Over two thousand people, mostly students from Rhode Island universities, colleges and high schools, rallied and marched outside the Rhode Island State House on Friday as part of a nationwide shutdown, walk-out, and general strike called by the Somali Student Association of the University of Minnesota in response to the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) murder of Alex Pretti and the escalating campaign of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) terror.
Participating schools included, among many others, Brown University, the University of Rhode Island (URI), the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Johnson & Wales University, Roger Williams University, Rhode Island College (RIC), and the Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI), The Wheeler School, Moses Brown School, Lincoln School and Providence, East Greenwich, and Barrington Public Schools.
The event began with a short speaking program before marching through downtown Providence and returning to the State House. For more information, see: ICE Out! National Day of Action: Protest in Providence as part of the national shutdown to stop ICE’s reign of terror
Here’s the video:
Diego Castillo, an organizer with the Party for Social Liberation:
It fills my heart to see so many people out here. Minnesota called, and Rhode Island is answering right now. Today, our country’s at an inflection point. ICE agents have been invading cities across the country. They’re tearing apart families, they’re destroying communities, and terrorizing workers for how they look, for how they speak. Over the last few weeks, over 3000 ICE agents invaded and occupied the City of Minneapolis in a racist campaign of terrorism, specifically targeting the local Somali population.
During this time, agents have killed at least two people: Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti. Renee and Alex were murdered because they dared to stand up for their neighbors. It is the duty of every person here today and every person in the country with even an ounce of empathy, with even an ounce of solidarity, to stand up.
Last Friday, the City of Minneapolis pulled off something historic. They pulled off a general strike with hundreds of thousands, something that we had not seen in nearly a century. However, the murder of Alex Pretti and the continued state violence against the immigrant community have made it clear that our job is not done. We need to take it to the next level, and this is exactly why Somali and Black student unions in Minneapolis put out the call to expand the strike to the national level, and that’s exactly why it’s so crucial for every one of us to be out here today sending the message that there will be no more business as usual as workers and students. When we don’t go to work, when we refuse to go to class, nothing in this nation can move. It doesn’t matter how rich the billionaires backing Trump are. If their employees walk out, they won’t make a dime, and that’s what makes this shutdown important, and that’s precisely why the billionaire ruling class is so afraid of it. Last week, 60 major corporations issued a joint letter seeking to lower the temperature. All this week, Democrats in Washington have been doing everything that they can to cover for ICE, pursuing meaningless mitigator reforms.
Let’s be clear. You can’t reform slave catchers. You can’t reform the Gestapo. You can’t reform ICE. We know why Democrats are saying that our calls for abolition are too idealistic. It’s the same reason that Democrats, every year that they control the White House, have given record increases to ICE. It’s the same reason that Obama deported hundreds of thousands and built the very same detention centers that Trump is using today. It is the same reason why, under Biden, 8-year-old Anadith Danay Reyes Alvarez died in Border Patrol custody simply because they refused to give her the medical care that she needed.
We know why. It’s because the same billionaires fund both parties, and they demand that their secret force terrorize the working class into not organizing, not speaking out, and not fighting for our rights on the job. We can’t reform ICE anymore than we can reform the capitalist system, where a few billionaires control everything and leave us begging for scraps. That’s why workers across this country are rising to say, Abolish ICE! Abolish ICE! Abolish ICE! Abolish ICE!
Pastor Santiago Rodriguez: Gloria Dei Lutheran Church and the Ascension Episcopal Church:
Thank you to the organizer of this powerful protest. I stand here in solidarity with Minneapolis and its Black and Somali students. We stand here as people of faith who work for justice, peace, and love. You people from ICE are receiving your salary from our taxes. Your salary is not for you to use your power to abuse people in our communities. We have the call from the students in Minneapolis, and we are here to say, but peacefully, “ICE out of our communities, out of Minneapolis, and out of Rhode Island.”
The kingdom of God is here. The kingdom of God is peace, love, and justice. You are doing the work of God here. I want to invite the whole faith community to stand up and protest what is happening in our country. We can’t be quiet anymore. We have to fight. We have to be present, fighting for peace in our country and saying together, “ICE out!”
Diego Castillo: We’re so grateful for the leadership that Pastor Santiago has offered in this moment. In cities across the country, across all religions and denominations, faith leaders have stepped up and stood up to ICE. During last week’s general strike in Minneapolis, a hundred local clergy were arrested during a sit-in at the airport, demanding that ICE stop terrorizing their community. Clergy play an invaluable role, and we cannot do this without them. Thank you, Pastor Santiago.
Sophia and Catarina - Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance (AMOR):
We’re here today because we know we are stronger together. The people protect the people, from Rhode Island to Minnesota, Maine, Oregon, Arizona, and every corner in this country where there is resistance. Resistance is in our blood. In 2002, our Rhode Island Cambodian community mobilized a march to the INS office to defend the folks being targeted for detention and deportation. The federal government was targeting permanent residents who came to the U.S. as refugees from a genocide in the sixties and seventies. Why? Because immigration law expanded the grounds for deportation to include any misdemeanor or felony that received a sentence of over one year. This law was retroactive and applied to people who had already served their time.
