Solidarity with striking ICE hostages!

Tempest: Thanks, Izzy, for taking the time to talk with me about your work with the group of activists that have been resisting the detention, and building solidarity with the detainees at the Delaney Hall facility in Newark, New Jersey. Could you start by describing, first of all, what’s happening on the inside and why people have been mobilizing in support on the outside?

Izzy: So, at Delaney Hall some of the people being held there, the hostages, went on a hunger strike and a work strike because they’re being paid less than a dollar a day to maintain the facility, and this is intolerable. Their demands are posted on Cosecha NJ’s site — they are specifically demanding the release of the elderly and minors and people whose health is in jeopardy. And they want [New Jersey] Governor Mikie Sherrill to come and see their conditions. Their demands boil down to freedom, right? Everyone needs to be free.

But it is not only a hunger strike, it is also a labor strike. And the operator of the facility is GEO Group, which is a for-profit operator that the federal government is paying to hold these people. And so the activists have gone on site to support the strikers in their resistance to GEO Group and their exploitation by the people who are holding them in detention.

Tempest: Can you say any more about why activists have chosen to come out in solidarity and mobilize outside the facility? What does this particular struggle represent for people? What motivated you to go out and what’s it been like out there?

Izzy: I was actually quite motivated by seeing friends who have gone there and the way that we can physically manifest this kind of resistance, to these kinds of totalitarian moves, with our physical presence. The people inside Delaney Hall don’t have a choice about being there, but we can choose to be there and be present with them, and that feels better to me than staying far away and consuming news about it. Seeing people report from on the ground just became harder and harder for me to stay away. If the question is, why was I out there, I felt like I had to be.

And it felt risky, and it felt legally risky. It felt physically risky, and nowhere near as dangerous as what the hostages inside are enduring. And seeing for myself what that physical situation is. It’s an industrial strip. I understand that there was an action filed today for a health inspection at the location because there’s not supposed to be human habitation out there. When city and state actors…are now trying to get access to the space in court in order to check that it is actually reasonable to hold human beings there, like that really resonates for me. It is not an easy place to be.

Tempest: Along those lines, it’s striking to me that both Governor Sherrill and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka are progressives or liberal leaders in a so-called blue state. They’re Democratic Party figures with a national profile, which echoes some of the dynamics in Minneapolis, where there was also liberal Democratic Party leadership. And now, in Newark, it’s Baraka who’s imposed the curfew and Sherrill that’s decided to call in the state troops to enforce it and police the protesters. What does that say to you both personally, and what does it possibly suggest for the Left in terms of strategy?

Izzy: What upsets me most coming from these electeds is the misinformation that they are promoting coming from whatever law enforcement is telling them about what’s happening there and why. What they are describing doesn’t match what I saw. When I saw violence, it was violence coming from law enforcement. And when I was injured, it was law enforcement putting their hands on me. What the electeds are saying about what was happening to me and the other activists there just isn’t truthful. Strategically, what to do when politicians are lying is a really good question. But knowing the truth for ourselves is at least a starting place.

Tempest: It’s striking that some of the major confrontations with ICE have happened in liberal states, that the Trump administration has thrown down a gauntlet to these “blue states.” So then the question becomes, what do we as a movement make of that, what lessons do we draw from that?

Izzy: Yeah. What I would say is, while I live in a blue state, I have loved ones in red states, and what I draw from that is you organize where you are, and you hold space where you are. When DHS is bringing this level of violence right here in our neighborhoods, then this is where we confront them.

Tempest: Can you say a few things about what it looked like outside Delaney Hall when you were there and what you experienced?

Izzy: The Delaney Hall facility is out in an industrial park outside of Newark. Supplies have to be shuttled in. At the south end of the facility, there is a driveway where hostages are brought in and out of the building. And one of the strategic goals…was to witness and potentially disrupt the transfer of hostages in and out of Delaney Hall, especially hunger strikers. At least one organizer [from inside the facility] was removed from Delaney Hall to some other location. Having an understanding, on the part of those outside, about what might be happening to the organizers and to the hunger strikers is one of the goals. When I was there, there was a focus on that access point where we’ve seen buses and vans coming in and out and wanting to have a sense of whether people are being moved.That’s what I was working on while I was there, observing vehicles coming in and out to have a sense of how people are being moved around. And so the night I was there, the protesters were occupying the lane of traffic facing Delaney Hall, and then the other lane of traffic was being held open for the trucks…And there were activist marshals that were working to try to slow the trucks down and keep the activists safe from trucks and cars racing through. I’d been told that the previous night that ICE agents had tried to push activists into the traffic as it came through. And I saw a situation where an activist was…on the ground very near a truck, and for a moment it looked like maybe their leg had been run over.They were okay. But it was a dangerous situation.

