We did have people trying to shut down the Portland ICE center. Unfortunately, they succeeded

 We did have people trying to shut down the Portland ICE center. Unfortunately, they succeeded: ICE now ships the Oregon immigrants that they arrest to Tacoma Washington, which makes it much more difficult for local families, friends and lawyers to help them.

What we lacked is a democratically-organized united front of people who are thinking the tactics and strategy through, well past the futile effort to shut down local ICE detention centers. There is a sentiment that legal and peaceful demonstrations are not radical enough and not really "militant."

Mark

The ICE intervention was short.  

 

Quite possibly because there are few food vendors and their customers who braved the area.  An area that is probably way above 50% migrants without papers.  I prefer the term 'migrant' as. to me, the word 'immigrant' implicitly recognizes the border as a fact and not as a notion.

 

I live now 70 miles or so from the area that my comrade-companer@s recognized me as one of their own even though I never learned to speak Spanish.  There was a lotta love going on even in the face of constant incursion by the LAPD. 

 

These acts of the RAC-LA (Revolutionary Autonomous Communities-LA (now MAALA) were occasioned by the Police Riot in MacArthur Park on May Day 2007 when the cops set upon some 30,000 marchers from 3rd and Vermont to the Park demonstrating on the fact that they were entitled to the human rights that must ought be recognized no matter one's quote 'citizenship' unquote.  With 'billy clubs, tear gas and so-called non-lethal weaponry, motorcycles and horses, the reactionaries set upon us as we peacefully assembled.  Myself and my recently-turned 7 year old granddaughter among them.

 

For a few months after that some 10-12 comrades--all but one self-described as anarchists with that last one an anarcho-Marxian communist--met in my bedroom analyzing what had happened and how to respond to it.  A free food distribution was proposed that, in light of the Black Panther 'Free Breakfast for Children' initiative,  we would follow their trailblazing self-help program that consisted of 3 points of unity:  1.) identify a need 2.) find a way to satisfy that need; and, 3.) do so at the same place, at the same time, while seeking to involve those we served.  This last constitutes the difference between charity and self-organization of the people. That food program (now termed MAALA) began in November 2007 continues to this day.

 

As time went on many of the comrades dropped out.  But, and this is the 'rub', they were replaced, and more, by members of the community that the program was designed to attract.

 

At first when the LAPD would try to stop us from breaking the law--as it is illegal to conduct activities such as our Food Program within the park proper--by insisting that our activities must be confined to the sidewalk--those without papers would shrink back away.  We operated according to our own rule "Those with papers must defend those without."

 

And as time went on community members, seeing our group face up and face down the cops, ceased fleeing and stood shoulders to us.  There was this one man, maybe 60, with a twisted body--whether from birth defect or accident or illness--joined us, standing as erect as he could, as we peacefully, but determinedly held our position.  The cops stopped fckn with us.

 

After 10 years or so age, health and common sense dictated that I cease 50 years of activity and I am pissed off about it.

 

So these are the folk that the ICE, the National Guard, the LAPD persecute. As a black who grew up under segregation, I recognize that our migration, in essence, the crossing a national so-called 'border' is very much the same as the social border--termed the 'Mason-Dixon Line'--that my family fled across in the very early 1960s.

 

They are no different from us.  They are us.

 

JAI