We saw fathers, teenagers, and young adults ripped away from their families and their communities, forcibly removed to a country they had no memory of. In 2006, hundreds of immigrant Rhode Islanders mobilized as part of a nationwide movement known as the Day Without Immigrants. Back then, like now, they could not silence immigrants through fear. These same community members, organized through the Olneyville Neighborhood Association, fought to protect their neighbors by launching the First Defense Network in Rhode Island. Back then, it was just a cell phone passed from one volunteer to the next, to friends and neighbors who were ready to mobilize in the middle of the night to protect their loved ones.
In 2008, the brutality and medical neglect of ICE agents at the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls killed Hiu Lui (“Jason”) Ng, a father and green card holder who was being held there. Our community, including Pastor Santiago, stood up to push ICE out of the Wyatt. Around that same time, this community rose to fight for the Dream Act when our undocumented young people demanded a pathway to citizenship and to be able to pay for their higher education. In 2010, Rhode Islanders joined the nationwide pushback against the SB 1070 in Arizona law that allowed for racial profiling and forced immigrants to carry their documents or face a misdemeanor.
For decades, our immigrant community in Rhode Island and across the country has fought for basic freedoms: the right to due process, pathways to citizenship, and what some would call immigration reform. But our so-called representatives won’t talk about immigration reform. For the past eight years, Democrats and Republicans alike have forced our movements to focus on how our immigrant community will survive until the next day with their families intact.
The Alliance to Mobilize our Resistance was founded in 2017 to fight back against an administration that promised to ramp up attacks against our immigrant community. That’s why we’re here today, to shut down their profits and exercise our power as a movement to say enough to the atrocities that the immigration system and ICE are committing against our communities every day. If they’re killing people in daylight, in front of cameras, on our streets, what crimes are they committing against our people behind the walls of the detention center?
This year, with Senate Bill 2278, Rhode Island state legislators will fight alongside us to shut down the Wyatt.
Shut it down! Shut it down! Shut it down!
Join the Deportation Defense Network, a statewide movement to defend against ICE terror. If you are not already involved, please take out your phone and text “Defense” to 401 675-1414 to get involved.
Today we’re striking to interrupt a wave of violent suppression across the country. Like those who came before us, we’ll not be silenced by fear. We’re joined by high school and college students from 14-plus schools. We’re joined by union workers and small businesses. The more we organize and mobilize, the stronger we become in taking care of each other. Our resistance does not end when we go home tonight. We’ll continue until ICE is abolished and all our people are free. Free them all! Free them all! Free them all!
Kenneth - Brown Rise Up!:
I am speaking on behalf of the thousands of students from Brown, URI, RISD, Johnson and Wales, Roger Williams, RIC, and CCRI. We are out to shut it down!
We have shut down our campuses, far-flung across Rhode Island, in opposition to the brutality and violence that we have seen rule our streets for months. I am deeply moved by the show of strength that we’ve managed to assemble out here while it is seven degrees. I’m so proud to be out here in solidarity with the Black and Somali student organizers, bearing the brunt of it in Minneapolis, who called for this strike.
I’m also proud to be out here with UCLA, Princeton, Harvard, U Miami, the University of Florida, Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Connecticut, and thousands of universities that are walking out right now. ICE is waging a terror campaign against every sector of society, and our schools are not exempt. Across the United States, ICE agents have kidnapped thousands of undocumented and international students. ICE has deported professors with anti-Trump memes on their phones and targeted students who speak up for Palestinian liberation.
I remember standing on those very steps last year when our professor, Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a kidney transplant surgeon at the Medical School at Brown University, was deported.
ICE is the agency responsible for some of the worst crimes we have seen in this country. The morning after the shooting that took two of our classmates, literally two hours after the shelter-in-place order was lifted on our campus, ICE agents kidnapped a person on Chalkstone Avenue. ICE exploited our shock and fear - the fear that the entire community was feeling after the shooting - to break into a house and kidnap one of our community members.
ICE is a fascist militia. It is an armed formation comprised of the worst dregs of American society. You know why you haven’t seen any Proud Boys or Nazi rallies recently? Because they all joined ICE.
We all walked out today because we know that our elected leaders will not dismantle this pack of white supremacists. The Republicans are a group of fascists who want immigrants and minorities dead. Donald Trump himself said that if Stephen Miller had his way, America would consist of a hundred million people and they would all look like Stephen Miller. That means every non-white person is removed from this country.
At the same time, too many Democrats serve as enablers for this fascism. Last week, seven House Democrats joined with Republicans to pass legislation that provides billions in funding to ICE. Why were they able to do this? Because Hakeem Jeffries and House Democratic leadership were too feckless, they refused to use their legislative power to get Democrats to vote against ICE.
Congress will not protect our campuses and communities from ICE. The police won’t protect us from ICE because they collaborate with ICE. The Supreme Court won’t protect us from ICE because Clarence Thomas is on it.
Who’s going to protect our neighbors from ICE? We are! That’s why all of us students are out here today, participating in this shutdown alongside every other member of our community, and that’s why we are ready to shut it down again and again until we evict ICE once and for all. Today is the foundation on which we build tomorrow. We can only defeat ICE if we are organized. If it takes one strike, if it takes two strikes, if it takes a hundred strikes, we will be striking until ICE is defeated.
You are, always, there when it counts and when the local news misses it! Thank you, Steve! 🙌❤️
“The young are at the gates”. Most grateful 🙏