‘No ICE, No KKK!’ New Yorkers Protest in Solidarity With Twin Cities
Solidarity on the streets of New York City on Jan. 23. More protests are expected here today. Photos/Judith Sokoloff
Editor’s Note: An emergency protest was announced for Saturday, Jan. 24 at Union Square starting at 4 p.m. just prior to publication of this story after federal agents shot and killed another person in Minneapolis believed to be a US citizen.
By Steve Wishnia
With the damp chill of a looming blizzard blowing in from the south, hundreds of New Yorkers flowed up the subway stairs at Union Square on January 23 like a fountain of humans wearing purple SEIU gear or bearing red “NO ICE” signs.
“We are here because we refuse to stand by while families are being torn apart,” New York City Central Labor Council President Brendan Griffin told the few thousand people packed into the square’s southern plaza. “This is about more than ICE. It’s about what kind of country we are building.” Almost half of working people in the city are immigrants, he noted.
“We’ve had enough,” said 1199SEIU secretary-treasurer Veronica Turner-Biggs. “We are demanding ICE out for good.” The paramilitary agency’s raids, she added, are “funded with the money that’s been ripped away from our health care.”
The protesters’ moods ranged from sorrow—one woman carried a sign that read in small letters “and then they came for a child in a bunny hat”—to rage. Tinina Villegas, a third-generation Nuyorican from Staten Island’s north shore, told Work-Bites that she’d come out after hearing reports of ICE agents in her neighborhood, “where I do my laundry, where I buy my groceries.” The prospect of them dragging people out of their homes, she said, “makes my blood boil.”
New Yorkers flood Union Square in support of the “Day of Truth and Freedom” protest in Minneapolis.
“We’ve got stormtroopers in our cities,” said Nancy Bless, 77, of Cortlandt Manor. But she was pleased to see the city crowd have more young people than similar protests in her Westchester County town.
The “Day of Truth and Freedom” protest was called in solidarity with a one-day general strike in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, where more than 2,000 ICE and Border Protection agents have assaulted and seized hundreds of immigrants and protesters, the undocumented and U.S. citizens alike; murdered 37-year-old mother Renee Good; tear-gassed a car with a six-month-old baby inside; dragged men wearing only underwear out of their homes in 10° weather; and on Jan. 20 grabbed a 5-year-old Ecuadorean boy and his asylum-seeking father on their way home from preschool and shanghaied them off to a detention center in rural Texas.
“What ICE is doing is inhuman. There’s no due process,” said Christine, a Taiwanese immigrant in her twenties. “I’m here with documents because I’m lucky.”
Her sign read “Jonathan Ross Is a Fucking Murderer,” referring to the ICE agent who shot Renee Good in the head, arguably because her wife had gotten sarcastic with him after he photographed their license plate.
“We are here because we refuse to stand by while families are being torn apart. This is about more than ICE. It’s about what kind of country we are building.”
The protest’s demands included the immediate withdrawal of “federal paramilitary forces” from U.S. cities; an end to masked arrests and indiscriminate attacks on citizens or immigrants; stopping racial profiling and retaliation for lawful speech and protest; and opposing “any federal funding increase that doesn’t restrain ICE abuses.” The House, however, voted Jan. 22 to approve new funding for ICE with only minor restrictions. The vote was 220-207, with far-right maverick Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) voting no, and seven Democrats defecting to vote yes, including Thomas Suozzi and Laura Gillen of Long Island.
More than 70 organizations signed on to the protest. They included about 20 labor unions, such as 1199SEIU, 32BJ, and the New York State Nurses Association; various religious and community groups; and political organizations, from the Working Families Party to the Communist Party. The union presence, except for the marshals from 1199, seemed to be more individuals and small groups than large contingents. The most obvious blocs came from several communist organizations.
“Dad Did Not Fight Nazis For This…” New Yorkers rally in solidarity with Minneapolis during the Jan. 23 “Truth and Freedom” general strike in Minneapolis. Another protest is set to take place in New York City today.
Democrats can’t be trusted, said David of the Revolutionary Communists of America, because “they’re just as complicit as Trump.”
He believes there should be neighborhood defense committees in every city to protect people, and that unions would be the groups best suited to organize them.
The march headed out onto 14thStreet westbound to the tune of Woody Guthrie’s “All You Fascists Bound to Lose,” then up Sixth Avenue. “The working class will lead,” Vivica K. of the Bronx, a United Auto Workers Local 2179 member, told Work-Bites, as the crowd chanted “No ICE! No KKK! No Fascist USA!”—a chant derived from a 1980 song called “Born to Die” by the Austin, Texas punk band MDC.
“I believe immigrants have a right to be here,” said Sebastian Ramirez, 18, of Queens, who was carrying a “Release the Epstein Files” sign.
The march turned right on 23rd Street and stopped in front of the Home Depot store, an old cast-iron building painted alabaster. Home Depot’s two co-founders have been avid Trump supporters and campaign donors, and its parking lots are frequent targets for ICE agents hunting immigrant day laborers. The sound was a muddle of “shame on you” chants, cowbells, and tambourines.
New York University history professor Rebecca Goetz stood on the sidewalk on the far side of the street, holding a “NYU-AARP Stands With Minnesota Teachers” sign. She had two reasons for going, she said. First, her sister-in-law is a public-school teacher in Minneapolis. Second, “the bigger issue is ‘fuck ICE.’”
Joshua Rubin, 73, of Brooklyn, carried a sign that read “No American Auschwitz” over a blue triangle. The blue triangle, he explained, was the symbol Nazi concentration camps sewed to prisoners’ uniforms to denote foreigners, in the way that yellow Stars of David signified Jews, pink triangles gay men, and red triangles political prisoners.
Rubin went to the Florida detention camp the Trump regime dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” a few weeks ago with a group called Witnesses At the Border, and plans to go back next month.
“There really are alligators. Right on the roadway,” he said of the Everglades prison. The group stands outside, bearing witness and trying to gather information.
“We see ambulances going in and ambulances coming out,” he said. “We see buses going in and buses coming out. We see planes taking people to other concentration camps in Texas and Louisiana.
“We know from people inside that they are torturing people,” Rubin continued. “We know from workers inside that a few people have died unreported.”
Did he have any relatives murdered in the Holocaust, he was asked.
“Of course I did,” he answered.