Notices by Carwil Bjork-James (carwil@mastodon.online)

"Through this letter, I would like to describe the situation that thousands of immigrants are currently living through…"

— Letter from detained immigrants in #Delaney Hall

"We see with profound helplessness and frustration that the right to due process & legal counsel were violated, and benefits granted in the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution were unacknowledged."

"Furthermore, there is a contradiction in the processes for voluntary departures and approved deportations, as it takes two, three, or more months of waiting to be sent back to our country of origin.

We feel vulnerable, in a way, kidnapped or detained without justification."

https://www.lahuelga.com/elgrito

"We have been subjected to court proceedings where lawyers are afraid to represent us because they say there is a presidential order to deport as many people as possible without considering or reviewing each case individually. Judges are denying a large number of cases, dismissing them outright."
https://www.lahuelga.com/elgrito

and in some cases, they were subjected to witnessed the arrests of their spouses and parents, who are devastated by the tragedy and the economic burden, since we are the providers and heads of our households."

"In addition, families are being destroyed and separated, especially where there are minor children and nephews who are suffering a very strong psychological impact because they do not understand the situation, …

"Additionally, the ICE agents have arrested people with mental health issues, physical disabilities such as deaf and non-verbal, elderly individuals, and young people with juvenile status, with whom we have to live in the detention centers that are overcrowded."
https://www.lahuelga.com/elgrito

RE: https://mastodon.online/@Carwil/116647986625810522

Re solidarity: this first letter from #DelaneyHall has a remarkable insistence by the writer, "I, Leonardo Villalba, with identification number A■■■■■■■■■, take responsibility for this statement, as I do not want my fellow detainees to suffer any consequences."

but 26 other detainees signed their names & numbers anyway.

Mapping ICE's un/under-reported detention sites:

The official count of immigrants detained by ICE passed 73,000 in January. But in the rush to expand several thousand more are being held each night in sites not include on the agency's public reports.

An analysis based on FOIA-supplied data…

#ICE #rstats #ImmigrationDetention

The military parade for the Commander-in-Chief's birthday was literally a Nazi move. And apparently was more impressive in the original German.

(photo from Topographies of Terror, exhibit on the ruins of the Gestapo HQ)

Student protesters at Nashville's citywide walkout for gun legislation, in their own hand-lettered words…

"Look me in the eye and tell me it's okay with you that I die."

More photos at https://www.flickr.com/photos/45233773@N00/albums/72177720307226165

#NashvilleWalkout #GunControl #NashvilleProtest @studentsdemand @amarch4ourlives@birdsite.am-institute.swiss

Zionism's/Israel's internal inequality, racism, creation of refugees, and unrestrained violence have created moral crises for generations of Jewish scholars.

Until I encountered these recent works, I was unaware of important links in the chain…

Everyone should at least consider the idea that the law is constantly remade to prevent social change.

That many effective strategies will be criminalized precisely because they are effective.

That, therefore, one should never confuse legality with morality.

https://twitter.com/hannahcrileyy/status/1753122792847880403?t=44AJD3F8lXyK7_rLGC4S5w&s=19

"From the River to the Sea" begins with an acknowledgement that there are Palestinians in Gaza, in the West Bank, and in Israel / "the 1948 territories." People who share a common national struggle.

People who must neither live as permanent second-class citizens, nor as permanently stateless subjects.

As a descendant of Jews and the African diaspora, I realize that historic trauma casts a real shadow.

But fearing expulsion from A SLOGAN that ends "Palestine will be free," while Gazans are under orders to evacuate 1/2 of the 1.3% of Israel/Palestine they are crowded within??

#Israel #FromTheRiverToTheSea #Palestine

Here's Saree Makdisi in 2007: "There remains but one possibility for peace with justice: truth, reconciliation–and a single democratic and secular state, a state in which there will be no “natives” and “settlers” and all will be equal; a state for all its citizens irrespective of their religious affiliation." https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/secular-democratic-state/

Prominent Palestinian voices speaking to the entire land "from the river to the sea" have presented a clear vision.

Here's Edward Said in 1999:

"I see no other way than to begin now to speak about sharing the land that has thrust us together, sharing it in a truly democratic way, with equal rights for each citizen. There can be no reconciliation unless both peoples, two communities of suffering, resolve that their existence is a secular fact, and that it has to be dealt with as such."

Freedom for one people does not imply or require expulsion of others.

The supposition that it does is an important mirror of how we settler state residents view the world, though.

Whatever the relative merits and potential for one-state vs two-state visions for Israel/Palestine, the North Star of one-state solutions for Palestinians, since the early days of the PLO, has been a "secular democratic state" of Jews and Arabs, not expulsion.

Some time today, the Palestinian death toll in Gaza (at 5,087 yesterday) will exceed the number of Palestinians killed in the First and Second Intifadas combined (high estimates 3,354 and 1,962 respectively. This month has been worse than 10 years.
#Gaza #Palestine #casualties