1:11 am

from Instagram

The cops shot and killed one of our fellow occupiers dogs today. Someone was following one of our comrades, assaulted him and tried to grab his bag that Hippo was attached to and she jumped at him. Hippo was super docile and sweet and the camp is mourning her today. We feel like this was a targeted attack on our comrade.

Beyond Occupation

  • July 17, 2018 1:07 am

from Friendly Fire Collective

Thoughts on the current #OccupyICEPHL and moving forward to #EndPARS

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We are two weeks into #OccupyICEPHL. We have ceased occupying the ICE offices since July 5 and the current encampment at City Hall has lost a lot of its original momentum. The Left in Philly united on July 2nd for the original occupation, but it has been fractured by burnout and internal conflicts. A lot of us are wondering, how did we get here and how do we move forward?

The encampment at City Hall

After the camp was dismantled on July 5th by homeland security and Philly cops, a meeting took place in the evening. Hundreds gathered, sharing reflections and potential strategies for moving forward so that we could effectively pressure Mayor Kenney to not renew the Preliminary Arraignment Reporting System (PARS) contract, which allows ICE access to the PPD’s database.

Following the meeting, an autonomous group decided that one strategy in continuing the fight was to begin a camp at City Hall in order to be a confrontational presence for city officials, and to educate the public about both PARS and ICE. Within minutes, they set up at City Hall, bringing yoga mats, signs, umbrellas, chairs, and food.

Picking up on the momentum of the previous camp, many came around to provide support. The camp was quickly built up with a medic and food storage tent, as well as a table of leftist literature, including flyers on both #EndPARS and #AbolishICE. Participants were flyering; workshops and teach-ins happened throughout the day; food and water and other supplies were consistently being dropped off; chants were constant; and general assemblies were held twice a day (and they still are).

That being said, within the past week, the energy at the camp has been fizzling out. I was at the camp this morning and counted around 15 present.

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Skepticism of the new camp

A number of leftists in Philadelphia have expressed skepticism of the camp.

This is fair.

More than half of those present at most general assemblies are white, and a majority of the principal organizers are white. Whiteness is a destructive force for all, with material consequences for those that cannot access its privileges. For those who are white or can access whiteness, it hinders empathy and results in moral deterioration to those who reap benefits from whiteness. We need to see and combat the way whiteness operates among us, making it a priority to center the needs and the voices of POC. In my experience, this is a constant struggle in leftist spaces, and in this sense the encampment is not unique.

It seems that a major reason why people have either backed away or have chosen not to support this camp is because they see the occupation as ineffective and believe greater action is needed. What should be noted is that this camp began with this in mind. A diversity of tactics is sorely needed and this camp was never envisioned as THE tactic for all to take. This camp was started to agitate at City Hall as part of a larger project which would include the continuing work of the original #OccupyICEPHL coalition as well as autonomous actions.

There is also skepticism because of the camp’s independence from the original coalition. Those in the camp desire to work alongside the coalition but are intentionally not bound to the coalition, structured so that those on the ground and actively involved decide the direction of the camp.

Some skepticism feels neither political nor strategic, but personal.

Infighting among leftists has been present throughout the whole occupation, even prior to the new camp. The first night of the occupation included coalition organizers squabbling with a few anarchists of a more illegalist, insurrectionist tendency. This was aired out very publicly through a zine that was published online and passed out at the final assembly at the previous occupation.

Tensions between those of a more anarchist orientation and those of a more Marxist orientation were heightened.

Some smaller orgs, especially those with a more autonomous bent, have expressed that they felt unheard and even shut down by the larger coalition.

A skepticism of anarchist organizers continues, leading some to view the new encampment as an anarchist project. Though the organization of the new camp is more horizontal, it is not solely anarchist-organized. Such thinking dismisses those houseless folks who are actively flyering, chanting, and keeping the camp smoothly operating – that do not identify as anarchists – as well as the presence of Marxists.

Again, I think some of this skepticism is a projection of people’s personal issues with specific organizers.

The stress of the original occupation, where participants were constantly surrounded by cops and federal officers, exacerbated disagreements among organizers. I cannot blame individuals for withholding their support because of being made to feel unsafe by certain organizers, but it would be strategically unwise to fully dismiss this camp because of that.

In the past week hundreds have come together to publicly agitate at City Hall. This camp is not meant to last forever, but it would be wise to not let it sputter and die out on such a sour note in such a public space. The forces-that-be want our inactivity and burnout so that the PARS contract can be renewed without a fight.

This occupation ending in such a way will reflect badly on all of us, and even more importantly, could hinder and even sabotage the campaign to #EndPARS.

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Moving forward

Last week, running off the energy of the first encampment, the camp became a base for activity.

Occupiers were constantly talking to those passing by, providing information on the PARS contract and getting folks to sign the petition put out by Juntos. Media and public attention on the camp highlighted the PARS contract. Mayor Kenney and other officials were flooded with phone calls.

This base is limited, as action-planning cannot occur in such a public space. That said, it has been a space for educating, connecting organizers and people of good conscience, and most importantly, a very public way of getting Kenney’s attention.

I don’t think as much energy needs to be put into this project as the first encampment, but I think it is worth actively supporting this camp in order to strengthen our message. If more people were out on the ground, more people could take shifts. The burden of this camp would not remain on the same 20-30 people, many of which have slept in their own beds only a handful of times since the original occupation.

But, again, we need to do more.

We need to continue calling city officials, handing out flyers, flooding social media with information on PARS; but we also need to begin agitating with more creativity. Perhaps also at other strategic locations – maybe not to the point of occupation, but at least picketing. We need to be creative in finding ways to get our message out to the public and to our so-called “leaders” as well as hinder ICE operations. We cannot afford to waste time on infighting. We cannot lose sight of the goal, and therefore we must not lose sight of our current moment. Upset over ICE continues, despite the media trying to move on. The time is ripe. We must act.

Direct Action for Freedom of Movement

  • July 9, 2018 9:31 am

Submission

Direct Action for Freedom of Movement
Thursday July 12
6:15PM
City Hall Occupation, East Market side

An informal talk and discussion on organizing and actions against border and immigration enforcement. Primarily drawn from experiences on occupied Tohono O’odham Land in southern Arizona, this talk will cover projects and mobilizations in the region from roughly 2006 through 2016. There will be some discussion on efforts in other parts of that region and globally as well!