This is an adapted excerpt from the Oct. 3 episode of “Connect with Jacob Soboroff.”
Right now, a group of interfaith leaders is nearing the end of a 96-mile “pilgrimage” in California. The leaders say they are embarking on the eight-day journey to “draw attention and call for an end to cruel immigration policy and a close to all detention centers.” The group spans different faiths, and its members say they want “to serve as a voice of protest for those for whom it is not safe to speak out.”
They began their epic journey last week. Their starting point was an infamous immigration detention facility in the Mojave Desert: the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, which is run by the Geo Group, a controversial private prison company. According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s own data, about 1,800 people were being held there as of July. And according to the agency’s breakdown, about 61% of detainees at the facility have no criminal record.
In 2018, at the height of Donald Trump’s first-term family separation policy, I was actually let inside the private, for-profit prison by then-Department of Homeland Security assistant press secretary Katie Miller. That same year, an inspector general report would describe the horrific conditions inside that facility, including reports of attempted suicides.
Protest in America has become a form of bearing witness and when this country has found itself at a crossroads, mass mobilization has usually led to fundamental change.
Last September, Ismael Ayala-Uribe died after about a month inside Adelanto. He was just 39 years old. He had been a DACA recipient, having arrived in the U.S. when he was 4 years old. Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., said his “pleas for medical care were ignored.” In a statement after his death, ICE said in part, “Comprehensive medical care is provided from the moment individuals arrive and throughout the entirety of their stay.” A month later, Gabriel Garcia-Aviles died after just one week in the Adelanto facility. ICE said Garcia suffered cardiac arrest tied to alcohol withdrawal syndrome.
The Rev. Canon Jaime Edwards-Acton, one of the marchers, said they are walking so the names of those two men are spoken “somewhere other than a court filing.” According to the ACLU, at least 57 people have died in immigration detention since the start of Trump’s second term.
The interfaith group plans to end its journey on Tuesday, outside the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal facility in downtown Los Angeles.
The march, called the Interfaith Pilgrimage of Witness and Solidarity, began during Sukkot, a Jewish pilgrimage holiday. Less than two miles into their walk, the marchers received word that California Gov. Gavin Newsom had signed a package of bills, including a 25% tax on private detention centers like Adelanto, and a ban on shock gloves used by law enforcement.
A few dozen clergy on a desert road may not seem like much. But the power of protest to bring about transformational change has a long history in this country.
In 1965, about 600 people set out from Selma, Alabama, to walk 54 miles to Montgomery, demanding that African Americans be granted the right vote. They were met by state troopers who beat protesters as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge. But that didn’t deter them. Two weeks later, they tried again. This time, thousands came with them. Clergy flew in from across the country. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel walked in the front row, alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Later, reflecting on his march, he said, “I felt my legs were praying.”
Five months after that march, President Lyndon Johnson signed the landmark Voting Rights Act. As King would later put it, “Selma produced the voting rights legislation of 1965.”
One year after Selma, grape workers who were on strike walked 340 miles from Delano, California, to the Capitol building in Sacramento. They referred to their march as a peregrinación, meaning a pilgrimage. The farmworkers began their march during the Christian season of Lent, and it ended on Easter Sunday.
Before they reached Sacramento, Schenley, one of the biggest growers, agreed to negotiate, eventually leading to the workers’ first union contract.
Protest in America has become a form of bearing witness. And when this country has found itself at a crossroads, mass mobilization has usually led to fundamental change.
Just consider what happened not too long ago, during Trump’s first term when the administration started taking children from their parents along the border. Altogether, more than 2,000 children were separated. In June 2018, under mounting pressure, the president signed an order ending the practice.
But the children remained separated from their loved ones. So, shortly after the president signed that order, Americans marched in more than 700 cities and towns. In total, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets.
Then came November. Turnout in that election hit a little more than 50%, marking the highest for a midterm since 1914. Democrats picked up 41 House seats and took control of the chamber. The biggest jump in turnout came from young voters.
Now, did the marches cause that? Nobody can prove it for certain, but we do know that the anger that filled the streets that summer did not evaporate. It showed up at the polls in record numbers.
Which brings us to this moment. According to organizers, 5 million people took to the streets during the No Kings protest against the Trump administration in June last year. By October, that number had grown to 7 million. This past March, 8 million turned out for No Kings in all 50 states. By organizers’ count, it was one of the largest single-day protests in American history.
And Americans aren’t done marching. The next No Kings event is set for Oct. 17 — just 17 days before Election Day. It’s called “No Kings: Vote Early.” There will be block parties, cookouts and group walks to the polls.
The organizers say their message that day is simple: “Power belongs to the people, but only if we use it.”
Allison Detzel contributed.
The post Faith leaders march against ICE detention in America’s long tradition of protest appeared first on MS NOW.
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