[Finding] One person, out of a system designed to make people disappear
[Editor’s Note, excerpted from The Workers Circle, 125+ Years, Jewish Culture for a Just World.
“The Workers Circle was founded by Jewish immigrants and refugees 125 years ago who undertook the daunting task of achieving real social and economic justice in a new nation. We know what it means to flee danger and seek refuge – and we know what it means when a government tries to make people disappear.”]
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We found Manuel because of our weekly Freedom Vigil outside Alligator Alcatraz – the kind of place the government would rather you never think about. We kept showing up publicly and building relationships with the families of people who were detained and people who were detained themselves.
Without the freedom vigils, Manuel would not have been identified. He would not have had the opportunity for free legal counsel, had the Freedom Vigil not given birth to a new collaboration with Sanctuary of the South to provide legal assistance to people held in the Blacksite known as Alligator Alcatraz. Were it not for the freedom vigils, he would not have won his habeas petition in Florida and walked out of unlawful detention in Jena, Louisiana where he had been transferred. Today he is home in Miami with his family.
One person, out of a system designed to make people disappear.
And now, after over a year of horrific treatment toward thousands upon thousands of people in a facility that should’ve never been built in the first place, we have emptied it out for good:
We organized and built power to pull down the “jewel in the crown” of the Trump detention/deportation machine. But it’s only the beginning. There are ICE facilities across the country, violating peoples rights, illegally detaining human beings, and daring us to look away. We will not.
While people are starting to be freed due to this freedom vigil and the uniting of grassroots advocacy with legal advocacy, many of the people we’ve fought for outside of Alligator Alcatraz are, sadly, still within the system. That’s why our fight is not yet over.
Our vigils are how the people notice. When we bear witness outside these facilities, we make the invisible visible – we do our best to document who's inside, we work with reporters, and we make it impossible for DHS to operate in total silence. That's exactly how Arianne, our community catalyst in Florida, reached dozens of detainees before they were moved. Her number was passed between the cages inside Alligator Alcatraz with people literally memorizing it (they have no paper or pen) so they could call for help.
But Alligator Alcatraz was one site. There are DHS detention facilities in every corner of this country, and the administration is racing to open more. We cannot be everywhere – yet.
So we're scaling up. More vigils catalysed and supported by The Workers Circle. More vigils led by coalition allies who've been inspired by what we built in Florida. A nationwide presence outside these sites so that no detention camp, anywhere, gets to operate as if no one is watching.
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