Never Again Action Shuts Down ICE Headquarters

July 17, 2019 | revcom.us

 

Photo: Never Again Action

Photo: twitter/@Yael_Shafritz

“Fuck the semantics. Children are dying. That should be enough. My goal is not to convince you to use those semantics. It’s to get you to stop these atrocities.” An organizer with Never Again Action responding to criticism of the group’s name.

A powerful and courageous action by more than 1,000 protesters shut down ICE headquarters in Washington, DC, Tuesday for at least five hours. People locked arms in the middle of the street and blocked all entrances to the building. “We will not allow them to get to their destructive place of work,” one protester told a reporter. Another said the action is “not just symbolic – we’re actually shutting down ICE.” Dozens of people were reported to have been arrested. Protesters also draped a banner reading “Pelosi, never again is now. #DignityNotDetention” on an overpass near the ICE building.

The protests were organized by Never Again Action, a group of mainly young Jewish activists, and Movimiento Cosecha, an immigrants group fighting for “permanent protection, dignity, and respect for the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.” A spokesperson for Never Again Action explained that “We look at … what our government is doing to immigrant communities. We see nothing less than a mass atrocity. While conditions might not exactly mirror the Holocaust, we shouldn’t wait for them to mirror the Holocaust to take action. That’s why we say ‘never again’ means never again for everyone, and never again means now.”

This protest continued the movement among progressive Jews to stand with immigrants and to shut down ICE and its concentration camps. Never Again Action intends to continue these protests and extend them to other cities. People everywhere need to learn from, support, participate in, and broaden these protests.