More than a thousand protests are planned across the US this Saturday and Sunday after ICE agents shot three people, one fatally, in Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon, this week.
"This weekend, people all over are coming together not just to mourn the lives lost to ICE violence, but to confront a pattern of harm that has torn families apart and terrorized our communities,” said Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of Indivisible, an organizer of “ICE Out for Good Weekend of Action”.
For the ICE Out for Good weekend of action, events are planned in every corner of every state, from Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, to Machias in eastern Maine. Indivisible, one of the groups behind last year’s No Kings protests, is continuously updating its online tracker to note every vigil, rally and protest. Other coordinating groups include the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and the 50501 movement.
“We demand justice for Renee, ICE out of our communities and action from our elected leaders,” said Greenberg. “Enough is enough.”
For protesting to work, it has to be disruptive. Read: not violent, but disruptive.
If you only protest when and where it’s allowed, then you’re not really bothering people (because if it were bothering the right people, it wouldn’t be allowed). Block streets, block businesses, block and bother people who want to go shopping, so they stay or go home and businesses lose money. AND KEEP IT UP. Don’t go home after one afternoon and give yourself a pat on the back. Stay there day in, day out, and don’t let up.
More importantly: STRIKE. Stop making money for the owner class. Strike and make sure other people can’t keep making money for the owner class. Let garbage pile up in the street, let packages go undelivered, let the bit of public transport you have stand still, stop cleaning those toilets, stop building those shiny new office buildings. STRIKE until they listen to you, hurt them until they listen to you.
Basically you need to grind society to a halt and force them to listen to you. Don’t be a tiny nuisance they can ignore for a day or two until things go back to normal. Why would they respond to that?
And for the love of everything that’s good, don’t give me the bullshit excuse of not having enough money, of not being able to lose your job, not having a social safety net. Throughout all of history, all over the world, there have been protests, riots, rebellions, revolutions – do you think all those people had job security and social safety nets? Let’s be honest about this: it’s just not bad enough for most people, that’s why it’s not happening.