And law enforcement was not trying to keep anybody that I could see safe. They were creating even more dangerous conditions on top of semis barreling down on us on the road and we didn’t know when they were going to try to push us out into that lane of traffic.

And there’s a lot of preparation for those mobilizing outside at Delaney Hall because the support is not really there on the ground other than what [people bring to the family tent] and what activists bring, and the New Jersey police have been destroying the water, supplies and first aid supplies that activists have brought, as part of the police clearing the area.

Tempest: And to what extent are activist and family member networks being built, where ties of solidarity are being created and connections made on the ground to help strengthen the organizing going forward?

Izzy: It’s very clear that this is a moment, out at Delaney Hall, where activists from all over the region are finding each other and finding a common project to work on, building connections and building trust. And that’s happening out there on this desolate and dangerous road, and that feels important.

Tempest: So what opportunities might be offered here, in building on these connections and those movement spaces?

Izzy: Well, I don’t really want to frame a hunger strike for release from appalling and inhumane conditions as an opportunity.

Tempest: You can see this in campaigns in solidarity with people behind bars, that there’s a synergy and comradeship between what those who are incarcerated are struggling to achieve behind bars and what people are doing on the outside. There’s potentially an opportunity to build cohesive movements and to shine a light on what people behind bars have experienced.

Izzy: My understanding is that the hunger strikers are taking our presence there as supportive and as following their lead. And it is a bigger need than just, like, the North Jersey folks should be expected to shoulder. We’re a big city and we can get to Newark, to the extent we can, to show our support. We know that the people inside could see the activists out their windows, and I think one of the reasons that law enforcement demanded that the governor clear the activists out was so that the hunger strikers couldn’t see that they had support.

And what I saw on the ground, makes me think that the law enforcement actions with the horses and the mass arrests was about characterizing the activists in certain ways and about making us invisible to the leaders of this particular action [inside Delaney Hall].

Tempest: So where do you see the struggle going, the movement for justice for the strikers, the detainees and their families, and also for the activists on the inside. Clearly elected officials – with the curfews and armed troopers — are trying to shut down the solidarity protests. But at the same time, the hunger strikes have spread nationally. At Delaney Hall, there was a teenage hunger striker who was just released [and others have followed since the interview took place]. What are your thoughts on where this might be going, both locally and more broadly?

Izzy: I think that this kind of activism works. I think that by shining a light out there we continue to build the case to abolish ICE right now. The electeds who think that they can successfully characterize this protest as disorderly or violent or any of that without accounting for the disorder and violence of ICE, and ICE agents, and the abductions on our streets, in our neighborhoods, I don’t know why they think we’re going to be that easily deceived because it’s perfectly obvious who the perpetrators are here.

I was thinking today about how I have survived a cancer diagnosis. I have survived parenting a child through junior high. If these goons think that I’m impressed by whatever fascist ethno-state they think they’re building for my benefit as a middle-aged white woman, they don’t have any idea what middle-aged white women want, what we’re capable of, and what is pissing us off right now. What I’ve been through, I was not afraid of what they had to offer, which was just dumb brutality.

Tempest: It feels to me right now like Delaney Hall represents or is reverberating for people the way Minneapolis did,  almost a shorthand for police violence, racism and standing up to ICE. It seems likely that people will continue to be in the streets.

Izzy: Yeah, if they’re gonna keep giving us these symbolic moments, I think they are vastly overestimating their ability to wear us. So, look up the families of the strikers, learn about what they’re facing and how to support those families. There’s fundraising for commissary. Connect with your friends and neighbors and let them know that this is something you care about. You may be surprised that they care about it too. And whatever your local strategy is for building something that resists all of this, that’s the thing you should be chasing.

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Featured Image credit: Jwswikiuser191; modified by Tempest.