New York, NY – Activists affiliated with the Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council (MACC) will join members of New Sanctuary Coalition, Occupy ICE NYC (Foley Sq.), and NYC Shut It Down to protest Mayor Bill DeBlasio’s keynote speech at this year’s National Homeland Security Conference Tuesday morning. Following the wave of #OccupyICE protests around the country, activists are increasingly targeting not only ICE facilities, but the political and economic relationships that facilitate the ever-more authoritarian work of immigration enforcement, deportation and detention. Organizers with MACC note that #AbolishICE actions are especially important in New York City, which has proven to be a “Sanctuary City” in name only. “It’s telling how little the ‘Sanctuary’ designation means that that the Mayor of the nation’s most ardent Sanctuary City doesn’t see a contradiction in delivering the keynote address to a National Homeland Security Conference,” said Marisa Holmes of MACC.
New York City is home to an estimated 500,000 undocumented residents and, despite Sanctuary status, hosts numerous ICE facilities that oversaw over 2,000 deportations in 2017. While De Blasio and the city administration pretend to defend immigrants and stand against ICE, they simultaneously advocate for “broken windows” policing. “Broken windows” policies have been shown to disproportionately affect communities of color and the poor, funneling these communities into the criminal justice system and, through data sharing from NYPD to the FBI to ICE, putting them at risk for arrest, detention, and deportation by ICE.
#AbolishICE demonstration protesting DHS/ICE/CBP border regimes and NYC’s “Sanctuary City” administration acting in complicity with DHS/ICE
Sheraton Times Square, 811 7th Avenue 53rd St., New York, NY, 10019
Tuesday, July 10th, 9AM
While the national movement to Abolish ICE has emphasized a need for greater protections for immigrants in local municipalities and an end to policies like family separation at the border (which remains unresolved), MACC activists trace their lineage to “alterglobalization” protests, saying that the issue demands much broader political change. “The Department of Homeland Security conference is an abhorrent celebration of border militarization and mass-surveillance, ultimately used to target immigrants for state violence,” said Matthew Whitley, an organizer with MACC. “When we say Abolish ICE, however, it’s not a call to replace it with a slightly less cruel and inhumane bureaucracy.” Whitley continued, “This is just one part of a decades long international struggle for freedom of movement that is claiming lives daily. Until we have just and egalitarian economic and political systems, borders will continue to reflect our “free trade” world, designed quite intentionally to globalize the rich and localize the poor. The result is further racism and xenophobia, but the causes are political and economic institutions that harden inequalities and disenfranchise the struggling, the desperate and the working class.”
MACC and its co-sponsoring partners intend to continue Abolish ICE actions in the run-up to the July 27th National Day of Action.
Email press@macc.nyc for inquiries