From a press release:
In Providence, over one thousand demonstrators are expected to gather at the Rhode Island State House at 2 pm for a rally and march as part of the nationwide shutdown on Friday. After hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans led the first general strike in the U.S. in 70 years this past Friday, federal agents murdered VA ICU nurse Alex Pretti in cold blood the very next day. In response to this escalating campaign of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) terror, the Somali Student Association of the University of Minnesota has called for a nationwide shutdown on Friday, January 30th, with the call: “No Business as Usual! – No School, No Work, and No Shopping.”
Hundreds of organizations have answered the call and are taking action across the country. The growing list of endorsers is available here.
Thousands of students across Rhode Island are organizing walkouts to join the protest at the State House, including high school students from across the Providence Public Schools, as well as the Wheeler School, East Greenwich, Moses Brown, Barrington, and the Lincoln School. College students from Brown University, CCRI, and URI are also walking out.
Immigrant rights organizations in Rhode Island have answered the call and endorsed the national day of action, including the Immigrant Coalition of Rhode Island, the Refugee Dream Center, and the Rhode Island Deportation Defense Network. Faith leaders and congregations from local churches and mosques have also pledged their support for the day of action and will mobilize together as participants. Dozens of local businesses in and around Providence are putting up signs promoting the national day of action, and dozens have pledged to close outright and instead participate in the mobilization, including Big Feeling, Small Format, Pickerel, The Nest, Black Beans PVD, and more.
This day of action will be a powerful demonstration of the increasingly militant resistance to the Trump administration’s full-scale assault on our most basic rights. ICE, CBP (Customs and Border Protection), other federal agencies, and local police collaborators are waging a war on immigrants and citizens who dissent or happen to be racially profiled. In addition to the horrific murders of Alex Pretti, Renée Good, Silverio Villegas González, and Keith Porter Jr., these enforcers of Trump’s racist agenda have subjected the people of this country to brutal kidnappings and deportations; arbitrary arrest and imprisonment; forcible, warrantless entry into homes and workplaces; shootings with live ammunition and with “less than lethal” weapons causing severe and permanent injuries; and targeted reprisals for political expression and community organizing.
Meanwhile, the same administration is depriving working-class and poor people of basic necessities by cutting vital support for food and heating assistance and slashing healthcare coverage, and at the same time escalating the U.S.’ longstanding imperialist siege of independent countries like Venezuela, by kidnapping President Maduro; Cuba, by cutting off their access to oil in the midst of an energy crisis; and Iran, by once again threatening to bomb and invade them.
These attacks are part of a broader war being waged on working people around the world by a racist political and economic elite, led in the United States by the Trump administration. What is being witnessed now is an escalation to open repression, with federal forces acting like an occupying power and carrying out killings in public.
But this escalation has also produced a powerful response. Across the country, people are organizing and resisting on a scale not seen in decades, through strikes, mass protests, and collective action. The historic Minnesota General Strike has created a real opening for change.
If this momentum is built upon—by disrupting business as usual, refusing to accept daily life under repression, and challenging the profits that sustain this system—it is possible to stop the killings, the kidnappings, and the accelerating attacks on the most basic rights.
Organizations involved in the protest in Providence include 100+ organizations, faith institutions, businesses, labor unions, and student groups. Some of these include: 50501 Rhode Island, AMOR Network, AFT Local 6516, Alliance of Rhode Island Southeast Asians for Education, Direct Action for Rights and Equality, Refugee Dream Center, George Wiley Center, Immigrant Coalition of RI, Cranston Forward, Providence Student Union, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Reclaim RI, Rhode Island Action Committee, Rhode Island Anti-War Committee, People’s Port Authority, University of Rhode Island Young Democratic Socialists of America, Reentry Campus Program, and DWRI Letterpress.
Thanks for the alert.